ISEES believes that women involved in agro-processing requires improved energy technologies that will reduce exposure to smoke emissions, reduce deforestation and energy expenditure. Fish smokers using the traditional smokers (chorkor smoker and drum smokers) works in smoky conditions, using more fuelwood, and have high levels of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH) on the smoked fish, which caused EU to Ban smoked fish from Ghana. To solve these problems ISEES in partnership with SNV under the SFMP Project will be installing improved fish smoking stoves for these women that addresses these problems in order to get the women work in smokeless conditions, use small quantities of firewood to smoke large volumes of fish that has less and healthy levels of PAH and healthier for human consumption.
ISEES technology Deployment Unit has been selected among other stove builders and trained in the construction of improved fish smoking stoves by SNV Netherlands Development Organisation under the USAID Sustainable Fisheries Management Project (SFMP) to deploy and install over 1000 improved stoves for women involved in fish smoking in coastal communities.
SNV organized this training at the Food Research Institute from 14th to the 20th of August 2016 to empower stove builders such as ISEES and others to help deploy these technologies on a large scale. ISEES staff and the other 9 stove building companies were also trained in business development skills to be able to venture strongly into the business of installing improved fish smoking stoves for women involved in fish smoking.
The improved stove called Ahotor (Comfort) Smoker includes an inner combustion chamber that is designed to enhance complete combustion with over 40% fuelwood efficiency. To reduce the PAH content, the stove has a metal lid that prevents the oil from the fish from falling onto the firewood – the fish oil is collected onto the lid and collected outside the burning chamber. There are absolutely reduced smoke levels and women will now be able to smoke in healthier conditions and get good quality fish.
The good news about this innovative technology is that the combustion chamber can be used to retrofit the existing chorkor smoker to help improve combustion and fish smokers using the chorkor smoker do not need to reconstruct a new fish smoking stove.
ISEES is pleased with this initiative since it falls within its vision and objectives.