Salud del Sol, Inc. is a proud partner of Solar Day.  Solar Day is an international day that was designed to bring awareness about solar energy, clean technology, and sustainability.  Visit http://www.solarday.com/ for more information and to find out ways you can get involved.

The Program begins with 4 days of classroom learning in Hong Kong, with participants from around the world, including Malaysia, Australia, Thailand, China and Belgium. Following these classes, participants will travel to Aceh, Indonesia to work in partnership with a local farmers cooperative and the UNDP to create a sustainable business plan for the cooperative.

It will be an incredible experience– check back for updates from Asia!

Come to Nicaragua and engage your head, heart, and hands in the real work of developing countries. Our hands-on courses allow you to be immersed in the daily life of rural Nicaraguans by living with host families and working alongside local community members to create their vision of a model community through renewable energy and sustainable practices.

Discuss the theory behind solar energy and the challenges of development with your instructors and other course participants. Spend your days learning how to construct solar cookers, photovoltaic panels, and installing photovoltaic systems. Laugh along with your host family as you try to recall your high school Spanish, balance water on your head or make tortillas. Most activities and classes are held in the new adobe Solar Center. Housing will be simple, like that of a typical rural Nicaraguan family.

Explore a beautiful country and its culture while learning about renewable energy and sustainable development in the field. Our courses provide a unique travel experience that is educational, rewarding, and fun!

This 11-day course, offered twice a year, has been held by Grupo Fenix since 1999. It is a great introduction to the science and use of appropriate renewable energy technologies such as solar cookers, dryers and photo-voltaic systems. Dr. Richard Komp, an expert from the United States with over 40 years experience working with solar technologies, teaches the technical classes for the January version of this course and the July version is based on his methodology for fabrication of PV panels in developing countries. During this 11 day course participants will:

• Visit Suni Solar, a renewable energy business in Managua started by Grupo Fenix
• Build a solar oven with the local women’s group, the Solar Women of Totogalpa
• Listen to talks on Solar Dryers and Medicinal Plants
• Learn about solar cooking and eat the final product of your class!
• Install a PV system with local solar experts
• Make a solar powered battery charger

Also, the course includes various tourist activities such as a visit to nearby beautiful spots in the mountains of northern Nicaragua. If weather permits, we will spend a day exploring the Somoto Canyon and swimming in its natural pools. Also, at the end of the course we will spend a night at a rustic ecolodge in the Tisey Nature Reserve, which has hiking trails, fields of organic vegetables, a farming community that produces its own specialty cheeses and one of the best panoramic views in the country.

The course fee of $995 includes all food and lodging, with a $50 deposit to be sent to the nonprofit Skyheat Associates at PO Box 184, Harrington ME 04643 before December 15th to insure a place in the course, which has a limit of 15 participants and is often completely full. For more information, please contact thegrupofenix@gmail.com or look on-line at www.grupofenix.org for details of all of our programs.

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.

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!

GES is an incredible opportunity for Lori and Salud del Sol, with a focus on building the capacity of organization leaders to implement on the ground, international development endeavors. Check back for more information about Lori’s experience at GES!

Update on Status of the Solar Autoclave and Sterilization Indicator

On March 13th the new design team currently working on the solar autoclave system presented the status of the project to their sponsors. Among the attendees of the presentation were Executive Director Lori Hanna, myself (Director of Product Research, Daniel Hensel), longtime sponsor Dr. Margaret Pinnell, and the ETHOS field team accompanying me to Sabana Grande, Nicaragua this summer. The presentation provided a brief overview of the project, the status of what they are working on now, and their plans for the immediate future. The members of the design team, those who presented, are Staci Grey, Christopher McGuinness, Ryan Smolik, Corey Vossler and Kyle Zeller.

The team is on task for the most part. There have been some issues with the pressure release valve that releases pressure if built up beyond 16 or 17psig. Using a proprietary valve with weights, rocks or sand was investigated, but found to be too insensitive. In other words, using these methods, the weighted valve will not release air/steam at the required pressure. The team feels that a precisely machined weight will be necessary, such as those used on traditional pressure cooking pots. This setback has pushed back final design testing by several class periods.

The team displayed the current progress of the sterilization indicator, which is made up of a small plastic container about the size and depth of five nickels stacked together. Inside the plastic container is 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 deg C and 15psig. There have been problems with these initial prototypes, such as the plastic melting inside the ovens, or pressure being created inside the capsules (due to expansion during the phase change) that causes them to burst. The design team is currently looking into correcting these faults by trying a vented hourglass design instead. This design will be very similar to the capsules previously discussed, except they will be larger, vented and in an hourglass shape and will not contain a washer. Their contingency plan, should all else fail, is to go with a bimetallic-based timer. Currently, the price of on 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.

For the solar autoclave pressure vessel, the team has replaced one of the wooden end caps with an aluminum end cap, shortened the bolts that connect the two end caps and used lock nuts on one end cap. Upon testing, they successfully brought the pressure up to 32psig – well above the 15psig required for sterilization but not quite up to our Factor of Safety of 45psig - before it started to leak at the seal again. They are looking into new sealants, such as silicone pie pans and baking mats. Nevertheless, once again the stresses were well below the yield strength for the can. Then the team discussed how the instruments themselves will lie in the pressure vessel. It was ideal that the instruments would be situated at mid-height in the can, such that they are not lying directly in the water. It was suggested that chicken wire be used to hold the instruments up, but a disadvantage is that only a few instruments could be sterilized at a time due to the size of the can. The team is now developing a test plan for use for the rest of the semester as well as in Nicaragua this summer. Their next task, once the design is completed, will be to determine how much water is needed in the can for sterilization.

The semester is quickly coming to a close and the design team is pooling resources to have testing and prototyping done before the summer. They will present their last findings at their final presentation on the 24th of April at 8am in the UD Design Clinic. Lori and I, as well as the ETHOS field team accompanying me this summer, are anxious to see the final results before I leave for Nicaragua on May 8th. As always, please feel free to comment with questions or suggestions if the urge strikes you!

Gracias, La Paz y Salud,

Daniel J Hensel

Director of Product Research