Lo Trau - History and Design

History and Design

The timeline of the development of the lò trấu is unclear, however it is known that the Lo Trau has been in use in Vietnam at least since the 1950s. The fixed version Lo Trau stove is thought to be strongly related to the Castrol stove design of the architect François de Cuvilliés in 1735 and similar European designs in the 1830s, with flue pipes connected to the chimney, oven holes into which concentric iron rings on which the pots were placed. Depending on the size of the pot or the heat needed, one could remove the inner rings. A recent innovation is the portable Lo Trau. Its compact design and efficient operation has been the target of a number of studies. Recently it has been distributed in the Negros area of the Philippines in the The Southern Negros Sustainable Agriculture Demonstration Projects in the 1990s . This relatively late uptake of apparently long-used innovation means the potential of rice husk as fuel has been overlooked by many for a long time, as well as the obscurity of the Lo Trau designs to the wider world.