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Honey bee publish details |
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SRISTI’s Techpedia.in |
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Small Towns, Big Mindsa.in |
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| Abstract |
One of the most important characteristic features of innovation eco system emerging in India is that lot of good ideas are found in small institutions in small towns. The connect between the real life problem and the pursuit of their solution seems quite high in such places. In Gujarat, the cooperation between SRISTI’s techpedia.in and Gujarat Technical University has unearthed lot of interesting projects done by engineering diploma students which are worthy of recognition and support. Somehow, the attention of public policy makers towards polytechnic has not been very strong. |
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The mechanical engineering diploma students of LSIT, Jetalpur, Ahmedabad - Viren Kumar, Chintan, Dileepbhai and Mayank Eashwarlal have developed a refrigerator of 125 litre running on LPG gas. It was portable and can be used for pharma, dairy, and other industries, costs hardly Rs.1300. Prof. A.B.Patel and Y.L.Rao guided this project as also several other projects on exhaust gas recirculation improving the combustion efficiency of the engine. Most owners of four wheel vehicles have faced the problem of opening the four nuts of a wheel one at a time. Hamil, Nisarg kumar, Daval, and Sandeep developed a device costing Rs.9000 which can open all the four nuts simultaneously in one fourth of the time under the guidance of Profs. Modh and Pandya.
Piyush, Chetan, Ketan and Vijay have developed a turbo charger for two wheelers which improves the efficiency of the engine and saves the cost. Recently, as a part of technology, energy, waste and process benchmarking of MSME units in different clusters facilitated by SRISTI’s techpedia.in team and GTU, students have achieved remarkable results. In the last week of June, Milap, Nishank, Rahul and Hiren from VVP Engineering College,Rajkot did the energy audit of Kadvani Forges Pvt. Ltd., during their industrial shodhyatra. This is very reputed company having developed 190 different types of functional and non-functional components during the last four years. What the students did was to look at the dimensions of compressed air receiver, gauge pressure leakages, pipeline and dimensions, wear and tear of various motor belts, speed of motors and then placed a recording meter to monitor the current, voltage, power factor, etc., every five minutes. Then they developed a project for designing automatic power sector control as their final year project. Under the new scheme of GTU, they get about three credit for defining and parameterising the problem and they will also get fifteen credits for attempting to solve it in the final year. Their initial work showed considerable potential for saving energy. If such savings are multiplied in large number of units, one can imagine the impact on the economy, environment, efficiency and educational quality.
When written in Chinese, the word ‘crisis’ is composed of two characters — one represents danger, and the other represents opportunity. - John F. Kennedy
Students of Canara Engineering College have proved this right by making innovative projects to address issues faced by local areca nut growers. Mr. Manchi Srinivas Achar, President of Areca Nut Growers’ Association had visited the college in August, 2010 to have an active discussion with students to motivate them to solve problems of areca nut industry through technical methods. During his recent visit to the college he appreciated the successful projects – Battery operated hand cart, Areca nut husker, Areca nut Drier and Areca nut tree climber & pesticide sprayer,Solar – Thermal energy conversion & storage, Hydraulic actuation of valves, Portable JIB crane by Mechanical Engineering Department.The students B. Shankar Rao , Sandeep Hegde, Tonse Supreet Kini Under the guidance of Mr. Ananth Pai of Mechanical Engineering Department of Canara Engineering College solved the problem of arecanut farmers. Areca Nut husker machine, reduces the costs of dehusking by reducing need for skilled laborers and also reduces damage caused to the areca nuts in traditional huskers (during the testing, 85% of the areca nuts emerged without any damage). The advantages of this machine is that an adjuster is provided to husk areca nuts of any size, no internal cleaning is required as the nuts do not get stuck during the process. The total project cost was just 18,287 Rupees.
Yask Kulshreshtha from the Department of Civil Engineering, Birla Vishvakarma Mahavidyalaya (Engineering College) Vallabh Vidyanagar, Gujarat has designed an automatic mechanical way to purify water using chemical (chlorine tablet solution and Moringa oleifera solution),useful for domestic tanks, providing better quality of potable drinking water to common man at an affordable price. All the devices available in market for cleaning of water are very costly, example-reverse osmosis cost around Rs 15,000 and it consumes electricity. These devices are not affordable by common or poor people. His setup is totally mechanical and very cheap (cost around 100-200 Rs). It can be manufactured from waste material making it almost cost free. A person has to just change chemical storage can, once in every eight days. Yash says
that this project is also a solution to various diseases persisting in Indian villages.
Six students from LE College, Morbi felt that there was a need for low cost injection moulding machine. Kavit, Ashish, Hiren, Sharad, Shailesh, and Mayur under the guidance of Professors Chavda and Akhariya designed a fully functional injection moulding machine in just about Rs. 45,000. It can work at par if not better with costlier machines in terms of wax moulding for investment casting.
Five civil Engineering students of Dr S & S S Gandhi College Of Engg & Tech Surat, viz., Nekzad, Hemant, Divyen, Jaymin, and Ismail designed traffic junction in Surat at Althan with following features: (i) speed breakers with rollers embedded underneath to generate energy when vehicles pass over them (an idea which has been received by NIF earlier), (ii) having ‘sensors to detect vehicular traffic for safe pedestrian flow over the zebra crossing’, (iii) drain of junction to take water to a garden and iv) planting trees that can absorb sound and reduce noise pollution etc.
Chetna, Priti and Sadhana, students of Sarvoday polytechnic institute, Limbdi have developed a system by which at every bus stop, a sensor will detect the bus identity or number from hundred meters away and display it on dot-matrix display for the convenience of passengers.
What do all these innovations scouted through SRISTI’s Techpedia.in-GTU cooperation show? That a state which is industrially so advanced still has a long way to go to make the life of the common people even better and at low cost. If things are not improving fast enough, it is not because we don’t have enough creative youth, or the GTU is not encouraging the students enough, but just because policy makers lack the hunger for leveraging innovations for inclusive, green and sustainable development. |
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| Volume No. |
Honey Bee 22(1) & 22(2) 16-17, 2011 |
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