Problem Statement

Problem
Throughout the developing world, especially in the rural areas, impoverished
populations have little to no access to reliable electricity for an extended period of time.
In the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh specifically, they might get four hours of reliable
power a day, but even then it is spotty at best. This is due to the poor infrastructure and
management of the electrical grid in India. The most power is produced in the dead
hours of usage, and the least power is made in peak hours of usage. Also, the grid is
not built to spread out to rural populations, if it reaches them at all. This leads to the
use of biomass burning as the primary means to cook food and heat the homes in the
colder seasons. Most of the fuel is wood, cow dung, or crop residues collected from the
farms that most of these families make their living from.
Rural Indian populations are particularly at risk for various respiratory diseases, as
"indoor exposures to the combustion products of unprocessed solid fuels have been
estimated to produce the majority of (nonsmoking) human exposures to particulates"
and these populations are still highly dependent on such "simple solid fuels"(Smith
2000). This burning creates smoke that contains dangerous amounts of particulate
matter, CO2, NOx, and SOx gases, which all can quickly cause various lung diseases
and cancer that leads to a high number of deaths.
We are specifically studying the state of Uttar Pradesh due to it hosting the highest
number of people in energy poverty of any Indian state, and therefore the highest
number of people who will be directly and indirectly affected by the air pollution caused
by the biomass burning.
Significance
Rural populations in developing nations such as India are often sold short on basic
needs that are prioritized to urban populations, such as clean water, solid shelters, and
reliable electricity. It is the lack of electricity that specifically restricts these people to
primitive ways of doing daily activities such as cleaning, cooking, and generating heat in
their homes. They are also stuck in poverty without significant economic
maneuverability. These areas are of less interest to electric companies because they
cannot afford appliances and other devices that use electricity, so the push to give them
these capabilities from the private sector is low.
Society is damaged by the biomass burning because this air pollution causes lung
diseases of various kinds such as Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, respiratory
tract infections, and lung cancer. These afflictions, along with several others, cause
approximately one million premature deaths per year across India (Mohan, 2017). The
burning of biomasses is also not completed at high efficiency, so resources are wasted
as the burning biomass produces byproducts that are viewed as waste and a significant
portion of the fuel potential of these resources is not being used.
If we are successful in reducing the effects of this issue, society benefits because the
number of premature deaths will be reduced and the overall healthcare of the region
goes up. This will contribute to a healthier labor force and give the population of Uttar
Pradesh a better chance to maneuver economically.
Stakeholders
One of the main stakeholders in this problem space is the Rockefeller Foundation. They
are specifically examining this problem because they see the need the people of India
have for reliable electricity. This is not directly the problem space we are looking at,
rather it is something we determined it to be a root cause of our space. In addition, they
hope that developing solutions will stimulate the economy in these areas so these
people can also begin to afford electricity and the appliances that will eliminate the
harmful gases and byproducts that pollute the air of homes (Khanna, 2017).
The next stakeholder we have identified is the group called ETHOS. They have taken a
direct look at the appliance aspect of the problem, examining cookstove designs and
how to innovate them to better serve the communities. They take into account the types
of foods prepared and methods of cooking used in the culture, what the culture will
accept in the appliance, and how to make it as harmless as possible for the people to
cook their food everyday. We differ in that our current proposed solution examines the
efficiency of the fuel source instead of the appliance it is fed into, but they are working in
the same problem space we are more so than the Rockefeller Foundation is. (ETHOS,
2005)
The government of India also recognizes that biomass burning produces air pollutants
that affect people of all ages. They have taken initiatives such as removing subsidies on
products that push solid fuel burning, as well as expanding the power grid to more areas
and improving its functionality (WHO, 1948). They have also invested heavily in the
renewable energy sector to reduce the reliance on biomass burning for energy (Martin,
2015).
