Archive for the ‘’ Category
April 29, 2009
Below are the three largest challenges faced by the design clinic team in developing a design for the solar autoclave. We welcome you to contribute your thoughts and suggestions to these challenges in the comments section!
Pressure Release Valve
The team wanted to build the pressure release valve of easily-found materials, however each of their designs proved to be too insensitive. In the end, the team decided to use the release valve off of a commercial pressure cooker. Fortunately, these are available to purchase without requiring the purchase of a whole pressure cooker. Its precisely machined weight and aperture is necessary.
Sterilization Indicator
For much of the semester, the team worked to improve a cylinder/washer design, in which a small plastic cylinder would be filled with a phase-change material, Polywax2000 and a washer. The idea is that the washer starts on top of the solid wax, but as the autoclave heats up and the wax melts, the washer moves to the bottom. There is a calculated amount of wax inside such that when the washer lies on the bottom (i.e. all of the wax has melted), at least 15 minutes have passed, the minimum for sterilizing surgical instruments at 121 degrees Celsius and 15 psig. Ultimately, this design was abandoned because too much pressure built up inside the cylinder.
The final design is a two-compartment cylinder, with one compartment filled with Polywax2000. It functions as does an hourglass, and is manufactured such that when all of the wax melts and flows into the bottom compartment, the solar autoclave operator can rest assured that sterilization is complete. It has a hole in both ends, for ventilation, and a cap that blocks the whole at the bottom.
This design requires further testing, so the team also offered a contingency plan-an electronic timer, using a thermistor and powered by a small solar cell. Currently, the price of one sterilization indicator stands at $2.00, which complies with the team’s goal of under $10 if reusable and about $0.01 if non-reusable.
Pressure Vessel
For the solar autoclave pressure vessel, the team has replaced one of the wooden end caps with an aluminum end cap, used a silicone pie pan as the seal, and used hex bolts with wing nuts to hold it all together. Upon testing with hydraulic oil, they successfully brought the pressure up to 32psig – well above the 15psig required for sterilization – before it started to leak at the seal again. The stresses were well below the yield strength for the can. It is currently thought that the leaking seal, once validation testing is complete, could provide the emergency safety release, because it always fails well above the operating pressure, but fails before rupture of the vessel.
Testing with air revealed that the prototype does not consistently maintain pressure-so, tests run in an oven were not able to achieve 15psi because the system is not completely air tight. Further development is necessary to ensure a good seal. The oven testing also revealed that the time to heat up is very lengthy, but that steps can be taken to decrease this time, such as adding already-boiling water in the autoclave instead of cold water.
April 29, 2009
Hi everyone! Finally giving this blog thing a try, so we’ll see how it goes…
Well, I’ll go ahead and introduce myself. My name’s Erin, and I am a sophomore studying mechanical engineering, biomedical engineering and Spanish. When I’m not at UD, I live in Toledo, Ohio with my mom, dad and little sister Claire, who’s going to OSU next year (yay, monkey!). I have only been outside the US twice, to Canada, but I’ll be in Nicaragua over the summer working on the solar autoclave with Dan, Maria and Nathan. I have been so overwhelmed with exams, final projects and term papers, but now I finally have time to think about this summer, and I am extremely excited.
Me (on the left), Monkey, Dad at the Demolition Derby
Sarah, Leah and Me skiing at Alpine Valley, MI
I’m a little concerned about missing my family, my friends, and my boyfriend just because eight weeks is a long time to be away, but I can’t wait to go exploring, meet everyone in the entire country, and see some freshwater sharks. Don’t worry, I’ll take pictures. The State Department sent my shiny new passport, I’ve got a plane ticket, and I bought a raincoat. Totally ready, right? Also, we haven’t been told who our “families” will be in Sabana Grande, but I really hope I’ll get some little brothers and sisters.
I’ve also been thinking about what I could do for a little project I could do down there while we work on the solar autoclave. I took a class on Latin American history in the 20th century, and my research paper was on the health situation in Nicaragua, and my concentration is biomedical engineering. Basically, I’m trying to think of a project that would do something to improve community health using engineering (besides the solar autoclave, haha…), and ideally involves hanging out with little kids. Let me know if any of you out there have an idea…
Ciao,
Erin
April 27, 2009
Here’s your chance to learn how to make a solar box cooker using locally available materials! Dr. Richard Komp will be teaching a one-day course at the Woodstock Museum in New York on May 17th. The cost of the course is $25 and includes a power point presentation and lunch. Registration is limited, click here, to RSVP and for more information.
April 20, 2009
Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to represent Salud del Sol at International Development Night at MIT Museum (ID Night), a precursor to the International Development Conference held at Harvard Kennedy School. ID Night was an opportunity for different organizations from the MIT and Harvard community to showcase their projects of International Development, Salud del Sol was partnered with Innovations in International Health. Conference participants, students and community members stopped by our poster to learn about the solar autoclave research, business model of Salud del Sol and Las Mujeres Solares, and to offer their insight. It was energizing to hear the interest of others, and also to bring their suggestions back to the Salud del Sol team for further thought.
