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Fall 2009

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Project Summary

 

Fall 2009 Sponsor:
Shell

Project:
Sustainable Cooking for the Developing World: 
An Entrepreneurial Effort

 Construction Specialties

Project Objective

Design a low cost, sustainable, and culturally appropriate cooking system for use by poor and marginalized people in the developing world.  The system should utilize an appropriate fuel source.  A business centered on the fabrication of such a system should be considered to serve a market of people who earn less than $2/day.  The design should be such that it can be used as a model for similar villages around the world.

Sponsor Background

Shell (www.shell.com) is a global group of energy and petrochemical companies.  They are active in more than 140 countries and territories and employ 102,000 people worldwide.  Shell believes that oil and gas will be integral to the global energy needs for economic development for many decades to come.  Hence, their role is to ensure that they extract and deliver them profitably and in environmentally and socially responsible ways.

What this means in practice is that Shell often must make a social investment in the community where it operates.  Perhaps it is providing clean water, or assistance with road infrastructure, or a jobs program.  Examples may be found on their website (link at end of this write-up).  Based on an annual internal questionnaire to their senior country representatives it is estimated that Shell spent approximately $140 million on social investment activities in 2006.  The largest programs were in Nigeria and the USA.  This amount is separate from the activities of the independent Shell Foundation.

Shell’s programs vary from country to country, depending on local needs, stakeholder consultation, and issues identified by Social Impact Assessments.  Shell has developed 10 criteria for local social investment to provide guidance to Shell companies as they design local programs:

  1. Inclusive: involving a range of stakeholder views and opinions
  2. Based on community needs: designed in consultation with local communities
  3. Involving local support: including financial and in-kind contribution, where appropriate
  4. Fit with existing Shell activities
  5. Based on partnerships and local implementation: with NGOs and community groups
  6. Sustainable: delivering lasting benefits and be self-supporting after Shell participation
  7. Have a measurable positive impact: socially, economically and environmentally
  8. Transparent: regularly monitored and evaluated with the results clearly and openly reported
  9. Able to leverage additional funding: leading to increased benefits
  10. Replicable: to accelerate the learning curve and decrease implementation costs.

One of the projects that has been supported by the Shell Foundation is the Envirofit (www.envirofit.org) clean cookstoves.  Compared to traditional cooking fires, Envirofit cookstoves reduce emissions by as much as 80%, use up to 60% less fuel and reduce cooking cycle time by up to 50% (http://www.envirofit.org/?q=our-products/clean-cookstoves).

Project Background
Large populations of poor and marginalized people exist throughout the developing world.  In fact, nearly 50% of the world earns less than $2/day.  Penn State’s Humanitarian Engineering and Social Entrepreneurship (HESE) program seeks to partner with such communities to successfully design and construct solutions to their problems—and to do so in an entrepreneurial fashion.

One such opportunity is the development of a low-cost cooking system.  It is estimated that the greatest health risk to children in the developing world under the age of 5 is caused by smoke inhalation from indoor cooking.  In addition, the use of certain biofuels for cooking purposes often leads to deforestation.  The cooking system to be used by the poor should be fabricated locally and sold to the local population—with the assumption being that their income level is less than a few dollars per day.  This effort should be developed as an entrepreneurial enterprise in order to support the village in the developing country you select.  The project should also be replicable and transferable to other countries and other contexts.

Considering that the project is meant to be a model for future entrepreneurial development efforts around the world, an examination of various alternative technologies is needed.  This research and evaluation is essential for the determination of appropriate technologies to be considered at the project site.  Costs in both the construction and the operation of the system must be taken into account.  Also, economic sustainability must be assured.  Minimizing cost is essential.  The target price for the cooking system is less than $20, although lower targets may need to be met depending on your chosen project site and population.

Example Project Scenario
An example project scenario is presented here.  Your instructor may present a separate scenario.

Design a low cost, sustainable, and culturally appropriate cooking system for use by poor and marginalized people in rural Kenya.  The system should utilize an appropriate fuel source.  A business centered on the fabrication of such a system is to be established at the Children & Youth Empowerment Centre located in Nyeri, Kenya.  The market should be considered to be people who earn less than $2/day.  The design should be such that it can be used as a model for similar villages around the world.

