Senior Design
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During the course of my senior year, (first and second semester) I worked on a team of 4 other engineering students where we attempted to develop a low cost refrigeration system for Rwandan dairy farmers.
We were all passionate about working on a project that was more significant than the standard offerings from our professors, so we formed our own team and proposed this project for our senior design class in conjunction with SMU's Hunt Institute for Engineering & Humanity.
We were all passionate about working on a project that was more significant than the standard offerings from our professors, so we formed our own team and proposed this project for our senior design class in conjunction with SMU's Hunt Institute for Engineering & Humanity.
The Challenge
We were approached Fall 2016 by Southern Methodist University’s Hunt Institute, who works to combine engineering with humanitarian work all over the globe. They had a rather unusual problem: dairy farmers in Rwanda couldn’t keep their milk product from spoiling over night, resulting in lower profits. Our challenge was to create a cooling solution that could cool and keep cool, all without access to an electric grid.
Executive Summary
The Milk to Market Initiative and the SMU Hunt Institute teamed up to serve rural Rwandan dairy farmers needing an overnight milk preservation solution. We developed a low-cost refrigeration system that operates independently of an electric grid.
Dairy product is 6% of Rwanda’s national GDP, with over 700 million liters produced in 2016. However, 50% of this milk never reaches the market. Rwandan small-scale dairy farmers milk livestock morning and night, taking up to 20L of raw milk per day in jerry cans to local milk collection centers that then treat and distribute dairy products to formal markets. With only 2% of rural areas in Rwanda having access to the national electric grid, farmers lack a way to cool raw milk product overnight, ~12 hrs, before bringing milk to a center in the morning. Collection centers accept Rwandan Grade II milk, which must be cooled from its initial temperature of ~101F to 45F within four hours, and Rwandan Grade I milk (U.S. FDA GRADE A milk), which must be cooled from ~101F to 45F within two hours.
Source: Rwandan Development Board, U.S. FDA
Dairy product is 6% of Rwanda’s national GDP, with over 700 million liters produced in 2016. However, 50% of this milk never reaches the market. Rwandan small-scale dairy farmers milk livestock morning and night, taking up to 20L of raw milk per day in jerry cans to local milk collection centers that then treat and distribute dairy products to formal markets. With only 2% of rural areas in Rwanda having access to the national electric grid, farmers lack a way to cool raw milk product overnight, ~12 hrs, before bringing milk to a center in the morning. Collection centers accept Rwandan Grade II milk, which must be cooled from its initial temperature of ~101F to 45F within four hours, and Rwandan Grade I milk (U.S. FDA GRADE A milk), which must be cooled from ~101F to 45F within two hours.
Source: Rwandan Development Board, U.S. FDA
Final Results
Our final design cools 1.5L of milk from 101F to 45F in 4 hrs, meeting Rwandan Grade II standards, and keeps milk under 45F up to 12 hrs. Each unit of our final product costs 97 USD.