I also had a chance to talk with a few of the other organizations at the event, including Amy Quin, from One Earth Designs, an innovative organization focused on developing culturally appropriate sources of alternative energy. At the International Development night, Amy was presenting a parabolic cooker being developed for villages in western China.
April 20, 2009
This academic year, a team of undergraduate engineers from University of Dayton School of Engineering Design Clinic class, have been researching a system design for the solar autoclave. Their design includes, the solar box cooker, a pressure vessel, and a sterilization indicator. The progress of this team has been incredible!
Friday, April 24 at 8:00am in the Kettering Labs Building at the University of Dayton, the design clinic team will be presenting a culmination of the research. They will also be setting forth future research plans for Daniel Hensel and the field team to implement this summer in Nicaragua. For more information about this presentation, please email daniel.hensel@saluddelsol.org.
April 20, 2009
Earlier this month, Lori Hanna had the opportunity to attend the Global Engagement Summit at Northwestern University on behalf of Salud del Sol, Inc. As you can tell from reading her blog postings, it was an incredible experience, full of personal and organizational growth and an inspiration for us to continue the work of Salud del Sol!
An exciting outcome of the Global Engagement Summit is the GlobalGiving Project Challenge. Sponsored by the GlobalGiving Foundation, the Project Challenge competition gives students two weeks to try to raise at least $4,000 from 50 donors. Organizations that reach $4,000 are allowed to keep their projects on the site to continue to raise funds. The top three projects also receive bonuses totaling $6,000. The Project Challenge is held from April 17 – May 8.
Salud del Sol is incredibly excited and honor to be participating in the GlobalGiving project challenge! The funds raised from this endeavor will support the field research of the solar autoclave this summer in Sabana Grande, Nicaragua. The field team this summer has an incredible opportunity to prototype and test the system design from that the UD Design Clinic team has developed. The research plans for this summer also include, capacity building classes for Las Mujeres Solares on the research and testing of the solar autoclave, as well as classes in marketing and entrepreneurship. Also, once testing has proven the solar autoclave design successful, we will be enlisting the support of local doctors from Nicaragua to begin clinical testing of the solar autoclave to guarantee pathogens are eliminated from the instruments, ensuring complete sterilization.
Please visit our GlobalGiving project page to learn more about how you can support the solar autoclave research this summer!
April 19, 2009
I had the distinct pleasure of working with a freshmen engineering course at University of Dayton this past semester. When Dr. Margaret Pinnell – the professor for the course as well as one of Salud del Sol’s most involved mentors – approached me about ideas for a project for the course, I was quick to suggest a solar tracking device. Thus, I mentored the class and their group projects over the course of the semester, and was very pleased with the results. Because of Salud del Sol’s infatuation with sustainability and appropriate technologies, I asked the students to write an article for the site describing their projects. Their articles are posted below:
K(A)BEBS – Sean Drennan, Katlyn Lopus, Emily Getter, and Becky Herrman
Redirecting the Sun
During the second semester of the first year at the University of Dayton, the Engineering Innovations class was presented the challenge of building a prototype of a device that could be used in developing countries to track the sun throughout the day. This device would be used to maximize the amount of sunlight directed onto a solar panel to capitalize on the efficiency of the energy. The class was divided into groups and each group had a $50 budget to work with.
K(A)BEBS was formed by four, first-year engineering students. These four students all were taking similar classes, but all brought their own ideas to the group. During the design stage, design ideas varied greatly between group members, which allowed the group as a whole to think outside the box. The students used their knowledge from high school and the knowledge from their math and science courses this year to design and build a prototype that would complete the task at hand.
The design team decided on a design that was much different from the rest of the groups in the class. A device that would remain stationary and be constructed using reflective newspaper tin would be built around the solar panel and redirect the sun onto the panel. The sunlight would enter through the top of the device and would reflect off the panels, which would be at carefully calculated angles. The design team tried to design the device so that no matter where the sun would be in the sky, its’ rays would be directed onto the solar panel after being reflected off the newspaper tin. The team had reasonable results and found that the idea did work but more calculations and testing would need to be done in order to correctly position the reflective panels for use throughout the day. Overall, the design team was happy with their final project and excited to see what could become of their idea on a bigger scale.
Solar Tracking Device Project – Alex Jules, James Lab, Jim Razzante, Alex Reed
In the class Engineering Innovations this semester at the University of Dayton, our team was presented with the project of designing an automated (hands free) and sustainable(reusable) solar tracking device. What the device needed to do was move a solar panel throughout the day so it faced the sun at all times. This would result in increasing the efficiency of the solar panel by forty percent.
