Nicaragua, PROLEÑA EcoStove
Rogerio Miranda, May 2002

Just to let you know that influenced by Kirk Smith publications, we at PROLEÑA began work toward an indoor smokeless stove in 1995 in Honduras. First we introduced the plancha to a lorena stove, which women liked very much due to its clean feature, however the efficiency suffered a lot.

Thanks to Hurricane Mitch in Honduras (that is the only positive side of the hurricane I can see), Trees Water and People (see also Stuart Conway, TWP, Rotary Stoves Project, Oak Ridge, TN) dispatched Aprovecho volunteers to Honduras to promote rocket stoves, including the master Larry Winiarsky. From their good work, they combined PROLEÑA´s clean but inefficient plancha stove with the great efficient rocket stove burner. The result was a tremendous stove called Justa Stove, with no indoor air pollution and 50% less fuelwood consumption in comparison to the plancha stove. Furthermore it is a multitask stove, you can cook in small pots, in a big pot or cook directly on the plancha. Women in Honduras and Nicaragia just love it.

Here in Nicaragua we at PROLEÑA decided to make this stove portable and commercial and we called it the Ecostove. so today we have a manufacturing plant pumping out about 100 Ecostoves per month to a free market demand.

The ecostove has an efficiency of about 20% and properly operated has zero indoor air pollution, besides allowing multiples cooking tasks. Enjoy these pictures while our web page is under construction.

The Ecostove I would say is quite similar to Piet's down draft barbecue.

Best wishes

Rogerio

rmiranda@sdnnic.org.ni

Small household business using Ecotove for sales of tortillas	Ecostove in operation	Ecostove with an oven
The look of an Ecostove	A small business using Ecostove	A low cost Ecostove developed under ESMAP project, This stove has a full 14 x 22 inch plancha
A low cost Ecostove developed under ESMAP Project. This stove has a direct fire above its rocket stove, and a side small 10 x 14 inch plancha for secondary cooking or tortilla baking	A small home business using a double size Ecostove for cooking tortillas	A small home business using Ecostove for cooking Tamales
A medium size home business using 4 Ecostoves for cooking tortillas	A girl carrying a PM2.5 pump to evaluate indoor air pollution from woodstoves.	PROLEÑA's Ecostove factory in Managua, Nicaragua with capacity to produce 100 Ecostoves per week.
	PROLEÑA's promotion of Ecostove in a public fair in Nicaragua under a USAID project