Penn State’s HESE has partnered with the Children and Youth Empowerment Center, located in Nyeri, Kenya.  The center was established to research and develop solutions for some of the major challenges affecting the 350,000 street dwelling children, youth, and families in Kenya and to replicate such solutions in Kenya’s major towns.  The initial development of CYEC began in 2003.  The first intake of eight children took place on October 19, 2006.

CYEC is currently serving two hundred children and youth in its residential and non-residential programs, and is expected to handle over eight hundred when fully established.  Administrative activities at the center fall under four organizational categories, aimed at creating a comprehensive program for the target population.  These are:  training and education, health and nutrition, finance and administration, research and development.

HESE is engaged in the design of a prototypical village to house the graduates of this program - with a focus on the design of housing, water and wastewater treatment, energy, and agricultural systems.  Such an undertaking needs to be sustainable in all aspects.  Before construction of the necessary infrastructure for such a village, it must be ensured that these villages are indeed economically sustainable.  Thus, technologies must be developed that are income-generating, culturally appropriate, and affordable by the folks who earn $2 per day or less. 

The development of a low-cost cooking system should be viewed as an entrepreneurial enterprise in order to support the CYEC village.  The project should also be replicable and transferable to other countries and other contexts.  The effort will be a collaborative one between Penn State University faculty and students and their counterparts at Jomo Kenyatta University and Agricultural Technology (JKUAT).

 

Map

Figure 1  Map of Kenya and Project Location

 

 

Houses

Figure 2:  CYEC Compound – Nyeri, Kenya

 

What is Humanitarian Engineering
Have you ever wanted to use the skills and knowledge that you are obtaining here at Penn State to make a difference in someone’s life?  Do you have a desire to understand a person’s problem so well that you are able to design a solution to it and enhance their lives—and make it socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable?  That is what humanitarian engineering is all about.

Undergraduate students in engineering face a future in which they will need more than just a solid technical background to be successful.  In setting the goals for any system they are asked to design, they will be expected to interact effectively with people of widely varying social and educational backgrounds.  They will then be expected to work with people from many different disciplines to achieve these goals.  They thus need educational experiences that help them develop these skills.

In addition to knowledge of engineering, mathematics, and science, and experience in engineering problem solving and system design, engineering students will need to function on multidisciplinary teams and to communicate effectively.  They will need to understand a wide range of issues, including the importance of professional and ethical responsibility and the societal and global impacts of engineering solutions.

One effective response to these calls is to engage students in “real-world” experiences.  Humanitarian engineering projects offer students a compelling context for engineering design, a multi-disciplinary team experience, sufficient time to learn and practice professional skills, personalized mentoring, and exciting technical challenges.  The combination of these five characteristics ensures that students will immerse themselves in the engineering project, thus learning the desired skills and addressing the desired issues as they perform their tasks.

A certificate program in (Humanitarian) Engineering and Community Engagement at Penn State has been developed that allows students to engage in multiple-semester-long Humanitarian Engineering projects (or single semester projects) while solving real world community-focused problems.  This project is an example of such a problem.  More information can be found at:  www.engr.psu.edu/ece.

 

Project Objectives
Your team should provide a design solution to the problem posed above.  All designs should take into account as many of the cultural, economic, and environmental constraints as possible—with an eye on sustainability of any and all solutions proposed.  Particular emphasis should be placed on developing a solution that costs as little as possible while being safe.

Sample projects involving cooking systems might include:

  • design of a locally produced skin for the Envirofit cookstove
  • a low-cost charcoal briquette maker for existing “Jiko” biomass stoves in Kenya
  • gassifier stoves
  • vegetable-oil-using stoves
  • solar cookers
  • solar heated grill

Solutions will be evaluated based on the following criteria and targets:

  • >50% decreased emissions
  • >50% less fuel use
  • >50% faster cooking cycle time
  • Economically viable (including business model)
  • Cultural appropriateness

Key Deliverables:
Note: Your instructor will clarify his or her expectations for these deliverables and their respective due dates.

  • Technical report on Web
    • The format for the first page of your website will be given to you and all requested material must be provided
    • Project description
    • CAD drawings detailing the design solutions for each of the systems
    • Overview of project location and population considerations along with a summary of suspected cultural impacts of the cookstove—both positive and negative
    • Trade studies
    • System cost estimate
    • Business case justification and evidence of economic viability
    • Complete list of brainstormed ideas showing top 4–5 initial selections
  • Prototype/model of system

Materials Provided: