Electrical engineering students Mr.Praveen Gothe, Mr.Jeevesh Jadhav, Mr. Harish Revankar, Mr. Ajay S Kalkamkar, Miss. Rachana Chougule and Miss. Vijayalaxmi Holechi of Jain College Of Engineering, Belagavi have participated and won a consolation prize of Rs. 30,000 in the National level Smart India Hackathon (SIH) 2018 – Hardware Edition, under the theme Waste Management at NIT Trichy held recently.
The Students have developed a prototype where the household kitchen waste is used to generate the Biogas as a replacement for regular LPG. The system has chopper unit and biodigester which are powered by solar energy. This system approximately generates sufficient amount of biogas which can be used to lit up a stove continuously for around 30-40 minutes with every 3kg waste. The system also includes single-axis solar tracking unit, to capture the maximum amount of solar energy by tracking the movement of the sun. Upon mass production, the system may cost about 20 thousand rupees and the payback period is estimated to be around 3 years.
SIH gave the platform, where the students, industry, and academia collaborate to turn the innovations into products. The prototype was rebuilt for the competition in just five days with the help of institute mentor Prof. Raghumanohar A. of Jain College of Engineering, Belagavi and also with the support of NIT mentors Dr. R. Anand, Dr. S. Vedraj and Mr. Dinesh Kumar. Industry mentors were Manjushree Tadvalkar and Jhumkee Iyengar. This was also their final year project guided by Dr. B. V. Madiggond.
Many Companies has shown interest in the prototype and are ready to work with the students to bring this as a product. The interview of the team will be aired soon on Doordarshan.