Archive for the ‘Winner’ category

I would like to nominate Big Belly Solar and Olin alum Jeff Satwicz ‘06 for the award. Jeff, along with classmate Bret Richmond and Babson MBAs Alexander Perera and James Poss, founded this company, whose flagship product, the eco-friendly Big Belly Solar Trash Compactor, is revolutionizing the processing of trash in cities around the globe. The Big Belly uses solar power to compact trash in high traffic areas, such as parks and city streets, eliminating the need for frequent pick ups. According to the company’s website, BigBelly can operate for a week on the equivalent energy it takes to make a pot of coffee. For its combination of economic and environmental advantages, and contributions to sustainable living, I nominate Jeff and his colleagues at Big Belly Solar for the Extraordinary Stories Student Award.

In 2008, MIT’s SENSEable City Lab began exploring how small amounts of technology could improve the cycling experience and ultimately tackle the transportation problems that cities face.
The Copenhagen Wheel is a new emblem for sustainable urban mobility. Smart, responsive and elegant, it transforms ordinary bicycles quickly into hybrid e-bikes that allow cyclists to capture the energy dissipated while cycling and braking and save it for when they need a bit of a boost. The wheel also functions as a mobile sensing unit, mapping pollution levels, traffic congestion, and road conditions in real-time.

Controlled through your smart phone, the Copenhagen Wheel becomes a natural extension of a rider’s everyday life. Cyclists can use their phone to unlock and lock their bike, change gears and select how much the motor is assisting them.
Meanwhile, the wheel’s sensing unit is also capturing a cyclist’s effort level and information about their surroundings, including road conditions, carbon monoxide, NOx, noise, ambient temperature and relative humidity. Through accessing this data through their phone or the web cyclists can use it to plan healthier bike routes, to achieve their exercise goals or to meet up with friends on the go.
Lastly, cyclists can choose share their data with friends, or with their city – anonymously if they wish – thereby contributing to a fine-grained database of environmental information from which we can all benefit.
The Copenhagen Wheel was presented at the COP15 United Nations Climate Conference in 2009. It is currently in its third prototyping phase and will go commercial in 12 months, cost $500/wheel.

The Leveraged Freedom Chair (LFC) is a wheelchair designed to go anywhere. Such a product is in dire need, as 14 million people who need a wheelchair in the developing world live in rural areas where rough roads and muddy walking paths provide the only connections to community, education, and income. The LFC’s lever drivetrain enables its user to travel 10-20% faster on pavement than a conventional wheelchair and off-road, it’s like no other mobility aid available. The user effectively changes gears by simply moving her hands on the levers; grasping high on the levers increases the mechanical advantage while grasping low increases speed. All moving parts on the LFC are made from bicycle components, making the chair manufacturable and repairable anywhere in the developing world.

A recent trial in East Africa confirmed that the LFC is more capable off road than any other mobility aid, and that people with disabilities from many demographics can produce more power with less exertion using the lever drivetrain. Under a $50,000 grant from the Inter-American Development Bank, the next generation LFC will be developed, prototyped, and trialed in Guatemala starting in the spring of 2010. The LFC was a winner in the 2008 MIT IDEAS competition, won first place in the 2009 ASME IDETC Graduate Student Mechanism Design Competition, and is in the process of being patented.

We are the Robo Rebels, a group of eight graders competing in First Lego League. Our research project was awarded the Innovative Solution Award at the 2010 Minnesota FLL State tournament. We also received an Innovative Solution second place award at the 2008 HTK FLL International Open as sixth graders for our auto-dimmer switch based on a Mindstorms light sensor.
This year we stumped the judges during the question and answer session and still had three minutes remaining. The judges were impressed with the level of our research and ran out of questions for our team.
We researched using algae and a Low Nitrogen Oxide Filter to filter carbon dioxide and particulate matter out of school bus exhaust. We call our invention the Algae Tube Filtration System – ATFS. Our invention fulfills NAE Grand Challenge criteria of Sustainability and Health by cleaning exhaust and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Dr. Min from the University of Minnesota found our concept to be quite feasible.
Our design is based on algae consuming carbon dioxide out of the environment through photosynthesis. The AFTS can theoretically remove 30-50% out of school bus exhaust. We chose to use the synechococcus strain of hot springs algae, because these algae can stay alive in temperatures of up to 162 degrees Fahrenheit.
The algae tube is located on the back of the bus, running up the side. A one-way valve keeps the water from flowing toward the engine. It carries 20 pounds of algae in 3 gallons of water.

Picture a community of 2,000 people, living on a landfill site where 3,000 tons of garbage is dumped everyday. To make a living, they sift through the garbage searching for recyclables. Their homes are shanty houses made out of scrap material and their children play around on heaps of trash: this is Kachra Kundi in Karachi Pakistan, a typical example of landfill slums developing on the outskirts of unsustainably exploding mega-cities across the developing world.

While the current situation is unacceptable, it would be a mistake to dismiss these communities as sorry anomalies that simply need to be relocated: in fact government attempts to evict the communities are usually unsuccessful and lead to violence. The continued presence of these communities, despite the harsh working and living conditions, reflects the fact that there is a dead-end in the current linear production model. There is incremental value to be salvaged from the unsustainable heaps of unprocessed trash being produced by cities like Karachi all over the world.

However, this value can be salvaged in safer and much more efficient ways and at the same time, the process can be fine-tuned to introduce optimal social and monetary value into landfill communities. This is the premise of em[POWER] Energy, a student-run social enterprise that focuses on developing community-owned and operated waste-to-energy businesses in the developing world.

At the heart of em[POWER]’s model lies simple biogas technology that has been in use for centuries: the organic content in the waste, which is currently just being burned away, can be used as an input into a biodigestion process that produces methane as the final product. This methane then runs a small electricity generator that powers up the community’s social amenities like the school and health clinic, and also forms the nucleus for a host of value-added, community-owned businesses that derive heavily on the by-products of the process.