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Chinese Villagers Saying Farewell to Kitchen Smoke
After working hard on the farm, Liu Xiuying, housewife of a farmer family, returned home, went to her kitchen and turned on a gas-fired stove. About 10 minutes later, dinner was ready.
"We now can get rid of the choking smoke when cooking, and the ceiling will no longer be covered with ashes," said Liu.
In Liu's hometown, in central China's Henan Province, farmers, like all the others in the country, used to burn crop stalks as a traditional and convenient fuel to cook. Piles of dry stalks in their storehouses imply that they had a good harvest and an affluent life.
Two months ago, however, farmers started to collect and give the stalk to village-based station, which can generate fuel gas with crop stalks.
Such a station can consume 200 tons of crop stalks and produce 400,000 cubic meters of fuel gas per year, saving 192 tons of coal or 36 tons of liquefied petroleum gas, said Yao Juchuan, director with Science Commission of Henan.
The governments of Henan, Hebei, Shandong and other provinces have allocated special funds to support such stations, which are likely to extend to almost all the rural areas in the near future.
The agriculture in Henan Province annually produces 60 million tons of crop stalks, approximately 10 percent of nation's output.
However, most of them are cast away or burnt in the field, causing pollution.
Burning large amounts of crop stalks also affects the normal operation of trains, buses and planes. In provinces like Hebei, Shandong, and Anhui, some flights were delayed or canceled owing to thick smoke from burning stalks in fields.
Chinese scientists are making efforts to use crop stalks, a major recyclable resources on the earth, in an efficient and pollution-free way. Now the crop stalks have been successfully used for fertilization, to generate electricity and heat.
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