IE : City institute develops energy-saving cooker for mid-day meals : Oct 15,2007
City institute develops energy-saving cooker for mid-day meals
UICT concentrates efforts towards developing simple, micro-level
technologies, devises ‘solar drying’ method for farmers, fishermen
MIHIKA BASU
OCTOBER 14
SIMPLE cost-effective technologies that have local maintenance capabilities
and benefit a significant number of people is what the University Institute
of Chemical Technology (UICT), currently celebrating its platinum jubilee,
is concentrating its efforts and resources on.
The institute has already developed a cooker for mid-day meal scheme that
can prepare food to 200-400 students but burns onefourth the energy than
used otherwise. While the institute has supplied such cookers to 24
locations, it plans to provide at least 100 more in the next three months.
The food value too, said UICT Director J B Joshi, is better than what’s
being provided through the present cooking methods. “If midday meal is
prepared using these cookers everywhere, the state will save around Rs 50
crore every year,” said Joshi.
“India’s contribution (in terms of knowledge building) to the global market
is in the range of .5 to 2 per cent. The real planners of different
countries have clearly identified that economic development of a country
depends on the knowledge generated,” he said.
So, Joshi said, all programmes of the institute, be it solar, atomic or
wind, would have students researching on them. The institute was also
planning to increase the number of PhD students from 500 (currently) by four
times in four years, he said.
According to Joshi, a significant technology developed by UICT was the
“solar dryer” that aimed at increasing the economic strength of fishermen
and farmers. “The entire efforts of farmers aren’t economic. What they get
for a certain quantity is often nominal. Hence, we have developed a
methodology whereby fruits and vegetables can be directly converted into a
powdered form,” explained Joshi. “The methodology is hygienic,
cost-effective and often the price (that farmers fetch) can be up to seven
times higher (that what they get now),” he said.
Accordingly, UICT is currently focusing on formulations for different
sectors like nutrition; for instance, one such powder has been developed for
poor, pregnant women.
Calling such projects “microlevel technologies”, Joshi elaborated that a
similar powdered formulation has been created for fishermen. While the
fruits and vegetables programme is still in its initial stages, the solar
dryer technology for fishermen has already been installed at one location in
the city, he said.
Water is another area where the UICT plans to devise solutions that can be
implemented at the local level and that have local design and maintenance
capabilities. For instance, a simple experiment conducted in the institute’s
laboratory indicated that for purifying pumped water, the pump could be
designed in a certain manner that its rotation itself would kill pathogens.
“It needs no extra cost or hardware and can be put to use wherever water for
con sumption is available through pumping,” said Joshi.
Besides, he said, the institute would work with the Department of Atomic
Energy on areas like fuel reprocessing and design and scaling up faster
reactors among others.