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Have stove, will travel. [Link]

That's the watchword for Eugene's Ken Goyer, who has journeyed from El Salvador to Turkey to Uganda to get his energy-efficient wood-cooking stoves in the hands of refugees and other impoverished souls.

Goyer came up with a stove constructed of six trapezoidal bricks that stand on end and are then wired together and encased in mud.The wood fuel is placed on a shelf in a hole in the front of the stove, which allows air to pass underneath and mix with the wood in an extremely hot combustion chamber. That allows the wood to burn more efficiently - no small accomplishment in lands where fuel is so scarce that people dig up dry roots to burn - and with less pollution.

The secret of Goyer's design is that the bricks - clay mixed with finely ground rice husks, peanut shells, sawdust or other material - are light enough to float in water. The lightweight "aerated" bricks offer excellent insulation.

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