Appropriate Technology for the World’s People, Design
UNIV-392/492, PSC-392/492, HNRS-392, MW 4-5:30, 21-133
UNIV-392/492, PSC-392/492, HNRS-392, MW 4-5:30, 21-133
Pete Schwartz, Cal Poly Physics, Pete’s Webpage, pschwart@calpoly.edu
Office Hours: M(12-1), M(1-2), T(3-4), R(3-4), F(9-10)
Office Hours: M(12-1), M(1-2), T(3-4), R(3-4), F(9-10)
See information from Design Spring 2017 from other previous classes.
See pictures of the final presentations and potluck at Cal Poly’s Student Experimental Farm from Spring 2017
The Timeline shows each day’s activities.
Final Presentations: Wednesday, June 13, 4-7 PM, at the SEF. From Cal Poly’s SchedulesOur Self Intervention Webpage In order to better understand change and the human being, we impose changes on our own lives and watch the response.
Feedback from you: Week 4, Final Student Evaluations, lecture, One Shop Section, The Other Shop Section, My Final Email to Class
Please see the links below to the possible projects. During your projects, you will develop a new webpage and move the information to this new page. For more information, please see some of the links below and read over the projects from last year’s class: Design Spring 2017 the development theory class from last fall, and from earlier years on the Appropriate Technology Website. You are welcome to build off old projects, and to start new projects yourself. The first 8 suggestions below are projects I personally emphasize and support.
| Link to webpage | Description of the topic | Members_Contact_info | |
| Immersion Heater | Associated with Insulated Solar Electric Cooking (or see this video) we have made more progress using diodes as a heating element inside of a food-safe metal tube that can be placed inside of the cooking pot, in direct contact with the food or water. Working with Kuyere in Malawi, and Aid Africa in Uganda, we aim to improve technologies that we are introducing to local businesses. | Micaela Board Amanda Stahler Matthew Walker 443-655-4793 Jessica Wei |
|
| Electric Cook Pot | Associated with Insulated Solar Electric Cooking (or see this video) we have made more progress using diodes to heat water and food. Working with Kuyere in Malawi, and Aid Africa in Uganda, we aim to improve technologies that we are introducing to local businesses. We are developing a cookpot that can be heated used diodes to reduce carbon emissions. | Anh Le Elly Halladay Kate Bilse Grace Gius |
|
| Cell Phone / Light Charger | Associated with Insulated Solar Electric Cooking (or see this video) we have made more progress using diodes to heat water and food. Working with Kuyere in Malawi, and Aid Africa in Uganda, we aim to investigate solar powered phone chargers to see if we can harness the energy from the diodes from the Solar Electric Cooking project to charge phones or an LED light. This would be an added incentive for the communities to implement the Solar Electric Cooking technology. | Kaitlyn Johnke Erika Rasmussen Jojo Fleishchman |
|
| Fetal Heart Rate Website | There is a need for a better way of observing fetal heart rate in Sub Saharan Africa. While developed countries use hand held doppler systems and wearable sensors, developing countries currently use a cheaper alternative: the pinard horn. Unfortunately, this no-tech device is difficult to use and inaccurate in its heart rate measurements. We have made efforts to modify this device to make fetal heart rate easier to find, hear, and count accurately by combining the pinard horn with more modern technology. | Rachel Chang Jocelyn Tam Ariane Schiesl |
|
| Blood Clot Diagnostic Website | Postpartum Hemorrhage is the leading cause of maternal mortality in the world due to insufficient blood clot by the mother leading to fatal blood loss. Current methods used to determine if the mothers blood will clot or not are both unclear and time inefficient leading to a higher mortality rate. If there was a device that could determine if a patients blood will clot both accurately and timely, the death rate for women in labor would be drastically decreased. Luckily there is. Cal Poly Biomedical graduate student Sara Della Ripa, has developed a device that diagnoses if the blood will clot within two minutes of testing and is very accurate. Working with her this quarter, we want to help her refine her design to make it the most affordable and sustainable device on the market. | Anita Kelleher Madison Moore Brenyn Bierbaum |
|
| Microgrid | In areas where the central utility grid is unreliable or unavailable, microgrids provide a solution to development in lieu of waiting for the grid to be built out to remote and rural communities. As such we are investigating models of smart DC microgrids oriented around various types of property rights, economic incentives in rate structuring and capital financing, while incorporating fundamental principles of Community Choice Energy reworked for the developing world. | Ayman Abdul Brandon Dela Cruz Kendall Spector Nathan Lubega |
|
| Food Storage | We are working to identify a sustainable solution that will effectively store food against pest and rodent intervention and relative humidity as high as 90%. By achieving this, we can reduce aflatoxin (mold) contamination post harvest. Last year, a group worked on Flour Container with Peggy C. Papathakis (Food Science and Nutrition, Cal Poly). Feedback from both Peggy and Mark Manary (the Peanut Butter Project) will be considered. We have decided to further progress on this project by testing calcium chloride as a desiccant in order to reduce the effects of humidity within the food container. Our design will incorporate a bag and desiccant within a clay pot, to effectively control for pest invasions and high environment humidity. | Brooke Begg Sylvana Saleh Madison Stepherson Hailey Taylor |
