SCORE - (S)tove for (CO)oking, (R)efrigeration and (E)lectricity supply: an affordable appliance for remote and rural communities

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SCORE, a 1.8M consortium, aims to significantly improve health, quality of life, economic growth and social and educational opportunities, and thus reduce poverty in Africa and Asia by understanding the energy needs of their rural communities and working with them to develop the capability to manufacture an affordable versatile domestic appliance. This will combine the functionalities of a high-efficiency cooking stove, an electricity generator and a refrigerator (cool box), referred to as SCORE, and may be fuelled by burning a range of biomass products. The partnership brings together four UK universities, a leading US research centre (Los Alamos National Laboratory), a multi-national electrical goods manufacturer (GP Acoustics), an international charitable organisation (Practical Action), and numerous universities in Africa and Asia. It will also collaborate to ensure that the devices are acceptable at a technological, economic and social level and that there is sufficient scope for the communities to develop numerous businesses from the manufacture, repair and innovative applications of SCORE.The operation of the electricity generating and refrigerator parts of the proposed device will be based on a novel application of thermoacoustic processes. Fundamentally, these rely on the interaction between an acoustic field and solid boundaries, leading to a range of fluid- and thermo-dynamic processes, which do not require harmful working fluids or moving parts in the traditional sense; the electrical power extraction is accomplished by a linear alternator.The concept of the device is based on the proven thermoacoustic Stirling engines and refrigerators developed by Los Alamos, NASA and the US military for applications including: cooling of satellite systems and radar arrays, gas liquefaction and cryogenics, use of waste heat for air conditioning, separation of binary gas mixtures and many others. There is a significant level of innovation in the proposed work in three respects: 1) research into the combination of the thermoacoustic engine, linear alternator and cool box in a single device, powered by a biomass stove, which has not been attempted before,2) design of a rugged and inexpensive linear alternator that could be easily mass-produced, 3) the overall system design from the viewpoint of low cost, application of indigenous materials, use of local manufacturing skills and simplicity of assembly, which are major research issues compared to the high-cost and high-tech thermoacoustic systems produced so far. These challenges form the backbone of the proposed scientific and technological work programme.Within the overall 5-year duration, there will be two stages to this project: the first 3 years will mainly focus on conducting the necessary social and scientific research, while the last 2 years will broadly focus on technology hand-over, including representative field trials and a wide dissemination among target communities.