It was out of pure curiosity that V Jayaprakash started building kilns(chulhas). But he was in for a surprise when his revolutionary invention of the smokeless stove started getting national and international recognition 25 years later.
Jayaprakash had a penchant for experimenting, especially with kilns, from a very young age and he perfected the skills of making kilns from ANERT (Agency for Non-Conventional Energy and Rural Technology).
His first attempt to make a kiln was at his own house, where he rebuilt the kiln they had from the scratch. “That first attempt was a total failure, I was inexperienced too. My aim was not to build an energy-efficient kiln. I just wanted to build one out of sheer curiosity,” says Jayaprakash.
Jayaprakash’s biomass stove was honoured with the Kerala State Energy Conservation Award-2008 in the category of Research and Innovation last December. He is also the recipient of the National Innovation Foundation Award (2012). This month, a team from Nigeria came to learn about his smokeless stove and sanitary napkin disposer. “They were quite impressed with the work and have given order for nearly 30 of them,” says Jayaprakash.
His inspiration to build an energy-saving stove came after he saw flame at the chimney of a hospital kitchen, where they had installed a community kiln. When he sought explanation from ANERT, he came to know that unburnt carbon particles exposed to oxygen at the top of the chimney had caused the flame. He started building his smoke-free kiln based on this process. “The smokeless kiln is constructed in such a way that air is pumped into the kiln, which helps the methane produced from burning the log to burn within itself. In the smokefree kiln, methane is not allowed to escape outside. Only carbon dioxide comes out, which is odourless and colourless and only vibration is felt.”
In 2008, he built more than 3,500 smokeless kilns. According to the observation made by ANERT, Jayaprakash’s smokeless kilns help save 50 percent of the energy while burning logs. Fixing this energy-saving stove in a house would cost upto Rs 9,000. It will be upto Rs 30,000 for fixing it in hotels. A portable model of the stove can be bought for Rs 2,000.
Nearly all the houses at his Edakkulam village in Koyilandy have been fixed with the smokeless stoves invented by him. The NSS College, Palakkad; The Energy Research Institute, New Delhi; and IIT Guwahati are some of the institutes where his stoves have been fixed. Nalanda Hotel and Jaya Auditorium in Kozhikode also use his energyefficient stoves.
Jayaprakash’s innovations are fast gaining popularity, especially with the soaring prices of LPG and the difficulty to get gas cylinders.