W.S.G. Isaac Newton

Madagascar is an island located in the Indian Ocean. In 2020, the World Food Program reported that half of the children under five suffered from malnutrition in Madagascar, a condition which drastically impacts their education, and in-house gas inhalation coming from biomass use for cooking has caused numerous deaths.

In an attempt to solve this problem, RisEcooking (Rise) has set the goal of supplying schools in remote areas of the country with clean cooking. To understand the communities involved, I was able to go onsite and exchange with them their needs, habits, and expectations.

The current system stores the excess energy harvested from solar energy into Li-ion batteries which makes the system economically inaccessible to the schools. Thermal Energy Storage (TES) is an alternative solution to mitigate to achieve clean cooking systems at much lower prices; for this purpose, Rise was looking at manufacturing their heat battery. During my internship, my role was to investigate the design of the system via proper heat storage material, and heat transfer fluid selections. The experience was both challenging and gratifying.