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Hindustan Times Dec 13, 2009
Official Correspondent, Varanasi
English Translation
The Director of Institute of Technology, BHU has been awarded with prestigious Honorary Fellowship of Indian National Academy of Engineers (INAE). Apart from Prof. Upadhyay, Prof. N. K. Mukhopadhyay of Department of Metallurgical Engineering, IT also received this Award. These Awards will be given to Prof. Upadhyay and Prof. Mukhopadhyay on Dec 17 at a function arranged at Indira Gandhi Center for Atomic Research. Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu. Apart from this, Prof. Upadhyay has been awarded with C. V. Raman Award by IES Institutions, Bhopal. Prof. Upadhyay will receive this award on 16 Dec at a function being organized at Bhopal.
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Additional Link
Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE)
The Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE), founded in 1987, comprises India's most distinguished engineers, engineer-scientists and technologists covering the entire spectrum of engineering disciplines. The aims and objects of the Academy are to promote and advance the practice of engineering and technology, related sciences and disciplines and their applications to problems of national importance. INAE also encourages inventions, investigations, and research in pursuit of excellence in the field of "Engineering".
Its activities include programmes on issues of technology policy and overall development for the benefit of society, and promotes research projects, pilot studies, engineering education, fellowships, scholarships, awards and other benefactions.
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(Forwarded by Aviral Srivastava, 2nd yr Mechanical Engineering. Email: avirals1@hotmail.com)
Spardha ’10, the annual Sports fest of IT-BHU will be conducted during a 5-day period from 17th February to 21st February, 2010. After the stupendous success of Spardha ’09, the 2010 edition of Spardha will witness many firsts- most prominent being the Pro-Nite, a guaranteed crowd-puller, to be organized on the penultimate day (a day before the last day) of the fest. In a further attempt to blend entertainment with sporting contests, the inaugural ceremony is scheduled to be accompanied by a cultural program.
With the inclusion of new sports like kho-kho, Taekwondo and shooting, Spardha promises to touch greater heights this year. The highlight of the sports fest would be Clutch- the Counter-Strike tournament, widely tipped to be the largest of its kind in India, with prize money of Rs. 75,000 and growing! No wonder that over 2000 participants are expected from colleges all across the country!
The Spardha organizing team has begun working in earnest, with the girls also pitching in to ensure Spardha’s success. The countdown has begun with the launch of our website and our journal, the Spardha Chronicles. It is our hope that Spardha’10 will be able to replicate last year’s success and surpass the expectations of IT-BHU students.
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Spardha website
http://www.itbhu.ac.in/spardha/
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Introduction:
GE (General Electric) Challenge is held each year for past few years. We have two reports forwarded by Devender Maun, 3rd year Ceramics (Email: devender.maun@gmail.com) and Praharsh Sharma, 4th year Electronics (Email: praharshsharmaster@gmail.com).
We are pleased to state that two of our teams have found their place in preliminary round of GE Challenge, held at Bangalore in September 2009.
The first team was headed by Devender Singh Maun, 3rd year Ceramic Engineering. The Ceranical team proposed various energy saving devices and methods for rural area.
The second team was headed by Chandan Kumar, 3rd year student of Electrical Engineering. The Hybrosaver team proposed home energy solutions.
Last year also two of our teams (including one led by Chandan Kumar) won the competition
http://www.itbhuglobal.org/chronicle/archives/2008/11/index-campus-view.php#003882
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About GE competition
This year, there this year there was only one challenge. The teams have to design an innovative technological solution to the energy requirements of a community of moderate or medium size.
http://www.ge.com/jfwtc/edisonchallenge/index.html
Preliminary results
http://www.ge.com/jfwtc/edisonchallenge/prelimresults.html
GE EDISON CHALLENGE 2009: The Finalists in Alphabetical Order
These 18 teams participated in the Final Round held at John F Welch Technology Centre, Bangalore, India on 5th and 6th November 2009.
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http://www.ge.com/jfwtc/edisonchallenge/challenge.html
GE EDISON CHALLENGE 2009
The Edison Challenge is to design an innovative technological solution to the energy requirements of a community of moderate or medium size. The energy requirements for households and institutions in rural or semi-urban communities are diverse - electrical, thermal, mechanical, etc. There are also several natural and other resources that are available as potential sources of energy. These may be underutilized or, at times, overexploited. The crucial need is for solutions that demonstrate their practical feasibility and ability to scale up to the required levels.
Your task is to choose a rural community with about five hundred to one thousand houses near your home or college.
Your challenge is to understand the community’s energy requirements, investigate the available resources, and then propose a novel technology/methodology that is sustainable and cost-effective to improve the energy scenario in the community.
The baseline you are starting with and the improvement in energy availability you aim to achieve must be quantified clearly in your report.
