Zenit Design is one of the companies that made this possible. With its long and broad knowledge within the fields of design and engineering, Zenit Design has helped us develop a product that is ready for production.
ECS, with its base in both Lund, Sweden, and Lusaka, Zambia, has already sold thousands stoves together with their own fractured pellets. They had experienced the poor supply of pellets stoves and its impact on the environment and on human beings. The cheap ones did not burn well and were not clean. The stoves that burned well did so because they had an electric fan, but they became far too expensive for the average African household to buy without offering credit and instalment plans.
The big challenge for us was to create an efficient combustion process without a fan that was still cheap to manufacture and easy to sell.
It's no coincidence that the stove works; there is a lot of research and scientific methods behind it. Several tests and prototypes have been developed for the pellet stove, which has yielded such good results that scientists believed the measuring instruments were faulty when they tested Zstove – that’s how low the levels of toxic gases in the air were after burning pellets in the stove. The main reason for this fantastic clean stove is the combustion expertise from Zemission and our capability to turn their ideas into an affordable product.
We needed experts on combustion in order for the stove to burn cleanly, and designers to make a smart stove that's still cheap.
Designing the vision “Cooking shouldn’t kill” has meant developing a stove with natural draft that burns as well and cleanly as a stove with a fan. By producing a stove that burns with very low emissions, African households can both save money and cook without damaging their health or the environment.
Through carefully designed natural draft, the pellet stove burns as cleanly as a stove with a fan, if not more cleanly. Without a fan, we can skip expensive components and without a battery for a fan, the need for charging has been eliminated. Zstove can also be used indoors, as long as there is a door or window ajar so that air and oxygen can enter the room. With their stove, ECS wanted to do what they think others had missed – to solve the problem from the bottom up instead of just tweaking the solution.
Zenit Design won Design S – Swedish Design Awards in the category of Sustainable Development with the pellet stove Zstove 2018.
Per Löfberg expressed his gratitude on instagram when he received the award together with Johan Lundgren from Zenit Design:
The work begun out of burning frustration: The stoves suitable for our concept where either expensive, or not good enough.[...] Our win is a recognition of all the work behind the product, and by all of my colleagues in Zambia. I'm very grateful to Svensk Form, the Design S-jury and to all involved.
Based on the user's prerequisites, environmental goals, and regional production, has a micro-economy been developed. From pellet production of weeds, to a combustion technology that eliminates lethal carbon emissions. Functionally designed products for everything from housing to commercial kitchens.
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Zstove part 1: Vision – cooking shouldn't kill