We first began by creating several sketches that depicted different ideas that could be used to achieve the desired effect. What we came up with was a system that would use a bucket suspended in a tub of water. The bucket was attached to a pivoting piece of wood which had the solar panel attached to it. Several two liter bottles were cut and placed together which created a source of water that would drip at a constant rate into the suspended bucket. As the day would go on, the dripping water would fall into the suspended bucket and cause it to sink and pull on the rotating piece of wood. This motion would cause the solar panel to be facing the sun the entire day.
When the day came to actually test our design, our team saw great success. Our simple design worked well, although we did encounter some problems. Interference with the weather caused some issues as clouds blocked the sun and a strong wind moved our rotating piece of wood. Our group was able to come up with propositions to create a better device in the future.
Overall, this project was a great introduction to the design process and gave us hope for our futures in engineering.
Again, as their student teacher who is heavily involved in projects like this, I was impressed with the results and proud of the work they had done. Our only hope now is that they will take away what they have learned about appropriate technologies and solar trackers and spread the word. They have a great opportunity to see some change in the world. Once again, comments and suggestions are always appreciated!
Many thanks and peace always,
Daniel J. Hensel
Director of Product Research
April 15, 2009
While I certainly did not attend the Summit with the intention of making friends, doing so was such a wonderful by-product! Madeline, Tracy, Catlin, Nadege… the list goes on and on of all of the wonderful relationships I made and hope to continue and even strengthen in the future. I have learned and have yet to learn so many things from these people, and I can see so many future partnerships for Salud del Sol.
I was able to attend Easter Mass before the final day’s activities commenced. We then participated in an open forum, which proved really useful. With everyone in the same room, we each wrote down our “burning questions” that we were still pondering. Then, six people were chosen to share their question and lead a discussion around that topic. The rest of us were encouraged to join one or more discussions, then each group reported their findings back to the whole group. I joined in a discussion about technology dispersion and organizational scaling. As one of the four more-developed projects represented in the conversation, I was able to provide a lot of good questions and reflections from Salud del Sol’s experience with the solar autoclave venture. We first differentiated between horizontal scaling (spreading the solar autoclave product or business model to rural clinics in other countries) and 3-D scaling (expanding into other arenas, such as military use of the product). The type of expansion we want determines our strategies for scaling, as well as IP protection. Other delegates provided a lot of brainstorming ideas for scaling strategies for the solar autoclave, as well as the three other implementation-stage projects. The general consensus for the most socially responsible approach to expansion was to support the global diffusion of ideas and the local diffusion of services and products.
The open forum was followed by our final small group session, wherein we provided feedback about the conference to the facilitators. This group of people, though from very different backgrounds and with very different projects, has proven such a valuable resource for discussion, acting as both a soundboard and a provider of critique. Our small group decided to continue this network through a Facebook group… appropriate, given the lessons I learned this week about the importance of social media networking! The summit ended with a luncheon, final announcements, and a picture slideshow of the week. We all exchanged any last-minute contact info, gave our hugs, and headed out. I was so excited to see my family, but it was sad to leave. But I can’t begin to describe the amount of inspiration and confidence gained through this Summit experience. The experience was so full and so rich that I was absolutely exhausted upon leaving. After resting up, however, I was excited to begin digesting all that had transpired at the Summit.
April 15, 2009
Saturday’s workshops were my favorite. My first one was about Social Media Marketing—basically, using tools like Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, and Google to further the goals of our organizations. Elliot Greenberger, of See3 Communications, first gave an overview of the main players within each utility, so he outlined important social networking, information finding, and blogging tools. He encouraged us to carefully consider what our goals are, instead of just jumping in to a tool because it is popular or new. He also advised us to use one or two tools really well, instead of trying to use too many different tools. Social media marketing, he said, is about STAR: storytelling, transparency, accountability, and relationships. The workshop was informative, but not overwhelming, as I had feared it would be. I tend to be wary of new and complicated software, but I left the workshop excited about the new tools, ideas, and tool functions I came away with, ready to expand the web presence of Salud del Sol.
The second workshop was about Socially Responsible Media. Daniel Yang and Harish Patel of Project Focus, led a discussion about the questions to ask and things to consider in the advertisement that organizations like ours will do. The main take-away was general disdain for pictures of African children with pot-bellies and snot, but we delved a lot further into the purpose of non-profit marketing, and how the images chosen will go along with the purpose. We examined two advertisements, one from Aldo Fights Aids and one from the Peace Corps, in small groups, to pick out the positive and negative things about both ads. We generally concluded that, though it is so common among non-profit advertising today, pity and guilt should not be the emotions we try to evoke. Rather, our media should work to promote emotions such as empathy, compassion, and solidarity. I hope to keep this in mind when adding media to any Salud del Sol-related material, including the website or future mailings. I think we’ve done a good job with this so far, but I invite feedback to anything on our site.
