Cooking mung beans on a brick rocket stove, they're cooked in half an hour
Trying to Build a Rocket Stove Out of Earth Bricks
About two or three months ago, I spent some time under the tree in the courtyard of my home, using recycled bricks and a bit of soil to build a brick rocket stove.
Living in the countryside, obtaining wood fuel is basically not difficult. The branches that naturally dry out and fall from nearby large trees, as well as the branches produced each year by pruning fruit trees and other trees, are all suitable as an energy source in daily life. For this reason, I hope to make wood one of the energy sources in my own life, which can also reduce dependence on electricity and natural gas.
I had previously seen online how to build a brick rocket stove with 16 earth bricks, and I had also seen the Hualien Permaculture community use bricks to build a rocket stove so that the partners taking part in the activity could cook lunch. However, I did not want to use brand-new bricks, which usually means having to spend money to buy them, so I spent some time slowly collecting bricks from roadsides in the countryside, construction waste, and open ground on riverbeds, whether intact or not. Until two or three months ago, when I felt I had enough, plus the half bucket of mud that Xiaomi and his mother brought back from playing in the dirt last year, the materials were more or less complete.
I used recycled thick iron wire to separate the wood from the ashes, then slowly stacked the bricks, filling the gaps between the bricks with mud to increase air tightness and heat retention. When it was first completed, I tried it once, but the burning condition was not very good. It produced more thick smoke, and I had to keep adding firewood, otherwise the fire would go out.
Somewhat discouraged, I did not use it again for quite a while. Later I realized that because I pressed the whole pot down on top of the stove, it blocked the rise of hot air and caused incomplete combustion. A few days ago, because I was distracted while caring for my family, I burned a pot black, so I happened to use it as the dedicated pot for the rocket stove. These past few days I found time to test the burn again, and I separated some of the top bricks of the rocket stove a bit so that the burning flame would not be suppressed, allowing the air intake and exhaust to match. The fire indeed flowed much more smoothly.
Based on my own inattentive testing, it is expected that in half an hour the mung beans can already be cooked until completely soft. A quite powerful rocket stove!
