Sustainable Technologies in Africa
The Sustainable Technologies in Africa project will support new efforts to enhance sustainable technology development in Africa.
Solar Refrigerators: The project seeks to develop a solar powered refrigeration system that can take vaccines to people in remote places. In this case, two camel saddles have been designed and built using bamboo. The saddles have also been integrated into a solar powered refrigeration system that has been configured to cool vaccines during multi-day missions to provide healthcare services to people in Laikipia in Kenya, and Afar in Ethiopia. The systems have been tested at the Bronx Zoo to ensure that they integrate well with camels. They will be delivered to NGOs in Ethiopia and Kenya.
Figure 1 – Photograph of the Camel Saddle at The Bronx Zoo
Solar Powered Homes: Experiments on solar powered homes have been initiated in the past year. This includes tests on flexible and rigid silicon solar cells, and solar lanterns with the potential to provide energy for basic lighting, charging of cell phones and a simple radio. The experiments have been carried out in Princeton, and in the rural town of Abeokuta in Nigeria.
A crew of 4 African technicians has been trained to install and maintain solar powered systems into homes in Africa. The training was done using a 3 kWh system that is able to provide enough power for a home with 26 lights and a refrigerator. Since the training in August of 2008, the technicians have installed two other systems independently. The current goal is to use them as a crew for the training of other technicians that can start solar based enterprises. A similar effort will be initiated at Mpala where a graduate student will initiate a study of the potential impact of solar technologies on the lives of people in rural Kenya.
Science and Technology Courses: Lab modules have been developed for three Princeton University African science and technology-based courses in the past year:
Sustainable Design is a six week long course (taught I Ghana) that will present a holistic treatment of engineering design concepts to non-engineers and engineering majors. The first four weeks of the course will be taught at the Kokrobrittey Institute near Accra, while the last 4 weeks will be taught at The Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi.
African Renaissance Institutes of Science and Technology (ARISTs): ARIST is an initiative that will use virtual networks to develop graduate training programs in conjunction with African universities in selected areas. The objective is to bring international (mostly U.S. and some European professors) and senior African professors into partnerships for the teaching of Assistant Lecturers at African universities. Since these are the next generation of professors at these universities, the objective is to use virtual networks to train these future professors in ways that could significantly enhance the education that they provide at their universities.
Drug Delivery Research: The research on drug delivery has been initiated in the past year. Two approaches have been explored:
The first approach is based on the synthesis of gels for localized cancer drug delivery. Gels based on PNIPA have been synthesized and soaked with the cancer drug, paxlitaxol. An initial drug delivery device has also been designed and fabricated using the drug eluting gel embedded in a poly-di-methyl-siloxane (PDMS) package. The device, which is also integrated with a hyperthermia device, is being tested to quantify the effects of localized drug release and heat on the death of cancer and non cancer cells.
The second approach is exploring ways of adding value to African plants through research. Extraction techniques are being developed to extract drugs from African plants. A visiting African graduate student, Ms. Sade Olaiya-Segun, is developing the extraction methods in collaboration with an African pharmaceutical company. The plan is to study the effects of these plant extracts on cancer cells.
Figure 2 – Schematic of Localized Drug Delivery Device
Technology Outreach: A bicycle powered centrifugal pumping system (Figure 3) has been designed and fabricated for use in rural areas. The system uses bicycle power to pump water from different water sources e.g. rivers, streams, ponds and shallow wells. The pump can also been made from wood, plastic and metallic materials that are available in Africa. The system will be installed at two locations Mpala. The water pump will be combined with a bamboo bicycles that can be made by local people in Mpala. In this way, the project will integrate water pumping with the training of local people to maintain and produce future systems. The hope is that this will make the systems more sustainable.
Figure 3 – (a) Design of Water Pump Design: Exploded View of Pump; (b) Cross-Section and (c) Impeller Blade Design
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Figure 4 – Photograph of Generation / Bamboo Bicycle
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