All that before lunchtime!! During lunch, I was one of four people interviewed by Pivot Nonprofit Consulting. A year of pro-bono consulting from this Chicago-based firm was one of the possible outcomes for delegates, and our project was one of four projects chosen as potential candidates for this outcome. While we did not end up getting this outcome, it was a really great interview, and I was really encouraged that the autoclave was chosen and that the members of Pivot doing the interview were so enthusiastic about us.
The afternoon included some announcements and small group time. Catlin Powers of One Earth Designs, a fellow delegate and member of my small group, and I used the time to peer-review each other’s projects. Both of our projects are implementation-stage projects, so we were able to offer each other valuable input.
Then, the closing keynote of the Summit was given by Premal Shah, of Kiva!!! I have been admiring this organization from afar for a few years now, impressed by its conception and how it has helped to make micro-finance popular. To hear him speak, however, was even more inspiring! He began with a quote from Howard Thurman:
“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
But his speech was not just about inspiring us to continue the work we are doing. He gave us practical advice on using the web to further our project’s goals. He really encouraged full disclosure, first of all, calling us all to publically reveal all of our weaknesses. This not only builds trust, but also allows us to get feedback and advice that could help us. He encouraged connecting patrons to the cause as personally as possible. He talked about the success of his organization, especially how it encourages a business relationship based on mutual dignity, not pity.
I was inspired to keep going with the solar autoclave project, for Kiva struggled for years before serendipity striked and Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. This sparked mass interest in social investment, and Kiva was there to guide the middle class in its investments. Kiva has been the path through which he has connected vocation with avocation… very similar to my own experience with Salud del Sol, and I hope the experiences of the other co-founders.
April 13, 2009
Friday began with what I thought was a really innovative part of this conference: individual mentorships. Each delegate was paired up with a facilitator, most of whom were workshop facilitators or nonprofit company representatives. We had half an hour to discuss our projects and get feedback. Megha Agrawal, who has been working on a really cool project in Uganda, gave me some great advice for Salud del Sol. Importantly, she asked some questions that will be important as we move forward with implementation and training, including challenging me to really utilize ABCD–Asset-Based Community Development–ideas as we move forward. I also look forward to really looking through the “Theory of Change” worksheet we were all given during our mentorship sessions… it’s a tool to use to better articulate goals, identify obstacles, and make sure that our activities are appropriate and effective.
This was followed by my third workshop, which was “Public Health in the Developing World.” Victor Roy, of GlobeMed, led is in a discussion about the main players in the global health arena and a big-picture look at the terms “sustainability” and “pragmatic solidarity.” We then looked at a case study of a public health partner organization in Nepal, analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the hypothetical partnership with any of our own organizations. We took this analysis even further by ranking five hypothetical programs by the partner in the case study, according to what we thought were the most effective or ideal programs. The workshop ended by exploring each of our projects in small groups, especially brainstorming potential partner organizations and the roles they would play.
We ate lunch at tables according to the regions in which each of our organizations work. It was mainly for networking purposes, and it was really great to get to talk to other people interested in Central America.
My next workshop was “ICT: Information Communication Technology,” led by Ken Banks of Kiwanja. I am excited to continue thinking about the potential that ICT has within the goals of the solar autoclave project. Particularly in this workshop, we discussed the appropriateness of different technologies. For example, what is better–a drum or a cell phone? It depends on the environment and the use. Similarly, our organizations need to consider the pros and cons of any communication technology we utilize, whether that is laptops, text messaging, or radio. SMS is the simple, low-cost technology of today, so I’ve been brainstorming about potential uses within our project… any ideas?!
Our small group session centered on discussing the article, “The toxis trickle downward,” from The Economist. This article points out, quite depressingly, the impact that the recent economic crisis has had and will have on developing countries. It led to a discussion about what the article missed, such as the effect it will have on war and climate change. But then we turned to signs of hope. Alex Merkovic of Global Peace Exchange pointed out that while some funds have recently dried up, private donations and foundation grants have increased. We discussed the successes of microfinance, as well as the continued spread of mobile phones, despite the crisis. Before reading the article, I did not realize the far-reaching repercussions of the crisis, which has the potential to affect our organization and our partners from multiple angles, all of which are important to consider.
The day ended with CareerConnect, which was mostly an opportunity to talk with some really great people from some really great organizations. I met Jason Selwitz from Green Empowerment, who works with many organizations, including AsoFenix in Nicaragua–a partner organization to Grupo Fenix! Small world!
Subscribe to Salud del Sol- MIT Global Challenge Award Winners May 4, 2011 Bill
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- 2011 IDEAS Competition & MIT Global Challenge Awards Celebration April 29, 2011 Bill