| Team Leader First Name | Mariana |
| Team Leader Last Name | Brito |
| Additional Team Members | Anthony Jiang, Ian Painter, Mathew Bissonnette, Nathan Parrish, Christina Blattner, Trevor Davis |
| Group Team Leader Contact Number | 925-330-7026 |
| Team Leader Email Address | mbrito@calpoly.edu |
| Faculty Advisor First Name | Peter |
| Faculty Advisor Last Name | Schwartz |
| Faculty Advisor Contact Number | 805-756-1220 |
| Project Title | Solar Concentrator for Developing Countries |
| Problem Description | Basic energy sources for many third world inhabitants are becoming scarcer as a result of deforestation and population growth. As natural biomass fuels that are used for heating and cooking become depleted, villagers in Darfur are forced to travel ever increasing distances away from home to obtain them. It is often women and children who make these journeys. As a result of traveling through dangerous areas, these people are often victims of rape and assault. Our partner community in the Congo, Working Villages International, contributes to deforestation and would thus benefit from an efficient solar cooking facility. In addition to the dangers of obtaining biomass fuels, burning the fuels creates a dangerous environment. The smoke created by the fires causes indoor air pollution: a high concentration of toxic gases that are emitted by the burnt fuel sources. Gasses such as Carbon Monoxide, Benzene, and Formaldehyde are released in concentrations deemed unsafe by the World Health Organization. Because women are generally responsible for tending the meals in developing countries, they are exposed to these gasses for extensive amounts of time. Also, women usually tend to the children, and as a result the children are also inside the house where fires are burnt, leading to many respiratory conditions that are often fatal. Although indoor air pollution is one of the leading causes of death in many developing countries, it receives almost no funding for improvement and has little media attention. |
| Project Description | Our goal is to provide a solution to the need for energy and consequently save women and children from going through dangerous journeys and living in unsafe environments. The solution is a solar powered cooking unit. Rather than burning wood and other biomass fuels, solar reflectors will be used to concentrate and redirect sunlight. The redirected sunlight will provide a heat source for our apparatus which utilizes earth insulating ovens. The ovens will be heated to appropriate cooking temperatures and its insulating properties will preserve the heat to allow cooking throughout the day and night. The processes involved in creating the oven will utilize environmentally healthy methods and materials to minimize the amount of energy consumption and pollutants, providing a clean sustainable technology.
We will be using the Scheffler model. It consists of a parabolic mirror, which would reflect sunlight directly onto the thermal mass of the oven to be used for cooking. A clockwork tracking system for the Scheffler rotates the reflective dish so it follows the sun throughout the day, achieving maximum efficiency. We have designed a heat conduction and insulation system consisting of an iron block surrounded by layers of brick and rice husks, utilizing materials that would be readily available at the places where the cooker could potentially be used. We are contributing to a sustainable model, and our ultimate goal is to implement our design in a third world community in the Congo. |
| Project Timeline | We have reviewed and finalized our design last quarter, and for this quarter our goal is to build a prototype at the Cal Poly Organic Farm. We are finalizing the purchase of the necessary materials and will start building as soon as possible. |
| Budget | The $500 will go towards refining and enhancing the prototype. With additional funding, we plan to continue the research full time during summer. In addition, there are other entities interested in the design, such as a university in Mexico, and further research would help us make the design more adaptable for different areas of the world. |
| Image | picture |
| Picture Description | Scheffler reflector, concentrating sunlight on a conventional oven. In our design, the conventional oven would be replaced by an earth oven on top of an iron block, surrounded by bricks and rice husks. |
| Links | http://www.workingvillages.org
http://www.itdg.org/docs/smoke/itdg%20smoke%20report.pdf http://www.geocities.com/~dmdelaney/scheffler-precis/scheffler-precis.html http://www.solare-bruecke.org/infoartikel/Papers_%20from_SCI_Conference_2006/21_wolfgang_scheffler.pdf |
