Appropriate Technology

Cairo Slums Get Energy Makeover

The nonprofit Solar CITIES has installed 34 solar-powered hot water systems and 5 biogas reactors in Cairo’s poor neighborhoods.

Solar CITIES’ hot water systems are constructed from recycled materials and are individually tailored to their locations.   ”The problem with professional solar hot water systems is that they’re made for cities with continuous water,” Dr. Sybille Culhane, director of Solar Cities said. The Solar CITIES’s water domestic hot water systems use city water when it’s available and draw from a backup storage tank when it’s not.

From Curious Cat:

The setup consists of an insulated rectangular box covered in clear glass or plastic on one side. Inside the box are copper tubes wrapped in sheets of aluminum, which are painted black. Sunlight striking the darkened aluminum is converted to heat, which is then used to warm water flowing through the pipes. The glass sheet on top of the box prevents the heat from being carried away by wind.

Solar CITIES also installs biogas reactors, which are based on designs Culhane saw while working in India. The reactors use microbes harvested from animal guts to break down food wastes into flammable gas that can be used for cooking and heating. If necessary, the reactors can draw hot water from the solar water heaters to maintain the warm temperatures the bacteria need to survive.

Check Out:  Solar Cities

$2.00 LED Light Fixture

Based on many conversations in the developing world I have concluded that poor people don’t want junk. They don’t want a recycled pop can nailed to their ceilings to be their only source of electric light. They want things that look good, just like everyone else. In fact it’s really strange to think of them as “them” or different in some way. Poor people are people who don’t have much money.

The Appropriate Technology Collaborative has the results of our first project working with Designers and Design Students (we often work with Engineers and Engineering students). The photos that accompany this post are proof that designers have a lot to offer low income people and that real design doesn’t have to cost a lot, in fact real design may be cheaper than you could imagine. The photos from the project are here Flickr Photostream

ShineOn designed by gregorysung and leading a team of researchers from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Parsons Paris School of Design have designed and engineered Shine On, a low cost solar/LED lighting system. The rechargeable lighting system can be produced for less than $2 US (not including solar panels) and provides 10 watts of lights versus otherwise environmentally hazerdous and traditional karoseen lamps used in rural  Guatamalan villages where the project focused its efforts.

These folks really put a lot of thought into what a light is, how it functions and how to make something really cool without spending a lot of money. Moreover they designed the lights so that they can be built in the country where they are going to be used. Designer Lights = Local Jobs!

Local Wood LED Light

Note the cool diffuser - it’s a recycled water bottle cap. Used here it looks great, you would never guess it was recycled. The translucent bottle cap diffuses the harsh LED light without absorbing too many photons. The light is on a cord so that it can be relocated to different parts of the room. We could cluster several of these to make a “chandelier” in the center of a room + have long enough cords so that the lights could reach all parts of a single room house.

Designer are very cool.

The possibilities are endless.

for more photos, check out  http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=shine+on+led+&m=text and to learn more about our design partner gregorysung, check out:  gregorysung.com

Our Michigan State University student design team recently returned from Guatemala where they demonstrated the ATC/MSU design of a solar vaccine refrigerator. (The MSU students deserve all the credit here)

This remarkable invention works. Period.  Put it in the sun and it will keep vaccines very cold.  With minor modifications it will freeze water solid and keep it that way, even in hot climates, just as long as the sun shines.  If the sun doesn’t shine when you want to keep vaccines cold you can make a small wood fire to power the freezer.  Moreover it can be built for about $400.00, about a third the cost of what NGOs are spending now in remote regions of Africa.

Background:

Over half of all vaccines spoil due to temperature before they reach the people who so desperately need them in rural Africa and parts of Asia.  We met up with a representative of the World Health Organization to discuss this problem after which we, ATC, came up with a design problem:  To design a low cost refrigerator that can keep vaccines cold without the use of fossil fuels or electricity in rural parts of Africa.  Moreover the design should operate without human intervention, it should be robust and it must be cheap.  While this sounds impossible, we challenged a group of Michigan State University Engineering Students to design just such a refrigerator.  The students were more than up to the challenge, they reveled in the near impossibility of it.  Imagine being charged with the task “just make a box that freezes when you put it in the sun” because this is the essence of what we asked them to do.

