Hi! We are Sam van Bekkum, Pepijn van Seters and Yin Fei van Mackelenberg. Pepijn and Sam are both studying Mechanical engineering and Yin Fei is studying architecture. For the minor international entrepreneurship and development we are able to work abroad to develop technical solutions for a complex challenge. This should provide a long term solution.
The challenge we are trying to tackle is reducing post-harvest losses for small farmers in Ghana. The post-harvest loss of vegetables is estimated to be between 30-50%. One of the problems is preserving the produce after harvest. A technical solution for this is to build a zero-energy cooling chamber, this is a cool storing place to keep vegetables fresh for a longer period of time. It works with the principle of evaporative cooling, this increases the humidity and decreases the temperature and extends crop life by more than a week!
Another solution is to use a solar dryer, with this technique solar energy is used to dry fruits, vegetables and crops for preservation. Together with four students from the Wenchi Agricultural College we will work on this project to ensure it is feasible and achievable. The students will work with these techniques during their time at the college and hopefully implement this in their work later.
This project is part of the ACHI project, an initiative from the Green Village who tries to boost agricultural practices in Ghana by offering practical training and sustainable tools.
Together with students 4 sustainability we are able to built the Cooling Chamber and the solar dryer, and reduce the post-harvest losses in Ghana!