Furthermore, it comes as no surprise that people who have watched their loved ones
die due to the diseases caused by the smoke and pollutants want to see a change, but
many of them have no idea how to begin or any ability to do so. Oftentimes children
and the elderly are the victims as they have weaker immune systems. They need an
outside group to step in, which is the capacity we are assuming in this project. (PTI,
2017)
Context and Existing Solutions
India is a large country that had been rapidly expanding its economy. However,
the power generation capabilities of India have continually lagged behind the power
requirement for all its citizens. In order to maintain a growth of 8% per annum to 2031,
India would have to raise its primary power supply 3 to 4 times, and its electric
generation capabilities 5 to 6 times (The Economic Times, 2016). However, increasing
the power output of India is not quite so simple. Despite having the 5th largest coal
reserves in the world, the coal supply is limited to 65% of the country’s coal requirement
for its coal generation plants. Installation of new plants is a costly investment, and takes
a long time to complete.
Thus India is relying on the short term solution of importing energy from other
countries to meet its requirements. In 2012, coal imports made up 16% of the coal used
in the country, natural gas imports grew to 22% and 82% of the oil used in India was
imported, driving the energy import bill to $120 million (Eluppinoqz, 2014). This makes
energy expensive, and difficult to afford for the rural population in many of the states in
India. Coupled with the frequent power cuts due to poor infrastructure, states such as
Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have less than 40% of households that are electrified. This
forces many rural households without access to other forms of energy to rely on burning
biomass for cooking purposes, resulting in large amounts of particulate matter and
pollutants being inhaled, causing respiratory diseases and even death.
Current solutions from the government involve improving the power grid, and
granting a stable access to electricity to more people in India. The Modi administration
has been steadily increasing investments into the green energy sector, with plans to
increase its generation capacity from 30GW to 100GW by 2022.The administration also
plans to spend $50 billion to modernise the energy grid over the next decade, allowing
more people access to electricity (Martin, 2015).
Private companies such as Simpa and SunMoksha are also involved in providing
solar power to rural populations, using smart systems to monitor solar panels, as well as
providing low cost solar panels for rural communities to purchase and use for power.
However, the power generated from these solar panels are mostly used for lighting, as
cooking requires a larger amount of power. In India, 85% of solar panels are made from
expensive, imported products that drive costs up for companies and prevent a rapid
roll-out for these solar schemes (Martin, 2015). A quicker solution is thus needed to
address the issue of indoor air pollution in India.
Why is it still a problem?
The solutions that are currently being implemented require time to take effect.
The investment into improving the power grid may take decades to have an observable
impact on the 400 million people that live without power in India, as infrastructure is
being constructed and expanded one section and area at a time. The $50 billion needed
for this investment is also no small sum, which would have to be budgeted and paid for
by tax dollars. In a country where only 1% of the population paid tax in 2013, these
projects would certainly take some time to fund (​Srivastava, S. 2016)​. Meanwhile, one
million people still die of respiratory diseases caused by indoor smoke inhalation
annually.
Therefore, our team is exploring a solution that can have a rapid impact on the
emissions produced from the combustion of biomass by creating a low-cost, easy to
implement device that can increase the efficiency of the fuels used for cooking.
Proposed Work
Goal
In the scope of this project, we aim to address the practice of burning “found fuel”
in currently implemented stoves through pelletizing existing biomass fuels in order to
decrease emissions of harmful pollutants such as carbon monoxide. Pelletizing can be
impactful in this area, as due to “the relatively low [emission factors] and high thermal
efficiency of pellet burning... the replacement of raw fuels with biomass pellets can
reduce the emissions of most air pollutants significantly” (Shen 2012). Studies show that
CO emissions for pellet pine (4.4 ± 2.4 g/kg) and pellet corn (17.9 ± 10.2 g/kg) are
significantly lower than in their counterparts, ordinary pine (38.4 ± 11.8 g/kg) and corn
(36.5 ± 3.8 g/kg) (Wei 2012). This is a result of the oxygen supply being more abundant
and uniformly mixed in the combustion of the pellets, as well as the low moisture
content and ash content that also contribute to lower carbon emissions in pelletized
fuels. ​Objectives
Objective 1:​ Determine the key components of the pelletizing process, including
tolerances in key areas of the process such as moisture levels, pressure for
compression, and purity levels of materials
Background: ​The goal of this step is to research each step of the current
industrial pelletizing process that we are basing our model on so we can begin to
determine which steps will be integral to our design. Certain aspects of the
current process, such as drying the materials before they are chopped into the
final product, may have to be done as a step in the overall process we implement
in these communities rather than as a part of the machine’s design. We see the
current industrial standard we are scaling down to a feasible, affordable method
for the population of Uttar Pradesh, but every exact step may not be the most
relevant to our design. However, some industrial processes may prove to be
useful to us to consider and implement, such as how they achieve their volume to
surface area ratio for maximum efficiency in combustion.