From the MSU Student Presentation:

Many of the vaccines used to control diseases require cold temperatures for preservation. Without a reliable power infrastructure, developing countries often lack the resources to keep these vaccines cool for an extended time period, hampering the ability to adequately protect citizens. It is estimated that 50 percent of vaccines in rural areas are wasted due to spoilage.

The Appropriate Technology Collaborative Student Design Team - Michigan State,  was charged with the task of developing a refrigerator to solve this problem. Design specifications called for an adsorption refrigerator capable of maintaining a temperature between 2°C and 8°C that utilizes passive solar energy and can be built in developing countries. As the third team of a three-semester project, the students were given the tasks to create a design that was easily and affordably constructed and to build two prototypes.

During a 13-day trip to Guatemala, the team built the refrigerator (actual build time was less than one week!)  with locally-available materials and tested it in a real-world scenario. The team’s final product is a clear and comprehensive set of instructions for building the device distributed freely online.

…The Appropriate Technology Design Collaborative Student Design Team - Michigan State University

MSU Solar Refrigerator CAD Model

A special shout out to AIDG, The Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group who hosted our work in Guatemala, and to the intrepid Prof. Craig Somerton, without whom this project wouldn’t have been possible.

A copy of the design drawings for the Solar Refrigerator is available:  Solar Vaccine Refrigerator

Photo: Kevin McPhail, Muhammed Aslam, Eric Tingwall, Brent Rowland, Ryan McPhee

University of Michigan BLUELab Guatemala Team

Starting fall 2008 a group of dedicated, energetic and really bright students from the University of Michigan  BLUELab accepted a challenge from the Appropriate Technology Collaborative (ATC).  To design a treadle pump using only materials that might be found in Tanzania or another mostly rural African or SE Asian country.  Moreover they would have to document the design such that other NGOs or individuals could easily read their drawings and copy their work.

BLUELab Treadle Pump Prototype

The BLUELab team responded with a robust design + documents that set a new standard in ease of use.  They chose to work with us in Guatemala as an exercise in working with limited resources.

The following is from a letter I sent to our host NGO, AIDG:

The BLUELab team has been working on an open source treadle pump design since the start of school 2008.  They got as far as a prototype or proof of concept model in their workshop, drew up incredibly detailed and easy to read documents and arrived in Guatemala after a daylong delay due to weather in the US.  They also had to cut their visit short by a day on the other end due to flight scheduling problems.

The BLUELab team made up for lost time by being very well organized.  They formed working groups for each component of the assembly.  The reality of building in the developing world was made clear early when certain types of plastic weren’t available, pipe sizes were different from standards in the US and steel parts were also different from standards we have in the shop back home.  Much was redesigned on the fly.

BLUELab worked all day at the AIDG workshop (thank you very much!) and then reviewed the next day’s assignments over a late dinner every night.  They were successful in proving their prototype works on the last day of the build, at the last hour, with their bags already packed and their shuttle waiting.

BLUELab posted their work on their website and within 3 days NGOs from Africa were already asking for copies of their drawings.  We plan on posting the revised design on the ATC website at the end of the semester and BLUELab is considering returning to Guatemala to build the new design.

Guatemala is probably not the place where treadle pumps will make a good business sense, but it is a great place to learn what it is like to build with limited resources.  The experience for the student team, working with people from Guatemala and living embedded in a new culture will change how they view their work.

Documents are available upon request.  We will be publishing the final documents when the BLUELab team is done redesigning based on what we learned in Guatemala.

Prototype drawings are available:  Prototype Treadle Pump Drawings

Treadle Pump Prototype

A team of students from the University of Michigan BLUELab produced their first prototype of a treadle pump in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala last week. There are currently many treadle pumps patented and manufactured by NGOs, but the BLUELab pump is unique in that all the drawings and specifications are available online for free. The goal is to get many NGOs the capacity to manufacture these life enhancing pumps and to have them produced in the countries where they will be used.

The Appropriate Technology Collaborative worked with the BLUELab students providing the design challenge and the opportunity to build their design in a developing country. ATC chose to build the project in Guatemala to simulate building in the countries where the pump will be most appropriate (sub Saharan Africa, South Asia). Guatemala offers the challenge of building with limited resources without the expense and carbon emissions associated with traveling to and building in Tanzania for example.