|
| Chicken Egg website | We need a way to collect fresh eggs, dry them and preserve them in a food safe way. You’d be working on a project of interest to Mark Manary (the Peanut Butter Project). There is the possibility of inoculating chickens with human diseases. The antibodies would then express themselves in the eggs. So the eggs would be medicine. This is a Monday Shop group. | Brett Crews Madalyn Hosick Kelly Lyons Shayna Aigner |
|
| Coconut Desiccation | We are working with CocoAsenso to develop design ideas for an integrated biomass energy system. Our process needs to meet all of the energy needs for a traditional coconut processing facilities while optimizing cost-effectiveness and simplicity. Our deliverable requirements for this project are not rigid and we are open to anything that will benefit the development of Coco Asenso’s energy system. | Mariana Perez Vivian Cheung Jenny Hoekstra Emma Stine |
|
| Below are some other projects that are also important, but are presently not being pursued | |||
| Baby feeding device | You know how 6 mo olds basically eat by sucking and swallowing, so spoons are a mess, but kids now take pureed vegetables from packets, and they do not even need bibs to stay clean. Can we create a reusable, food safe device to feed a 6 mo old? Peggy C. Papathakis, Food Science and Nutrition, Cal Poly | ||
| Low tech solar cooker | We are always in need of cooking devices, things that capture the sun’s energy and can boil beans. Can we create some kind of plastic tube a mother could leave in the sun for some hours and cook the beans 90%? The first (and possibly only) part of this project would be to investigate the myriad solar cooking technologies at Solar Cookers International, and inquire how is it that people cook and is there something already that would work fine. Peggy C. Papathakis, Food Science and Nutrition, Cal Poly | ||
| Insulating Bricks for stoves | Create a new form of insulating bricks using rice hulls for Aid Africa to use in their cook stoves. See past efforts from Fall 2016 at Rice Hull Pulverizer and Insulating Brick Making Overview of cooking in Africa by 2020 | ||
| Garri in Ghana | Please read about how garri is made from cassava, an African stable. There are some automatic garri makers and Burro is working with Stanford to make one. But rather than make them for use over a fire, can we insulate the pot and cook them with Insulated Solar Electric Cooking? Please see our publication about insulated solar electric cooking. | ||
| Alternative Sanitation | In poor countries, people poop in local bushes, in the street, wherever. We need a radically inexpensive technology that could work better. I (Pete) have a bucket toilet at home that composts in the back yard and is used as fertilizer for the fruit trees – consistent with a model by SOIL in Haiti. Aid Africa is interested in trying a similar method for a family or community in Uganda. We’ve collaborated before, and it’s reasonable to think we could try this out in the coming year. Additionally, a past student works with Sanivation that makes charcoal briquettes out of poop (I think) in Kenya, and also recommends we contact Sanergy in Nairobi. I’ve worked a lot with Cami (Sanivation) when she was a student here. She sends this Email to us, and provides this document of their interests. Here is one group from last year. | ||
| TEC Heating/Cooling | Use of “Peltier” ThermoElectric Cooling (TEC) for heating water and powering a refrigerator. | ||
| Wind Power | Turns out you can buy this small wind turbine for about 60 cents / Watt.. same cost as solar panels! Where would wind power be as appropriate as solar electricity? or Better? But why does it even cost as much as it does? Could we find a way to make them cheaper? You can buy one (I’ll pay for it), and maybe improve innovations. We are working with Robert Van BusKirk of Kuyere in Malawi, but he has experience in Eritrea, doing work with Wind Power. Drop this group? | ||
| Virtual Battery | Associated with Insulated Solar Electric Cooking (or see this video) we have made more progress using diodes to heat water and food. Working with Kuyere in Malawi, and Aid Africa in Uganda, we aim to improve technologies that we are introducing to local businesses. It turns out that one can connect a solar panel directly to a battery or an inverter (providing standard AC electricity) if the electricity is modified through a diode heater for our cookstoves. This product could be of considerable commercial value. For more information how this might look technically, try looking at the Electric Cooking Pot project. Drop this group? | ||
| Solar Ice | Question: Can we find a way to connect a solar panel directly to a freezer and make ice during the day, keeping it cold at night? We’ve been working on it a lot with solar ice, and the solar ice cream truck. Working with Kuyere in Malawi, and Aid Africa in Uganda, we aim to improve technologies that we are introducing to local businesses. Here is one of the projects from previous classes. We may need to power it through the Virtual Battery (see below). Drop this group? |
||