Method: ​We will first examine how a variety of companies and producers go
from raw materials to their final products. After compiling this info to develop what
we see as the standard industrial process, we can begin to examine each step in
the process individually and how imperative it is to our desired goal. By knowing
how each step puts us closer to our goal of pellets that reduce emissions, such
as carbon monoxide and other particulate matters, we can determine how much
emphasis our design has on that step and where it falls in the design. This
research also encompasses developing target numbers for each part of the
process so we have something to work towards in Objective 2.
To simplify this process, we began by first looking into 3 key steps involved in the
making of biomass pellets. First, the biomass must be fed into the mechanism
and chopped into fine pieces if it is loaded in large chunks. Because most
biomass, including wood, switchgrass, crop surplus, contains 50-60% percent
water, this input material must be dried before the pressurization process (Zafar,
 2014). The pressurization consists of placing the dried biomass powder under
pressure to force the particles together. One way to simplify this entire process
is to house all stages of pelletization within a single compartment housing
multiple chambers. Each chamber will take in a prespecified amount of biofuel
that will be dried, ground, and then made into one large ‘pellet-sheet’ or several
biomass pellets. We will run tests in the future to determine the various
tolerances required in each aspect of the pelletization to achieve maximum
efficiency and utility with minimum energy and effort requirements.
Outcome: ​In achieving this objective we will become more efficient in our
approach to this solution. Through this achievement, we will be able to prioritize
the major parts of the pelletization process that will allow for maximum impact of
implementation with minimum labor and cost to the people of Uttar Pradesh.
There are a variety outcomes we are looking to achieve in order to determine the
validity and importance of several processes involved in pelletization. Among
these outcomes are required pressure values for the compression process,
moisture levels through dehydration, and achievable purity levels through
filtration. These give us marks to measure our progress in objective two.
Our preliminary research shows that we should aim for a ten to twelve percent
moisture level, twenty-eight megapascals of pressure, and 95% purity of input
materials through feasible processes. All of these processes collectively achieve
88.5% reduction of carbon monoxide and 25% reduction of carbon particulates.
However, the overall goal of the objective is to confirm or redefine these goals.
Anticipated Problems: ​The hardest part of attaining this goal is going the be the
research of which steps contribute most to our desired product. We are going to
want the largest data pool possible. We either have to find records from
producers who have been doing this for a while and have changed their process
over time, or we have to create this data pool ourselves somehow.
Objective 2: ​Synthesize individually each step of the pelletizing process, testing for
efficacy.
Background: ​Despite ideal comparisons made in laboratories between
pelletized fuels and their solid counterparts, if we are unable to replicate the
effects ourselves, we cannot make a create an effective machine and beneficial
process. The transitionary step in our process needs to provide proof of concept
for individual components in ways that demonstrate we can fabricate these
industrial processes on a smaller scale and achieve the goals we define during
the completion of objective one. This step is key because it is where we will
develop each aspect of the machine to make sure it works on its own before we
try to combine them into a final product for prototyping.
