Paper, sticks and dried manure are among the "organic, burnable materials" that can serve as fuel for an ecologically-conscious and affordable stove developed by BioLite, a company run partly by Thayer School of Engineering alumni that specializes in energy-efficient products, according to Clay Burns '87, BioLite's vice president of product development.
BioLite was founded by Chief Executive Officer Jonathan Cedar '03, Chief Technical Officer Alexander Drummond and Chief Operating Officer Jonathan den Hartog '03 Th '05. The company offers two products: a camping stove, designed for commercial use, and a home heating unit for use in developing countries, according to Cedar.
In May, BioLite received the 2011 St. Andrews Prize for the Environment, presented by the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and energy company ConocoPhillips, according to an article in industrial design magazine Core77.
The two award-winning products function differently to account for their differing production costs and profit margins, Cedar said.
"The electromechanical component is very different the camping stove is small, lightweight and compact, whereas the developing world product is much larger," Cedar said. "Its user requirements are also very different."
Both stoves are designed to be environmentally sustainable, according to Burns.
"Basically, both of the products are trying to be somewhat greener and more sustainable in that they emit fewer powerful pollutants to the environment," Burns said.
Unlike most traditional camping stoves, the BioLite stove uses a fan to improve combustion, according to Burns.
"Once you've got a small fire going, [the stove] senses that heat through a special component, and that heat is converted into electricity which is used to power a fan," he said.
As a result, the fire burns cleaner and requires less wood or biomass, he said.
The lifespan of the home stove, sold to customers in the developing world, ranges between three and five years, Cedar said.
The development of the home unit may not prove economically sustainable for the company over the long term, Burns said. BioLite will need to pursue external funding, from either the government or a non-governmental organization, for the production to remain financially viable, he said.
"You need some other way to fund your business, to make up for that shortfall of margin, even if you're only going to make a third of the margin you'd make in the developed world," Burns said.
Because BioLite has yet to receive outside funding, its current business model involves using proceeds from the U.S. market to fund the production and distribution of the stove used in the developing world, Burns said.
"[BioLite is] using some of these proceeds to essentially pay salaries and make our business run, which is in a way supporting our ability to deliver products to the developing world," Burns said. "I lead the product development team, but also work to unify product development across all of the products. I'm really trying to make sure the products are suiting the needs of our intended customers and they are as good as they can be within a price that we can command."
Burns, who leads the product development team and examines the needs of intended customers, said his project is "closely" linked to his studies at the College.
"I'm always combining engineering skills and arts skills, which is pretty much what I studied at Dartmouth," Burns said. "I worked with wood a lot, so it's interesting that I'm now working on a project that uses discarded wood as fuel."
Burns said his role at BioLite has enabled him to interact productively with Cedar, a much younger College alumnus.
"There were 15 years between my Dartmouth experience and Jonathan Cedar's, but we are very much able to work collaboratively," Burns said. "In a lot of ways we do similar things, despite the half-generation spacing."