A shout out to the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group - Guatemala office, for hosting ATC and BLUELab for the project build. The experience was incredible, the design team worked long hours adapting their design to locally available materials and conditions and produced a working prototype. BLUELab has already started the process of taking what they have learned in Guatemala to improve the design of the pump. The revised drawings will be made available online as soon as they are completed.

The value of Open Source design is that intellectual property and information can be spread quickly. Already there have been inquiries into the pump design from an NGO in Liberia and the pump isn’t yet published on the ATC website. This inquiry is a good indicator of interest in open source appropriate technology design.

Photos from the Treadle Pump Workshop 2009 are available at Picassa BLUELab Photos

We arrived in Guatemala Sat. Feb 21st.  The University of Michigan BLUELab team was held up in Miami overnight so we arranged to pick them up directly from the Guatemala City Airport on Sunday and head directly to Quetzaltenango (Xela, pronounced Shay-la, to the locals).

The BLUELab has designed a very efficient and low cost treadle pump for use by rural farmers.  Our project here is to check out the constructability of the design in the field using locally available materials.  Already this process has produced very valuable information on how to design for construction in the developing world.

We got to Xela Sunday night.  The BLUELab team got a chance to see the Parque Central area of Xela and we stopped in at El Balcon in Pasaje Enrique to look out over Parque Central and much of Xela.  The night sky was mostly clear and we could see the volcanic peaks that surround the city in the distance.

Monday we found out that we couldn’t start work at the AIDG workshop till the PM so we organized teams who will work on sub-assemblies and review the build process.  When Jose Ordonez arrived from AIDG several of us took off in the AIDG pickup truck to purchase materials.

Jose doesn’t drive so Ben Connor Barrie took the honors which ended up with Ben driving in rush hour traffic with 6 meter lengths of steel on the roof and students riding in the back.  Ben managed to merge into a packed and fast moving round-about and get out at the right exit while taking directions in Spanish.

The build is now under way with the teams working through a few local condition induced design changes.

Photos to follow.

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Our LED lamps on display

The Appropriate Technology Collaborative recently had some of our products featured at an appropriate technology fair at the University of Michigan’s North Campus. It was great to see so many engineering students engaged in developing technological solutions to improve the lives of people in the developing world.

A model of the prefabricated paper house

Designers at Bauhaus University have developed a low cost paper house that could be used to provide housing for slum dwellers. From the article in Spiegel:

Niemöller is a co-founder of the Swiss company The Wall AG, which holds the patent for material used in the construction of the mini-homes. But, he says, he envisions the houses — called the “Universal World House” — ultimately being produced in the countries where they are needed. And, he says, the sticker price for the 36 square meter (387.5 square foot) structures won’t be more than $5,000 each.

The material used in the construction of the houses mimics the honeycomb pattern used in the manufacture of airplanes and other products for which both weight and strength are important factors. But instead of using aluminium or other alloys, Niemöller used resin-soaked paper processed to form thin, light — yet strong — panels. The material is also an excellent insulator, and is flexible, making it appropriate in areas at risk of earthquakes.

At a price of $5,000 the house is out of range for some of the poorest of the poor. None the less, Nigeria has already put in an order for 2,400 houses.

-Ben Connor Barrie

Photo via: Spiegel

ATC needs your laptops

The Appropriate Technology Collaborative is planning a trip to visit our project partners in Guatemala in February. We would like to bring some gently used, working laptops to a school we will be visiting. If you live in South East Michigan and would like to make a tax deductible laptop donation, drop me an e-mail: ben.connorbarrie@gmail.com.

We are looking for working Windows machines (preferably XP), that are in good working order and have at least a 40 gig hard drive.  Your laptop donation is tax deductible and will be put to good use at a rural school that lacks much needed technology.

For more info please Contact Us

-Ben Connor Barrie

Photo via: SBray

One of our prototype LED lamps

Over the holidays we received our shipment of LED’s and resistors and have been soldering up a storm. We’ve cobbled together a few prototype lamps that are going to be on display at the Developing Nations, Developing Technologies show on North Campus next week. We’ve also sent off some components to our design partner gregorysung so that they can play around with some experimental designs for the lighting system. You can check out:  gregorysung.com and for more photos, check out  http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=shine+on+led+&m=text More updates as they come.

(Note:  The LEDs we use in the field don’t use resistors, instead they feature a high efficiency circuit boards that improve the overall system efficiency by about 25%.)

-Ben Connor Barrie