The LuciaStove

By Giovanni Fois and Marta Mutti Translate by David Mulcahy

When a simple solution is found for a complex problem, we usually describe it as a Columbuss egg, recalling the story that, when challenged to do so, he was able to stand an egg on its end, simply by crushing a little bit of the shell on one end. A simple solution can resolve a challenging question. The Columbus egg story we are about to tell you about, one that, in a few months of life has been able to catalyze the attention of vast numbers of people, the LuciaStove. The first impression you have at a demonstration of the LuciaStove at work is one of skepticism for its apparent simplicity, being made up of only five metallic parts, assembled in a few seconds in the hands of Nathaniel. But it does work and produces energy, so much energy, that the question becomes, how is this simple device able to do this? But were getting ahead of ourselves here. Lets take a quick flashback, going back to the origin of the idea and its creator. Nathaniel, an American of Tortona, son of American father and Piemontese mother, decides to establish his home and work in this small Piedmont town and to live in the house of his grandfather, among rooms filled with books, yellowed by time, but mainly by use. In the company of Lucia, the inseparable friend, to whom he owns his life. It was, in fact, thanks her assistance after a serious accident, that Nathaniel today is able to function without problems. Its easy to almost forget that Lucia is a dog. And I use the present tense even if Lucia is no longer with us, because the tie between them is perpetuated in the name of Nathaniels invention, the LuciaStove. The Eureka idea came from a series of events, ideas and desires that, in Nathaniel, found fertile ground, thanks to his earlier experiences as consultant and inventor for other industries and firms. In the case of the LuciaStove, all hinges on a single word, pyrolysis that is, the breakdown of organic matter by heat in the absence of oxygen, thus extracting gas from solid organic material. How does this stove differ from other little stoves? First of all, it has an efficiency of combustion equal to 93% (lets remember that fuel does not burn but pyrolyzes). And if you have ever seen films of old charcoal makers at work, you will know how much smoke that produces. And smoke is unburned fuel. But, with the LuciaStove, noxious fumes are very limited. In fact, if you see a demonstration of the LuciaStove, you soon realize that there is no chimney, but no obvious smoke, or smell of burning. Secondly, LuciaStove is able to obtain energy from any type of dry organic material: pellets, wood, but also the various types of organic waste such as clippings, chips, scraps of wood, nutshell, chaff of grain, organic waste, and, being destined mainly for

populations deprived of vegetation LuciaStove is able to function at its best even with animal manure. In view of such apparent simplicity, we could easily of lose sight of the complexity that is at the base of this project, the result of thermodynamic studies and the genetics of Nathaniel that enabled him to develop the art of the LuciaStove, a device that, thanks to its particular design is able to channel the gases produced by pyrolyzation and release them as clean energy, generating a flame, at times transparent, at others a Fibonacci like cone. The clean and transparent look of the flame is another characteristic of this little stove that, thanks to the pyrolysis and the consequent extraction of gas introduced into the combustion chambers, works as a burner but without gas tank making the LuciaStove a fireplace insert available even in places which do not allow burning of wood. Its difficult to explain it, but, if you have the time and the will, I suggest you go to the Utube.com and enter worldstove or LuciaStove and an entire world will open up to you. The next step was the recent widespread realization that the pyrolyzed material extracted from the stove, a form of charcoal known as biochar, is a valuable product. It is able to improve the quality of soil, even arid soils, thus possibly reducing desertification. In this way, discarded material such as agricultural waste, often considered an expensive disposal problem, is transformed into a valuable ally. And now, we have an interesting possibility, one that makes the LuciaStove more than just a simple technological exercise, made to reduce indoor air pollution or to dispose of agricultural waste. Instead we have a stove that produces char and thus increases agricultural productivity. This increase mean, not only more food, but more fuel as agricultural waste for the stove, more char and still more productivity, in other words, better and better, a virtuous cycle. Nathaniel decided to develop the LuciaStove in two ways: for both commerce and social benefits. On the commercial side, the LuciaStove can be extended to an industrial size for disposal of agricultural waste. For social benefits the small LuciaStove can greatly benefit the lives of people in the developing world by enabling them to boil water and cook with little fuel while avoiding the dangerous smoke and fumes typical of open fires. The LuciaStove became well know starting with the United Nations Conference on Climate Changes held in Poznan (11-12 December 2008) during which the World Health Organization placed it among the best inventions able to sequester CO2 (an important cause of climate change) and to help meet the needs of the developing world. And it is for these reasons that the LuciaStove is already being distributed, with the help of the U.N. and other humanitarian associations, to families among the poorest nations of the world.