A tad nutty

After perhaps my most depressing blog entry yet, I thought I'd give an update on Engineers Without Borders stuff. I'm still leading "The Haiti Project," one of our chapter's international projects. We're currently working on...

A Solar Peanut Dryer
We built a solar peanut dryer last March at MFK's factory in Cap Haitien, Haiti. It doesn't work very well though. Costing about $400, it is too complicated to build, and too expensive for the amount of drying it can accomplish.


We're going to be working with some peanut experts that visited Cap Haitien recently to develop a cheap, simple drying structure that allows farmers to keep their peanuts out of the rain but still allows them to dry fast enough. Once we get a working prototype, we'll distribute the plans to farmers. This, combined with proper peanut drying and storage at the factory, should greatly reduce mold on the peanuts, and therefore the amount of peanuts thrown out at the factory.


Peanut Shell Charcoal
We're developing a way to make charcoal out of the waste peanut shells at the factory. They want to employ 1-2 people to make charcoal and sell on the street. Wood charcoal is the main cooking fuel for average Haitians. A large coffee can's worth of charcoal sells for about $0.60. By setting up this mini-business, MFK will employ 1-2 more people, and reduce demand for wood charcoal, which has wrecked Haiti's environment.


We put the peanut shells in the chimney, then light then with newspaper underneath.


Then once it's burning well, we smother the fire with a bucket and let it cool down. This pyrolyzes (I think this is right) the peanut shells and just leaves simple carbon chains.


Then we use cooked tapioca flour goo to bind the charcoal fines together and compress them into these nifty briquettes!

A New Factory
MFK is planning on building a new factory, to be completed in 2011. Jim S, an engineer that's helping us out, is going to be helping them put together a construction schedule. We're going to help as much as well can.