Redesign in Progress

The SLAB meeting went really well! We receive some very positive feedback and some great suggestions for our future plans. Furthermore, our project has been officially approved by UT's International Office. So now we're rolling out travel plans as we work on our project.

Concerning our project, Alex B. and Sam are working on testing briquettes and analyzing their burn characteristics, while Alex K., Simon and Marc are beginning to work on the press redesign. We are very happy with the press we've built, but we want to make sure only the best design will be implemented in Ghana!

Here's a video showing how our press churns out briquettes:

We also plan on making numerous drafts using SolidWorks CAD software and printing out more 3D models before we built our improvements. Here's an example:

Using SolidWorks, we can visualize any changes we make, along with motional and stress analyses. We're very excited to see what we come up with, and we'll have more updates later.

More Briquettes, More Experience

Today is our Service Learning Advisory Board presentation regarding our final approval for travel.  If all goes as planned, we will be green-lighted for travel by the day's end!

We've been pumping out a lot of briquettes lately.  We've learned a great deal about the production process, and have made several refinements to our equipment.  A baseline production rate was established at about one briquette per minute, and after a few process refinements, we were able to increase this rate by ten percent after working on it for only one day!  We look forward to continuous process improvement and refining our equipment for improved briquette production.

For a future outlook, we are looking towards carbonizing the briquettes. There is one prototype in the picture above, though many more will need to be produced for any kind of relevant results.  Shatter tests have been performed on some controlled parameter briquettes, and we are sorting through the data now.  Soon we will be conducting some combustion analysis tests, monitoring burn time and peak heat output.  More updates to follow soon!

Press built, molds built, briquettes!

The press has been refined a bit, several mold designs built, and a few preliminary briquettes have been pressed.  Overall, it's been a busy and successful week.  Below you can see two molds and accompanying plungers.  

Here are some briquettes laid out to dry.  We experimented with a few parameters just to get to a reasonable size, shape, and consistency.  We have a more rigorous experimental procedure developed, but were too excited to have the molds done not to produce a few.

While we were on a roll, we couldn't resist burning some.  Two days in the sun left these briquettes were plenty dry to burn.  The lit easily with newspaper and burned really well.  The densest ones flamed for a bit, then glowed red-hot for a while, very similar to charcoal.  Promising results!

Briquette Press Built

The press is built!  Sam and I (Breckel) did the final assembly today, and it looks great!  Just a little bit of final polishing up to do and we can start producing briquettes with it.  

And it only took one extra trip to the hardware store. Lots of lessons learned during the prototyping, it's been a great experience.  

New Member of Our Team

Simon Arends, a former member of the Peru Kitchen Project and a junior mechanical engineer, will now be joining the PUC Ghana Briquette Team. Due to major communication problems between the Peru team and Santa Cruz, Peru, the project had to be discontinued and their members have decided to join other PUC teams. We look forward to working with Simon and are excited to what he will bring to the team!

Rapid Prototype of the Press!

We have a working model of the press! Much thanks to team member Marc Nestenius for drafting the prototype in SolidWorks, and to Prof. Billy H. Wood for allowing us to use the the Engineering and Computer Graphics 3-D printer to create a rapid-prototype plastic model of the press.

The picture (below) shows our model, with pencil to scale. The lever arm on the right side of the press moves up and down, which in turn moves the horizontal beam downward to press the briquettes, which will be plunged inside a 3" PVC pipe in the full-scale press. The model even has the full range of motion that our full-scale design will have (see video).

With this proof-of-concept design under our belt, we will be building the first full-scale press in the upcoming days after Spring Break. Stay tuned!

Summary of Our Exciting Project

Howdy, y’all!

Since this is our first post, we might as well tell you about our work and ourselves. We are engineering students at the University of Texas at Austin engaged in a course called Projects for Underserved Communities. This is not your typical engineering course that makes you derive formulas invented by geniuses who wore wigs. It is not one that allows you to be successful by hiding in a dark corner in the library.

Instead, PUC is a year-long class that puts members in groups that will solve pressing problems in underprivileged areas of the globe. Professionalism, drive and ingenuity are required of all members because there is no amount of cramming that will save your project if you slack off. We work closely with real people who are counting on us to select, design and implement our solutions to solve global issues.  

The concept is similar that of Engineers Without Borders, and we are led by outstanding faculty. From the Cockrell School of Engineering at UT, Janet Ellzey, Ph.D., P.E., and James O’Connor, Ph.D., P.E., contribute their technical and managerial expertise, while Dorie Gilbert, Ph.D., offers the engineering students much needed guidance on societal dynamics from the School of Social Work.

The Ghana Briquette team is working with the town of Patriensa, Ghana, a small village of 5,000 residents in the center of the country. The village suffers from high unemployment and illiteracy rates, but has able leaders and an entrepreneurial spirit. That spirit has fostered microenterprises, such as a bakery and a bicycle-to-tricycle conversion business, along with the implementation of a communications center that houses computers – in the middle of rural Ghana!

Our goal is to lay the foundation for an additional enterprise – one that converts biomass waste into salable cooking fuel. Lumber is one of Ghana’s main industries, and 75% of the country’s forests have subsequently been removed. Compounding the problem, villagers scavenge the brush for wood to use as fuel. Therefore, the village of Patriensa has asked PUC to make use of their local sawmill’s waste sawdust. It is our task to design a press and procedure that will convert this waste sawdust (that would be otherwise discarded in local waterways) into burnable briquettes. Our ultimate goal is to turn this concept into a business that will employ villagers and contribute to Patriensa’s exciting microenterprise portfolio!

PUC already has a strong connection to Patriensa, as last year’s team built a well for their school. Even more reassuring, Dr. Gilbert has been working with Patriensa for over a decade and its chief anointed her their Queen Mother of Development. The team is very excited to be supported by Afren and its COO, Shahid Ullah.

In addition, the Home Depot in Sunset Valley and its manager, Linden Wilson, have decided to donate materials for our press design.

We are very thankful for the support we have received so far and plan to provide updates on our designs, pictures and information on our partners in the coming weeks. We look forward to continuing our work, and we appreciate your interest!