Electric Cooking Pot
Elly Halladay, Kate Bilse,
Grace Gius, & Anh Lee
We aim to improve the present diode-heated cookpot prototype developed by our collaborator Robert Van Buskirk. We want to further understand how diodes run current and from there create a prototype using less diodes that can easily heat up. Currently, we are in the process of experimenting with diodes on the cookpot and running different levels of current through the pot.
During this ten week quarter, we plan on further developing Robert Van Buskirk's prototype. Specifically, we want to improve the technology to provide better insulation and reduce carbon emissions.
We are excited to work with Robert and receive his updates on how the project is being implemented currently in Malawi.
Their project is dedicated to the idea of affordably and sustainably providing solar electricity to the poorest rural households in Africa over the next 10-20 years. They consist of a small group of family and friends, along with a group of implementors and partners in Malawi. The principal organizers are Dr. Robert Van Buskirk and Dr. Bereket Lebassi Habtezion who met and began collaborating on technology and African development in the newly independent country of Eritrea, East Africa in the mid 1990's. The goal of their work is to have a large, positive impact on our world and measure our impact in therms of how it can improve lives of the most disadvantaged.
The current prototype contains diodes that can very easily overheat and break. We hope to solve this problem by creating a prototype that aims to prevent diode breakage and redistribute otherwise lost energy back into heating the pot. We also will try to find new ways to better insulate the pot to contribute to solving this problem.
This decision matrix features a decision we faced when being our project. We were deciding if we should create our first prototype on a bowl (similar to what we hope our final prototype will be on), if we should practice on a small aluminum cup, or if we should conduct more research before creating a physical prototype. Our criteria included the cost of building, the environmental impact, feasibility, time to build, and learning experience. We then ranked each option on a scale of 1-10 with 1 being the worst and 10 being the best. After completing this decision matrix we found that our best option would be to jump right into building a prototype on a bowl first as it would provide us with the most learning experience and had the best cost since we already had all the materials available.