MIT team cooks up simple fuel recipe1 August 2007

Charcoal briquettes made from plant waste material. AnMIT student-created company, Bagazo, plans to producethese briquettes as cooking fuel in Haiti. Photo / JulesWalter

MIT student Jules Walter has seen firsthand theimpact of deforestation in his native Haiti: Nearly98 percent of the island's forests are gone, andmore trees are being cut down every year.

Deforestation is not only an environmental problemin that country, but it also makes life difficult forHaitians who rely on wood to cook their food.

Now, a team of MIT students including Walter isworking to bring affordable, environmentallyfriendly cooking fuel to developing countries likeHaiti. The technique, which grew out of an MITclass, offers a simple way to produce charcoalbriquettes from organic material such assugarcane waste.

The students have formed a company to produceand distribute the charcoal to Haitian villagers.Their firm, which includes Walter, MIT graduatestudents Amy Banzaert and Kendra Leith, andHaitian 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 asenior at MIT this fall, is traveling to Haiti later thismonth to conduct a market study and meet withpotential investors. He hopes his business willappeal to those who want to invest in somethingthat is both profitable and socially responsible.

"Traditionally people think you can either makemoney or help people," said Walter. "But this is aproject where we really think we can do both, anddo both well."

Students in MIT lecturer Amy Smith's course, D-Lab: Introduction to Development, first startedworking to develop low-cost cooking fuels after atrip to Haiti in 2003. The D-Lab course givesstudents the chance to explore technologicalsolutions to real-life problems.

"The charcoal project was one of the very first D-Lab projects, and over the years, dozens ofstudents have worked to help create the solution,"said Smith, who received a master's in engineeringfrom MIT in 1995 and won a MacArthur Fellowship,often nicknamed the "genius grant," in 2004.

Walter and his teammates named their companyBagazo after the energy source for the charcoal:bagasse, or sugarcane waste. Sugarcane is widelyavailable in Haiti, and corncobs and possibly otherplant wastes, including banana leaves, can also beused to make the charcoal.

Several families in Haiti have tested the briquettesand liked them better than wood charcoal, Waltersaid. The briquettes are good for cooking becausethey burn longer than wood and are easier to light.They also create less smoke than wood and dungfires.

"Both of those emit a lot of smoke, especially whenpeople cook inside their homes, and it gives themproblems with their lungs," Walter said.

The production process has three steps. First,organic waste is carbonized in a drum in a low-

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oxygen environment, which prevents it from turningto ash. Second, the resulting powder is mixed witha binder to help hold it together. Then, it is pressedit into briquettes with a simple machine press andallowed to dry.

The entire process takes two and a half to threehours, but the Bagazo team wants to speed up andautomate the process. Their plan is to develop asmall- to medium-scale manufacturing business todistribute the fuel to people.

Although the team is focusing on Haiti, thebriquettes could be beneficial in other places wheretrees are scarce, such as Africa and India. Studentsin Smith's class have visited Ghana and Pakistan tosee if the briquettes could be successful there, andinterested parties in Namibia have also contactedWalter.

Source: MIT

APA citation: MIT team cooks up simple fuel recipe (2007, August 1) retrieved 5 June 2018 from https://phys.org/news/2007-08-mit-team-cooks-simple-fuel.html

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