Method: ​We plan to develop our machine modularly so that we can test each
component individually. The parts that we need to test independently include the
grinding and compressing processes. Grinding requires us to learn the kinds of
 materials needed to crush crop residue, fallen wood, and dried animal dung into
particles suitable for pelletization. After we determine the best way to turn the
raw biomass into easy pelletized material, we will determine what kind of binding
material will best hold our pellets together during the drying process. We will
have to take advantage of various labs dealing with fields like civil engineering
and combustion in order to obtain pertinent information about how effective these
steps we develop will be in producing our desired final product.
Outcome: ​By achieving this objective, we will be able to legitimize each step of
our design and prove that it is a feasible and scalable step in the process. This
will also prevent us from hit snafus as we try to build our final product, rather we
are getting out front of major issues in the process design early on.
Anticipated Problems: ​One of the major problems we expect to encounter in
regards to pelletization is the feasibility of shredding or grinding the biomass in
the first step. Our current plan involves the pelletization process to be very small
scale, and coupled with the fact that our area of interest is comprised of rural
communities in a third world country, the machines will need to be run without the
aid of electricity. This will be a crucial step of our testing, as a product would
need to be able to shred biomass at a reasonable rate and also not require
back-breaking labor.
Objective 3:​ Combine steps into the most compact, streamlined process or device
feasible.
Background:​ After finding methods to produce each step of pelletizing, our
focus must turn to combining each step into the most concise process possible.
To increase the cultural adaptability of our product, we must make sure that we
take cultural context into account. Regardless of how effective the process may
be, if it is too laborious or difficult to comprehend and/or manufacture, people will
not use it. Ignoring this aspect drastically decreases the likelihood that our
solution can be implemented and embraced, and thus it is essential to dedicate
time to work on making the pelletizer enticing and user friendly.
Method: ​We plan to make our process culturally acceptable by taking into
account how much work they are going to be put in to obtain some goal we put
before them. There has to be a benefit they can latch onto. Also, we have to
streamline the design by using our experiment driven design process to create a
fully functioning model and prototype. After ensuring our design works as
intended, we can begin to examine what materials are readily available to build
the actual machine and how we can implement into the community.
Outcome: ​We will have successfully fulfilled this objective when we have
developed the solution so that it fits within the target culture well and does not
require any convincing beyond a very slight learning curve to successfully
implement the solution.
 Anticipated Problems: ​We will need to ensure that the people of Uttar Pradesh
will consistently use a pelletizing process if the equipment was provided for them.
The entire process would be extra work for them, as they currently just burn
different forms of biomass in their whole form. A pelletizing process would have
to be simplified enough that the people of these communities would find it worth
the extra time to pelletize their fuels. This aspect may also bring in the need for
an educational branch of our project, to inform the people of Uttar Pradesh of the
extreme dangers of the air pollution produced from inefficient combustion.
Project Team
During the coming fall semester, two members of our team will most likely be
studying abroad, leaving four to work on the project. Due to our project being a
mechanical accompaniment to a chemical process, our project members must be
interested in making improvements in these fields.
We have not yet contacted any potential advisors for the second year of our
project. However, our current primary prospect is Dr. Timothy Lieuwen, the executive
director of the Strategic Energy Institute at Georgia Tech and a professor in the school
of Aerospace Engineering. We interviewed Dr. Lieuwen earlier this year and found him
to be very energetic and helpful. We feel that he would fill the role of an advisor very
well if he agreed to the position. He also has the technical knowledge needed to advise
us on where and how we should proceed due to his position in the Strategic Energy
Institute. We also plan to reach out to Dr. Joyelle Harris, who is the faculty advisor for
Engineers Without Borders at Georgia Tech and is the director of the engineering for
social innovation center, as well as Dr. Shannon Yee, the faculty advisor for the Energy
Club at GT and a researcher in heat transfer, combustion and energy systems.

Timeline
Objective 1: early-mid fall 2017
This objective is relatively early on in the process, and will not require extensive
work beyond what we have done in spring 2017.
Objective 2: late fall 2017, early spring 2018
We feel that objective 2 represents a reasonable level of progress necessary for
our proof of concept, and consequently should be completed around the end of
the fall semester.