You could look at newer sources of energy or novel energy conversion technology. You could also explore making current processes more efficient.
The solution should not only address the community’s current unmet needs but also improve the quality of life beyond what it currently is.
You should test and validate your solution or concept. In addition, you are expected to provide a plan for spending up to Rs 20,000 for further testing and validation.
This is a challenge India and all countries in the world see as critical today, and this is your chance to take it up! The links on this page can provide you useful information. You are, of course, encouraged and expected to go beyond and innovate on your own.
* Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, GoI (http://mnes.nic.in/)
* Ministry of Power, GoI (http://powermin.nic.in/)
* Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, GoI (www.mospi.nic.in)
* Rural Electrification Corporation Limited (http://recindia.nic.in/)
*Technopreneur Promotion Program (http://www.dsir.gov.in/tpdup/tepp/tepp.htm)
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Devender Sing Maun (3rd year Ceramic Engineering) and his Ceranical Team
Team name: Ceranical (cera + mech)
Team Members:
1) Ankit Dangi - 4th year Mechanical Engineering
2) Ankit Kumar Ladha - 3rd year Ceramic Engineering
3) Deepak Mahajan - 4th year Mechanical Engineering
4) Devender (Team Leader) - 3rd year Ceramics
(Devender Singh Maun)
The complete Ceranical Team solution is provided in the 91-page PDF report. Please click here.
GE_Edison_Ceranial_Solution.pdfSolution: (please refer complete report for comprehensive solution)
The problems of energy in villages (asked in problem statement) are many and diverse. We wanted to give a generalized technological solution. So, we decided to choose two villages in two different parts of the India. One-Ramna in Eastern Uttar Pradesh, considered being a very backward part of the country, and second is, Shahpur village in Central Haryana, considered to be relatively prosperous state of the country. We carried out survey along with discussion with villagers. We tried to analyze their lifestyle, their energy needs, existing solutions, inefficient processes, ineffective government policies and even tested some of our ideas.
Our ideas were proposed along with an appropriate planning so as to not only meet energy needs but to enhance their livelihood and to make village self sufficient. Solutions proposed were inspired and to some extent based on Gandhian Theory of “Model Village”. Gandhi ji proposed an ideal model of village, “My idea of Village Swaraj is that it is a complete republic, independent of its neighbors for its own vital wants and yet interdependent for many others in which dependence is a necessity. Thus every village's first concern will be to grow its own food crops and cotton for its cloth.”
We proposed solutions so as to make village self-sufficient yet villagers will be interdependent.
Problems that we addressed and proposed solution were:
a) ELECTRICITY:
Electricity is a major problem in rural village. Out of the two villages surveyed, Ramna does not even have a full grid system installed. In other village, Shahpur, electricity cuts are very frequent. Although Shahpur has grid system properly covering entire village but problems like villagers not paying bills, theft etc. are big subject of concern for government.
Our solution: We calculated cost of installing solar cells in Ramna village and concluded that installing solar cell will be relatively cheaper option than using hydroelectricity. We did some simulations to increase efficiency of solar cells. We then proposed one very innovative and novel solar cell.
b) COOKING
Villagers primarily use chulha for cooking, which is very inefficient use of biomass. Also shortage and increased prices of LPG are making it hard for them to switch on other alternates.
Our solution: Bio-gas is not a new concept to us but we investigated a lot about them in our solution including reasons behind their failure, and have come up with new enhanced plan.
C) EFFICIENT AND PRODUCTIVE FARMING:
We are proposing following solutions for efficient and productive farming:
a) For Irrigation: Major population in villages depends on agriculture and water for irrigation is one major requisite. Some of the villages, even at present, depend on rain water, others on pump. In our study we have found that pump consumes a lot of energy and costs a lot.
Our solution: We proposed an entirely new concept, and even tested it practically, which can work as pump. This pump will use solar energy and cost is also expected to be less.
We proposed a very innovative design, dependent on solar energy alone, which can significantly reduce cost of irrigation. Though initial design cannot replace pump completely but its design can be developed to replace conventional pumps.
b) Improving their lives:
“Vertical Farming” as such is no new concept but what we proposed a modified and customized design of vertical farming for a poor country like India. What has been proposed in vertical farming, so far, is very advance and futuristic but India is country where people are even hesitant to use solar cell so we just cannot apply same concept. So, we proposed a design of vertical farming customized according to the needs and available resources of villages in India.
D) WATER NEEDS:
We categorized this problem in two parts:
Drinking water: Clean drinking water is not available readily in villages like Ramna, which are in backward part of the company.
Our solution: We proposed the use of our water purifier, which we developed in second year.
