By Ebele Orakpo

Nigeria’s hope of being counted among the technologically advanced nations, is gradually taking shape as her researchers in every field are coming up with inventions and innovations geared towards solving local problems. Little drops, they say, make a mighty ocean, and practice makes perfect.

It is generally acknowledged that the hardest part of a project is the beginning, once the foundation has been laid, it is easier to build upon it. Engineer Lanre Tairu of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Yaba College of Technology, Lagos, is the head of the Refrigeration and Air-conditioning section.

He has supervised a number of students in his department and they have come up with many products including a mini cold room and ice block-making machine. He spoke with Vanguard Learning in his office on these two products.

Excerpts:

*Ice block-making machine

Mini cold room:

According to Tairu, this was one of the projects by his students. Although the cold room is not a new technology, but they wanted a situation where the local environment is taken into consideration in making the cold room.

Said he; “The cold room project was embarked upon because we wanted to use our own environmental considerations to design a cold room which can be used for preserving foodstuff like poultry, fish etc.

Our mini cold room is fitted with temperature regulator so that the operator can manipulate the temperature. For instance, if you want it on minus 4 degree Celsius, you put it there and if you want it on -10 degree Celsius, you can adjust it.”

Cost:

“I supervised the students who constructed it. They did it with about N130,000 because the project initially was to cost about N200,000 but I did not want the students to spend that much so we had to reduce the capacity of the cold room because if we were to go by the initial size, then we would have to increase the capacity of the compressor and other components. In the Department of Mechanical Engineering, we already have a standard amount that students could spend on a project. This was a group project carried out by about five students so they shared the cost,” he said.

Ice block-making machine:

Tairu said they have two types of ice block-making machine.

“What we tried to do was to meet the local requirement because the normal ice block machine that we have has the problem of brine (salt solution) used as refrigerant, so we needed to do away with it. The students designed the one that is like a deep freezer but has partitions that you can just buy cellophane bags, put your water and place them in the machine and within three-four hours, you get your ice for commercial use.

“We use empty plastic bottles so that when you fill the bottles, you just place them in the slots.

Once they are frozen, you remove them,” he said, adding; “we are still working on one that the layman can easily use.”