Nishant Bioenergy (NB) is a new company formed to do business in improved biomass cook stoves. NB was formed after winning the Ashden Award-UK in the year 2005. Earlier to this the business name was Nishant Bioenergy Consultancy. Mr. Ramesh Kumar Nibhoria is a mechanical engineer with over 17 years of experience in biomass for energy application such as biomass briquetting, biomass pelletizing and biomass thermal application equipments. NB has designed a more innovative cook stove technology, the Earth Stove, for large scale and domestic cooking. The stove has an automated feed for powdered biomass.
Contact Information
Our Focus
India, rural and urban.
Our Experience And Interest In The Four PCIA Central Focus Areas
NB has extensive experience with biomass combustion technologies and a good understanding of the reasons for low adoption rates. The Earth Stove has been built keeping in mind that the poor need a low cost, reliable technology. These stoves use any type of biomass and households are not advised to change the fuel that they are using.
Although the Earth Stove has been developed especially targeting rural poor, it has wide applicability in urban areas as well. We have started discussions with several NGOs and venture capitalist organizations to support us in establishing a stove manufacturing facility in India, which will produce 100 stoves per day. GEF's SGP is disseminating the stoves through their NGO network. The stoves will be promoted using existing community level networks, such as, various NGOs and CBOs who are working with the communities for development programs. We will integrate improved stoves and finances into existing programs. We are also coordinating with organizations working to provide improved cook stove technologies. We expect these organizations to provide funding for the programs, while the local NGOs/CBOs will be our sales agents. The cost of the stove will be recovered by the NGO/CBO and paid back to the society/corpus fund. The project would be executed by the NGO/CBO with grant from the Government. Stoves will be installed with the grant and households receiving stoves would be required to pay a fixed monthly fee This fund will be collected in the common kitty and then can be used for any type of community work.
The Earth Stoves are factory made metallic / ceramic products and have standard designs. The stove is clean and smoke free. All the requisite tests will be carried out in the next few months. The stove can be used for cooking / heating (with minor modifications). The Earth Stove is a biomass domestic cook stove. It has a mechanical fan (no electricity DC/AC) for providing air for improved combustion. It also has a chimney for taking out the smoke from the kitchen. The Earth Stove has been tested at our workplace as well as in actual kitchens. The cost of the stove is around Rs 1000 (US$ 22) for woody biomass, and Rs 1500 (US$ 33) for powdered biomass.
The Earth Stove does not produce any smoke.
Relevant Publications or Studies
http://mnes.nic.in/akshayurja/akshayurja_2005_07_08_english.pdf http://www.ashdenawards.org/winners/nishant http://www.climatecare.org/projects/countries/india-schools/
Our Contribution to the Partnership
We feel that we have the skills to develop low cost improved cooking technologies and would like to collaborate with other Partners for dissemination of these technologies. The Earth Stove is a technical product which requires a strong base for manufacturing and distribution.