Objective 3: mid-late spring 2018
Objective 3 represents a final or nearly final product for this stage of our project.
Budget
Materials and Supplies:
● Raw materials to simulate what’s burned and run tests to give us
data(wood/cow patties/crop residue)
○ Due to the fact that “both the wood species and whether the fuel is
of stem or bark seemed to have an effect on emissions”, we will
attempt to acquire fuels most similar to those used in the region
(Sippula 2006).
○ We can also use AQI meters and low cost Carbon Monoxide
monitors to test the effectiveness of our design.
○ The species most heavily relied on in Raynal Hills, District Shangla,
Pakistan, which is in a more similar region of the world, include
“Berberis lycium, Continus cogyra, Cotoneaster integerima,
Dodonaea viscosa, Plectranthus rugosus, Quercus incana, Q.
balloot, Spiraea lindleyana and Vibernum cotinifolium” (Ibrar 2007).
○ $2-$5 per foot of wood
● Metals to test for compression of the biomass inserted
○ Metal roofing averages $4 per square foot, can range from $3-$15
■ https://www.fixr.com/costs/metal-roofing-installation
○ General metal stock for prototyping
■ https://www.mcmaster.com/#metals/=171o0q6
Equipment:
● Aerosol Monitor:
○ DustTrak Aerosol Monitor (~$2,000)
http://www.tsi.com/dusttrak-ii-aerosol-monitor-8532/
● Partnering with the GT aerosol lab for testing using the Georgia Tech
Environmental Chamber facility
● Multi-gas monitor:
https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/GXH-3051-portable-Multi-gas-anal
yzer_60507193517.html
● Aprovecho Rocket Stove (~$105)
● Carbon Monoxide Monitor:
http://catalog.nova-gas.com/viewitems/indoor-air-quality-personnel-safety/
ntinuous-carbon-monoxide-alarm-monitors-580-series
● Particulate monitors
○ http://www.globaltestsupply.com/product/kanomax-ppd60pv-t2-parti
culate-matter-sensor-unit-0-5um-and-larger?gclid=Cj0KEQjw5YfHB
RDzjNnioYq3_swBEiQArj4pdJrXodZOZithhTQBblgdkcT4z-roiWf8c
4eyaSybOgIaAt0t8P8HAQ
○ Cost of $250, could cost anywhere north of $1000 for high quality
○ More particulate monitors:
http://www.metone.com/support/service-maintenance/
 ○ Evaluation of two particulate monitors:
https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/GXH-3051-portable-Multi-g
as-analyzer_60507193517.html
● Temperature sensors

Services:
● External Machinist to produce parts for the final prototype
● External place to contract to produce the final product after prototyping

Travel: $6000
● Travel to Uttar Pradesh to gain cultural context and eventually implement
our devices.
● Travel to next year’s ETHOS conference to make possible connections for
implementation in the region of focus later.
Expected Outcomes and Future Directions
While it is still fairly long term to think about where our project will end up when
we are still developing the idea, we believe we can have a significant impact on Uttar
Pradesh and other rural communities experiencing the same problem. We expect to
have designed a cost-effective, easy to operate machine that can grind and pelletize a
variety of forms of biomass available to people of rural communities. How this will be
delivered to these communities is still a question to be answered. Due to the difficulty of
reaching Uttar Pradesh, it is unlikely that our team will be significantly involved with this
process. After year 2, we may lend our product to the startup of a microenterprise that
pelletizes fuel for consumers, or sells and distributes the machines to communities.
Some other groups that are working in a similar project space include Engineers without
Borders, ETHOS, and the Rockefeller Foundation. We also anticipate working and
testing our designs with the assistance of the Invention Studio at Georgia Tech, the
Combustion Labs, and the Environmental Chamber Facility at GT. Another possibility
may be collaboration with the other GC’16 team working to reduce particulate emissions
from biomass burning. We will most likely be welcoming David Key from this team to
ours in the fall, as two members of our team will be studying abroad in the fall.

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