To address safety concerns regarding smoke released from cooking on open fires or stoves ISO has developed a series of International Standards and related documents for cleaner, safer cooking solutions.
These initiatives include an International Standard on laboratory testing, a technical report on sector-specific vocabulary, and a technical report for benchmarking lab testing measurements. Two of these have now been published, with the third due to be released later this year. Each of these initiatives aims to provide a platform for new and existing technologies to develop and grow.
Ranyee Chiang, Chair of the committee that developed the standards, said: “These standards will help to motivate and mobilize designers and companies to raise the standards of cookstoves and accelerate the market for new technologies that benefit consumers.”
ISO 19867-1, Clean cookstoves and clean cooking solutions – Harmonized laboratory test protocols – Part 1: Standard test sequence for emissions and performance, safety and durability, is the first International Standard for the testing of biomass cookstoves. Based on terms and definitions from ISO/TR 21276, Clean cookstoves and clean cooking solutions – Vocabulary, the new technical report establishes precise terminology for cookstove technology and testing and specifies laboratory measurement and evaluation methods for the particulate and gaseous air pollutant emissions of cookstoves.
Part 3—which is due to be published in the coming months—will set voluntary performance targets for cookstoves based on laboratory testing. Together, they will provide a useful portfolio of test protocols and laboratory measurement procedures to test the performance of cookstoves under controlled laboratory conditions.
The documents were developed by ISO technical committee ISO/TC 285, Clean cookstoves and clean cooking solutions, which comprises leading global specialists from the clean cookstoves and fuels sector, with special expertise in testing, design, business, and policy.