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EPA Funds EWB Project
Engineers Without Borders (EWB) has received a $75,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to continue a project in Uganda that will supply power for agricultural machines via an engine that runs on jatropha oil obtained from seeds (at right) of the native tree. The Columbia team competed against 42 other teams from around the country at a three-day event in Washington, D.C., winning the funding for “Multifunction Energy Platform and Jatropha Program,” a sustainable technology designed for the EPA’s People, Prosperity and the Planet (P3) Award.
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EWB began working in 2007 in Soroti, Uganda, to install multi-function energy platforms (MFPs), engines that are powered by oil from jatropha, a small tree. Jatropha has been touted as the next hot biofuel since it is plentiful, can live for as long as 50 years while reaching its maximum productivity in as little as five years, and is not edible, so has no impact on the food supply.
The MFP that EWB will use consists of a stationary engine to which various pieces of agro-processing equipment can be attached. The engine can provide power to grind flour or to produce electricity. An MFP is currently being used in Soroti as a back-up generator at a secondary school. The EWB team is currently there installing two more MFPs within an established farming cooperative network.
The biofuel MFP was first tested thanks to a gift in 2006 from Darren Manelski ’91, which enabled the Department of Mechanical Engineering to convert an old stock room into a laboratory facility to test engines.
“In this laboratory, we now have equipment that can test for exhaust emissions, engine efficiencies, and behavior of engines with alternate fuels,” said Professor Vijay Modi, who is also EWB’s faculty advisor. “This facility makes it possible to test and characterized the technical behavior of devices useful for the developing world, such as the engine that is powered by jatropha oil.”
Graduate student Matt Basinger ’10PhD (EEE), working with Modi, has refined the engine, building on an idea developed in a mechanical engineering senior design project several years ago that took a Listeroid engine and converted it for use with waste vegetable oil as a power source. The project initially was started to technically support the attainment of the United Nations Millennium Development goals.
The EPA award comes at a good time in the expansion of EWB’s Uganda project. “The funds will be used to support several components of our project as we move forward,” said Janelle Heslop’10, project manager for Uganda.
The grant will go toward monitoring and evaluating the energy platforms being installed this summer in the Amuria and Katakwi districts, Heslop said, while also providing resources to install and monitor three more pilot sites in other regions.
“This combination of five pilot sites across multiple districts will provide significant momentum toward a national [energy platform] program in Uganda,” she said. “The intention is to establish a widely supported program via a combination of funding from the United Nations, the Ugandan Government, The Gates Foundation and/or other institutions.”
The student group had previously won a $10,000 grant for phase one of the project.
Heslop leads a seven-member Columbia’s EWB team that includes Bassinger, Sara Del Fierro ’10CC, Jennifer Wang ’10, Jin Wang ’10, Lacey Gleason ’12CC and Watue Sowaprux ’12.
Posted:
Jun 9 2009