Running with DMC pt. 1
Learnings from field testing of Prakti Air in Kolkata, India, May 4th, 2022. By Lea Serrar (Mechanical Engineer, Prakti)
We have partnered with Calcutta Rescue (CR), an Indian registered charity working to improve the lives of the poorest people in and around Kolkata. CR's close relationships with urban slums and our experience with stove technology are a perfect match for Prakti Air field testing.
We have extensively tested the performance of the Prakti Air, so the field testing will instead focus on the user's experience. I spent two weeks in Kolkata cooking with six different households in the Dakshineswar Metro Colony (DMC) to answer two main questions that will help our design process.
1. Are cooks confident about cooking with the Prakti Air?
Are they worried the fire will go out?
Is tending difficult?
Can the meals be cooked successfully?
2. Do cooks like using the Prakti Air, and why?
What are their favorite differences compared to traditional cooking methods?
Do they notice reductions in smoke/fuel usage/cooking time?
I also learned how to cook a few Bengali dishes, how the DMC’s access to electricity has evolved over the years, and how to build traditional mud stoves. The field testing yielded favorable feedback. No families had issues completing meals, and fires were just as easy or easier to start and tend than traditional. Most families even reported that they could get a powerful flame with less wood than with the conventional stove.
There were several reasons cooks liked using the Prakti Air.
Every household felt it improved the stove performance.
Prakti Air used less fuel for the whole meal and took less time
Every family felt there was less smoke, and families loved how much easier the pots were to clean (less soot build-up)
Usually, clean cookstoves end up with less firepower than traditional methods, so we are thrilled the Prakti Airs I brought to Kolkata impressed the families who cooked with them. We are excited to tweak the design to make it more durable against the elements and manufacture ten more for our upcoming beta testing with more families this month.