Solar Conduction Dryer has won the first prize in this year's Dell Social Innovation Challenge. The Dell Social Innovation Challenge is a global competition that encourages undergraduate/graduate students to become social entrepreneurs by the implementation of an innovative idea/technology that can improve the lives of many people.
This year, the first prize winning entry is from India and they have designed a Solar Conduction Dryer (SCD) that can dehydrate food items, increasing their shelf life and reducing food wastage. This technology runs without any electricity (it directly uses the energy of the sun) and can save the food items (like vegetables, etc.) that get destroyed due to improper handling/rotting, etc. It seems, a total of 20-30% off all our food items are lost due to these reasons and only 2% of food items are currently processed. By dehydration/food processing, this 20-30% of food that currently is wasted, can be saved.
The Solar Conduction Dryer mainly uses conduction, but it also uses convection and radiation to dehydrate food items, thereby increasing their shelf-life. The student team intends to sell the SCD to Women Self Groups or Farmers (who also receive a Govt. subsidy) and they can use it to dehydrate/process their food items. The team will then buy it back from them (paying a higher price for processed food products), which they sell directly in the urban markets. The student team has already implemented this project in a limited scale and they seem to be successful with the pilot.
It seems solar dehydration (using this technique) saves more nutrients than direct sun drying and since the system doesn't use electricity/very simple to use, anyone can use it. The energy of the sun can be harnessed directly and indirectly by using inexpensive technologies even by common people (this project is a good example). It requires little expertise/know-how and some innovation, that's all. Let's hope more such innovations come from India.
Further details about this project is available here.
This year, the first prize winning entry is from India and they have designed a Solar Conduction Dryer (SCD) that can dehydrate food items, increasing their shelf life and reducing food wastage. This technology runs without any electricity (it directly uses the energy of the sun) and can save the food items (like vegetables, etc.) that get destroyed due to improper handling/rotting, etc. It seems, a total of 20-30% off all our food items are lost due to these reasons and only 2% of food items are currently processed. By dehydration/food processing, this 20-30% of food that currently is wasted, can be saved.
The Solar Conduction Dryer mainly uses conduction, but it also uses convection and radiation to dehydrate food items, thereby increasing their shelf-life. The student team intends to sell the SCD to Women Self Groups or Farmers (who also receive a Govt. subsidy) and they can use it to dehydrate/process their food items. The team will then buy it back from them (paying a higher price for processed food products), which they sell directly in the urban markets. The student team has already implemented this project in a limited scale and they seem to be successful with the pilot.
It seems solar dehydration (using this technique) saves more nutrients than direct sun drying and since the system doesn't use electricity/very simple to use, anyone can use it. The energy of the sun can be harnessed directly and indirectly by using inexpensive technologies even by common people (this project is a good example). It requires little expertise/know-how and some innovation, that's all. Let's hope more such innovations come from India.
Further details about this project is available here.
