Community Work: Hybrid Couscous Dryer

mardi 3 avril 2012

Introduction

This community work is a project done by three team members: Lina Fassi Fihri, Ouassim Ben Karim and I, under the supervision of Dr. Darhmaoui, associate professor and coordinator of the Learning Technologies Center at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane.

The project was dedicated to women working in Couscous Making in Cooperative Al Amal for medical herbs and Aromatics which is one of the associations located in Tagrigra, Ifrane region, Morocco.

This project is about helping these women in their daily activities with an easier and a user friendly apparatus that dries couscous grains and medicinal herbs using solar energy or gas (hybrid system).

Lina and Mohamed

In this blog, we will present :

Description of the association

System Design

System Implementation

Final product

Lina hosted in the cooperative

Cooperative Al Amal

The cooperative produces and sells traditional products to the customers of the region. They produce couscous in different flavors, Medical herbs and oil from medical herbs. For example, they produce oils of "La Rose" and "Lavande".

Medical Herbs: Thyme

Couscous products

Medical Oils

Women in the organization use simple and traditional ways of processing their products. They get together in the organization's location and work in a friendly group. Here are some pictures discribing the working environment, and the basic techniques used.

women processing couscous

"KASKASS"

"Kaskass" is used to cook semolina by water vapor in order to expand the shape of each individual grain.

Actually, the products are sold at lower prices, and the cooperative do not get the return of their hard work. Moreover, their work is exhaustive and takes longer to produce small amounts of couscous and herbs. The drying of the products is the critical part of the process and the workers used to expose couscous to the sun light on the roof.

In order, to help the women of the cooperative in making the drying process of couscous more efficient and less energy consuming, we came up with a project of a Hybrid drying system.

Hybrid Dryer Apparatus: Design

Our project is to produce a couscous dryer, which consists of a hybrid system (gas + solar), that this cooperative could use during the entire year and most importantly during the winter. The suggested design is as follows:

System Design

The suggested system is composed of three main parts: the solar, gas and drying room.

Solar part: it is the main goal of our project as it uses sun light to heat up the

products of the organization. It is totally solar energy based, and it is composed of simple and basic materials.

Gas part: this is the part that makes our system Hybrid. It is the alternative way for the cooperative to continue their work during extremely cold weather conditions. Also, it is built by simple ideas and basic materials.

Drying room: this is where the magic happens. This box contains a dozen shelves that can carry couscous or other products like medicinal herbs. The hot air in this room comes from either the gas or solar part depending on the temperature of the atmosphere.

Hybrid Drying Apparatus: Implementation

Our goal in the project is to make use of simple ideas and basic materials. However, the material has to be non-toxic in order to preserve the quality of the products.

The building process was difficult. Actually, we got a well experienced carpenter who helped in processing wood to build the different parts of the system. Here are some pictures describing the different phases of the implementation.