Dartmouth Engineer

By Kathryn LoConte

POWER TO THE PEOPLE: From left, Giancarlo Nucci ’07 Th'08, Zoe Acher ’08, and Manaure Francisquez Rodriguez ’11 work on a micro hydro-power system in Rwanda that is generating interest from several villages. Photograph courtesy of Dartmouth HELP.

Seven students working as part of Dartmouth Humanitarian Engineering Leadership Projects (HELP) Worldwide have successfully implemented a micro hydro-power system in the village of Banda, Rwanda. Using the area’s natural water resources, Dartmouth engineers designed and built two hydro-powered turbines that can generate enough power to charge the batteries community members use for home lighting. The technology saves villagers from walking 27 miles each way to the nearest city on the electric grid to charge their batteries.

The project, started in 2008, made a point of using local materials and involving local residents in the work, according to Ben Koons ’08 Th’09, president of HELP.

“Acquiring local materials was pretty interesting,” he says. “There are these big scrap markets in the nearby city of Kigali, hundreds of tiny one-room stores. We’d spend days trying to find specific parts, find bearings, an axel that fits. Then it would be hours haggling. One time I spent three hours finding a whole bunch of plumbing and electrical supplies, and then another three hours bartering. And I guess I went too low, because the guy just stormed off with all the wares. Then there was three hours of frantically running around the scrap yard all over again. It’s pretty exciting, but tiring, too.”

Another stipulation set by the students was to use local labor, which served to provide community members with employment as well as familiarize them with the technology.

“We were employing up to 35 people in the course of several months,” says Koons. “And the ultimate goal of this project is to have these systems spread naturally without any foreign aid, to have trained local technicians, managers, and entrepreneurs who can run this as a small business with a local energy producer. Then it would just fit naturally into the economic framework.”

Looking forward, HELP aims to have the Banda micro-hydro project act as a working model for future sites in surrounding communities. “With every successful project, I’d like there to be less and less involvement from us and more involvement from trained locals,” says Koons.

That reality is not far off. Members of bordering communities have inquired about implementing the technology in their own villages.

—Kathryn LoConte is assistant editor at Dartmouth Engineer.

Zoe Acher on HELP (3:14)

Watch Zoe on YouTube.

For more photos, visit our Dartmouth HELP Collection on Flickr.

By Kathryn LoConte

Students from Dartmouth Humanitarian Engineering Leadership Projects (HELP) Worldwide and Dartmouth Engineers Without Borders (EWB) have been working to improve living conditions in Kenya and Rwanda. Here’s an update on their projects:

Dartmouth engineers and community member work together on the micro-hydropowered generator.

Micro-Hydropower Turbine:
Over the next two to three years, students will install a micro-hydropower turbine in the water-rich Banda Village in southwestern Rwanda. The 10kW system is being designed for optimum efficiency, cost, and ease of maintenance.

“One of the driving forces behind the Rwanda project is to make a whole system that can be designed and manufactured locally,” says 2007-08 HELP/EWB president Benjamin Koons ’08. “We’re trying to back away from the standard development model where foreign-aid industries bring in first-world components. If you bring a solar panel from Japan and a pump from Germany into a rural village in sub-Saharan Africa, it’ll work great until a fuse blows. Then you’ve got $30,000 of equipment that’s sitting around gathering dust.”

An overall goal, Koons explains, is to transfer the knowledge of how to repair and sustain the turbine to the community. “If the product is successful, then the knowledge can spread naturally through the framework,” he says.

Regional components include modified bike bearings, car alternators adapted as generators, and pipe sections that will be used as buckets for the turbine. “By using locally available materials, we’re cutting the kilowatt cost by a factor of 10, which is fairly ambitious,” says Koons.­

Biogas System:
In the summer of 2007, three students traveled to a health clinic in Bisate, Rwanda, to implement a biogas digester system. The project aimed to address contamination and energy issues by converting human waste into sanitized fertilizer and clean-burning fuel.

“The biogas project was a relatively low-cost, low-tech solution,” Koons says. “Instead of human waste contaminating ground water by leaching through the soil, it goes into the anaerobic digester, which is essentially a capped concrete form that contains the waste and keeps it oxygen free. When it decomposes in the absence of oxygen, you get methane, CO2, and trace elements of sulfur — which turns the waste into a great fuel source.”

Koons traveled back to Bisate in the winter of 2008 to review project results. “The sanitation system has greatly improved the clinic,” he says. “To have clean toilets that aren’t contaminating ground water is a pretty obvious improvement.”

Water Sanitation Project:

A LITTLE HELP FROM THEIR FRIENDS: Nick Edwards ’10 and community members lay pipes for distributing clean water in Nyamilu, Kenya. Photo courtesy of HELP/EWB

For years, Dartmouth engineers have helped improve living conditions in the village of Nyamilu, Kenya. Students installed a solar-powered water pump in 2005 and a gravity-fed water distribution system in 2007. The finished project incorporates a 30,000-liter tank and 6,000 meters of pipe that run a radius of two kilometers around the well. The distribution system brings water to 12 taps serving the primary school, church, town center, and other population clusters, meeting the drinking-water needs of 2,000 people.

Unable to travel to Kenya this summer because of violence in the area, HELP engineers plan to return as soon as possible. Meanwhile, they are maintaining contact with Nyamilu officials to ensure that clean water keeps flowing.

— Kathryn LoConte is assistant editor at Dartmouth Engineer.

For more photos, visit our Dartmouth HELP collection on Flickr.

MOUNTAIN HIGH: Michael Bolger Th'05 traveled to Nepal for HELP. Photograph courtesy of Michael Bolger

By Kathryn LoConte

The organization that aims to change the world one village at a time has undergone its own change. Dartmouth Engineers Without Borders (EWB) has broadened into “Humanitarian Engineering Leadership Projects worldwide” (HELP).

The new organization plans to conduct multiple humanitarian engineering service projects each year, according to its president, Michael Bolger Th’05, an M.E.M. candidate. “Thayer School students realize that they have the knowledge, means, and resources to provide people in need with valuable technical assistance,” he says.

J.J. Johnson ’06, an M.E.M. candidate who is one of HELP’s project managers, explains that “flexibility and independence are the two major advantages of this change — and we still have access to the EWB network.”

“We’re creating our own model,” adds Jeffrey Spielberg ’10, the HELP’s fundraising coordinator. “We can send our own technical advisors to projects, and we have more freedom.”

EWB/HELP is supporting four projects this year. This spring Bolger conducted a feasibility study of energy usage and storage at a micro-hydropower facility in a remote village in Nepal. This summer EWB/HELP members will complete the clean water distribution system installed at Nyamilu, Kenya, in 2005. Another clean water project, led by Spielberg, will get underway in Kipingi, Kenya, this summer, with completion scheduled for 2008. And in a renewable energy project at a health care clinic in Biasata, Rwanda, a team led by Johnson will implement a biogas anaerobic digestion system that will convert human and animal waste to methane fuel for cooking stoves.

-Kathryn LoConte is assistant editor at Dartmouth Engineer

For more photos, visit our Dartmouth HELP collection on Flickr.