Our primary concern is to construct an energy source that is not dependent on firewood. We have considered energy through sustainable sources as water, sunlight and wind and decided that solar energy is our best option. How and why will be discussed in the paragraph on solar power.
As said in the problem statement there was one productive lemongrass still in Valaramkunnu before the project began. This method is all but efficient. It takes 90 minutes to distillate180 kilogram of lemongrass. A batch this weight produces 200 to 250 millilitre of lemongrass oil. The head of the project is dr. Udaya; a professor at Amrita University with a PhD in chemical engineering. He has performed several tests concerning distillation with a simple kettle setup in his kitchen. During these tests he extracted 0.7 ml of oil from just 100 grams of lemongrass. If the same efficiency would be reached with the 180kg batch this would lead to a 1260 ml of oil. This efficiency compared to the current one would lead to a production that is up to 5 or 6 times as high. The first target of the prototype is to reach at least this – or even a better – efficiency.
After increasing the efficiency of the distillation unit we want to target the use of the agricultural land. At the moment there are only four acres that are being cultivated with lemongrass. The existing still can continuously distillate lemongrass. Seen the fact there are no records of the production, there is no knowledge on how much grass they use exactly. It makes it hard to determine the amount of lemongrass that four acres of land produces. We are going to investigate this matter and try to come up with some exact figures. There are 23 available acres in the village that are all well suited for lemongrass cultivation. Logic dictates the efficiency here can increase with roughly 500%. We are going to calculate the optimal production of lemongrass. This will determine how many stills are necessary in the future to make full use of the lands capacity.
Combining these two factors you get an efficiency that is 25 times larger than it is now. This is a very optimistic view but even if a multiplication of 15 would be reached, it would be an outstanding result.
Another part of the testing phase is reaching the very best quality oil. Currently the quality of the oil is average to bad because of the old setup used to distillate. Corrosion of the still causes the oil to decline in quality.
The main targets of the prototype are reaching the maximum efficiency and producing the best quality. When we have successfully discovered how to reach these targets, there must be built more distillation units. The amount of distillation units that are needed depends on the potential of the production of the grass. The last target is to discover the potential of the agricultural land and make full use of this.