Trade.Information

Topic Name: Charcoal technology

Category: Environmental engineering

Research persons: Jules Walter

Location: 77 massachusetts avenue ,cambridge, ma 02139-4307, United States

Details

MIT student Jules Walter has seen firsthand the impact of deforestation in his native Haiti: Nearly 98 percent of the island's forests are gone, and more trees are being cut down every year. Deforestation is not only an environmental problem in that country, but it also makes life difficult for Haitians who rely on wood to cook their food. Now, a team of MIT students including Walter is working to bring affordable, environmentally friendly cooking fuel to developing countries like Haiti. The technique, which grew out of an MIT class, offers a simple way to produce charcoal briquettes from organic material such as sugarcane waste. The students have formed a company to produce and distribute the charcoal to Haitian villagers. Their firm, which includes Walter, MIT graduate students Amy Banzaert and Kendra Leith, and Haitian community organizer Gerthy Lahens, recently won $30,000 in seed money from the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition. Walter, a computer science major who will be a senior at MIT this fall, is traveling to Haiti later this month to conduct a market study and meet with potential investors. He hopes his business will appeal to those who want to invest in something that is both profitable and socially responsible. "Traditionally people think you can either make money or help people," said Walter. "But this is a project where we really think we can do both, and do both well." Students in MIT lecturer Amy Smith's course, D-Lab: Introduction to Development, first started working to develop low-cost cooking fuels after a trip to Haiti in 2003. The D-Lab course gives students the chance to explore technological solutions to real-life problems. "The charcoal project was one of the very first D-Lab projects, and over the years, dozens of students have worked to help create the solution," said Smith, who received a master's in engineering from MIT in 1995 and won a MacArthur Fellowship, often nicknamed the "genius grant," in 2004. Walter and his teammates named their company Bagazo after the energy source for the charcoal: bagasse, or sugarcane waste. Sugarcane is widely available in Haiti, and corncobs and possibly other plant wastes, including banana leaves, can also be used to make the charcoal. Several families in Haiti have tested the briquettes and liked them better than wood charcoal, Walter said. The briquettes are good for cooking because they burn longer than wood and are easier to light. They also create less smoke than wood and dung fires. "Both of those emit a lot of smoke, especially when people cook inside their homes, and it gives them problems with their lungs," Walter said. The production process has three steps. First, organic waste is carbonized in a drum in a low-oxygen environment, which prevents it from turning to ash. Second, the resulting powder is mixed with a binder to help hold it together. Then, it is pressed it into briquettes with a simple machine press and allowed to dry. The entire process takes two and a half to three hours, but the Bagazo team wants to speed up and automate the process. Their plan is to develop a small- to medium-scale manufacturing business to distribute the fuel to people. Although the team is focusing on Haiti, the briquettes could be beneficial in other places where trees are scarce, such as Africa and India. Students in Smith's class have visited Ghana and Pakistan to see if the briquettes could be successful there, and interested parties in Namibia have also contacted Walter. For more information about the project, please contact Walter at jdwalter@mit.edu. About Researcher Jules Walter, a 20-year-old junior, spent a month in Ghana this year where he taught villagers to make charcoal from agricultural waste, like corncobs and the skin of the sugar cane. "The method is great," he says, "because forests will no longer need to be cut down to make wood charcoal, and local entrepreneurs can use the know-how to set up small businesses." Walter is one of many MIT undergraduates who participate in D-Lab, an MIT class that teaches undergraduates how to deliver technology to the Third World. Students travel to Brazil, China, Ghana, India, Lesotho, or Zambia, where they help local villagers develop labor-saving technologies and invent new solutions to age-old problems. The project was launched in 2002 by Amy Smith, an MIT mechanical engineer and inventor, who in 2004 won a MacArthur "genius" Award for designing simple and affordable solutions to fundamental problems that affect poor regions of the world.So far, the program has been a huge success. This year, the class was oversubscribed by more than 100 percent, and already there have been results in developing countries. In one Zambian village, for example, students ran a training program in water safety and sanitation. They taught community leaders safe water practices so they could then teach others. Six months later, when they went back to the village, many of the water trainers were promoting safe water practices and there was a huge spike in the sale of chlorine. Also, in Guatemala, students built a second-generation prototype of a pedal-powered washing machine that has generated great community interest and shows much promise. The best part of D-Lab, Walter says, is the fieldwork. "I’m not saying it’s better than learning from a book, but fieldwork and the classroom complement each other. In class, you solve problems that are abstract; in the field, you solve problems that are concrete. You need both experiences." Smith says that offering students a chance to travel to developing countries is "eye-opening. In many ways," she says, "it's a transformational experience. When they come back, they just say it made such a difference in the way they look at problems." Walter agrees. Born and raised in Haiti, he says: "When I lived in Haiti, I thought the poverty there was terrible, but that was just the way it is. Now, I think, yes, there’s poverty. But what is the solution?" "When I lived in Haiti, I thought the poverty there was terrible, but that was just the way it is. Now, I think ...what is the solution?" Jules Walter taught villagers in Ghana to make charcoal from agricultural waste.