E) Solar Refrigerator:
Problem: People in Ramna village are chiefly dependent on cultivation of vegetables. From survey, most of the villagers emphasized the point that they have to sell their collectively vegetables else vegetables will go bad and of no use.
Our solution:
We asked them what if there is one cold storage plant in your village itself and they replied that their income will just be doubled as they can sell their products whenever they want. So, we proposed an innovative solar refrigerator based on solar adsorption refrigeration cycle.
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Chandan Kumar (3rd year Electrical Engineering) and his Hybrosaver Team
Hubrosaver Team members:
 Chandan Kumar |  Smriti Agarwal |  Abhishek Modi |
a) Chandan Kumar (Team leader), Electrical 3rd year (Chandan8240000@gmail.com)
b) Smriti Agarwal, Electrical 3rd year (its.smriti5@gmail.com)
c) Abhishek Modi, Electronics 3rd year (lovableabhi.modi@gmail.com)
1. Unlike four different Challenges as in last year GE EDISON CHALLENEGE, this year there was only one challenge. We have to design an innovative technological solution to the energy requirements of a community of moderate or medium size
( http://www.ge.com/jfwtc/edisonchallenge/challenge.html )
2. We have got a lot of options like hybrid Lighting, PV plant etc. but these plans depend on the region in which it is to be implemented .So we decided to choose something very different .After a lot of searching and Goggling we decided on rural electrification by Hybrid Energy System. We began to search for a village with certain parameter in minds like it should be remote and main occupation of the villagers should be agriculture. After surveying the area we prepared the statistics for the electricity demand, availability of renewable resources, Load analysis etc. Finally we prepared the Plan for electrification of the village.
3. Advice for students: What you need is not castles in the sky but soil under your feet. We got so far on the basis of our idea. Second thing- yes, the topics was hard (somewhat boring) but then again they were the same for all of us. So just chill out and take the leap. It will work out on its own-that's what we did. Third thing –we think of lot of ideas daily but we let it go. My advice to you is that note down all of the stupid ideas (It may be a pahtta) as eventually all the big innovations come from them only.
4. Prize money: This year we are Getting seed money of Rs.20,000/- for proof of concept from TePP - The Techno Entrepreneurial Promotion Program (TEPP - http://www.dsir.gov.in/tpdup/tepp/tepp.htm ) wing of the Dept. of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), Govt. of India. Also we are reimbursed AC 2nd tier for our trip back and forth and also we will get to see their John F. Welch Technology Centre and from previous year experience I can say that it is going to be really overwhelming. Such industry exposure at the fortune 500 company (Ranked 12th in 2009) and voted "Best company to work for" will be more than fabulous. We will experience a company at the cutting edge of technology and research.
Our team constituted of four members:
ABSTRACT:
Energy is vital for sustaining life on earth and it expresses the economic stability of any nation. It is required to improve the standard of life by exploring and exploiting the resources available. The unsustainable use of these natural resources ultimately affects the environment. The energy problem is, thus, synonymous to ecological and economic problems.
The world energy demand has been increasing day by day. The conventional energy resources are exhaustible and limited in supply. Therefore, there is an urgent need to conserve what we have in hand and explore the wider use of alternative energy resources. The proper management of available energy resources is a must to meet the energy demand in a sustainable manner locally and globally.
The general scenario is that most of the energy is used by only half of the world population. The rest half make use of fuel wood, cattle dung cakes, agricultural wastes etc. These only satisfy their minor problems related to energy need. Their economic condition remains the same. Most of these populations live in the rural areas in developing countries. They need a solution that is economic and easy to handle for fulfilling their energy demand. Stand alone in the solution list is Hybrid Energy System (HES).
The proposed solution can be implemented in any rural areas where agriculture is the main occupation.
HES is meant to solve the problem of household electricity, cooking gas and agricultural activity requiring electricity. It will also help in improvement of standard of living in the region.
Hybrid Energy System generally integrates renewable energy sources with diesel/petrol powered generator to provide electric power where the electricity is either fed directly into the grid or to batteries for storage. The role of integrating renewable energy in a hybrid energy system is primarily to save diesel fuel and to provide the clean and nature friendly energy to all.
They are generally independent of large centralized electric grids and are used in rural remote areas. In these systems it is possible for the individual power sources to provide different percentages of the total load.
For systems employing clean renewable energy, high capital cost is an important barrier. However, we can produce green power by adding different renewable energy sources to diesel/petrol generator and battery, popularly called as hybrid energy system. This kind of system can optimize investment cost, fuel usage cost and also operation and maintenance costs. The most important aspects of hybrid energy system are to supply power to the customers in an economic way which can be easily accessed. The economics of hybrid energy system depends on three factors: the size of the individual component, the dispatch strategy and the availability of the types of renewable energy in the area.
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Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University
Varanasi 221005, UP