While the nation is concerned about the ever-increasing prices of fuel and demand for fossil fuels, N. Krishnan and his team find bio-diesel as a solution to the present crisis.
Their experimental work resulted in the production of bio-diesel samples from used cooking oil, which earned them a spot among the final set of teams competing at the TechTop 2012 — an annual national-level innovation contest for engineering students, which is being held at the Technopark here.
Executive vice-president of the Kerala State Council for Science, Technology and Environment V.N. Rajasekharan Pillai inaugurated the exhibition organised jointly by the Technopark Technology Business Incubator (T-TBI) and Degree Controls (India) here on Thursday.
The event saw the participation of 15 shortlisted teams from across the country.
Some projects aimed at providing technological solutions to a number of environmental problems were showcased. The plastic segregator using tribo-electrostatic separation, designed by the students of Amrita College of Engineering, Kollam, is one among them One of the team members Prahashith said the clean-up drive organised by the college turned to be an eye-opener on the difficulty of manual separation of plastics and waste material that was mandatory before taking up any kind of recycling activity. Mosquito trap and ‘Possible construction materials aiding sequestration of carbon dioxide gas to combat green house effects’ are other projects aimed at providing innovative answers to the issues such as mosquito menace and carbon dioxide pollution respectively.
ICT projects
The contest also has a few Information Communications Technology (ICT) projects aimed at empowering the differently-abled people and assisting older people.
The Portable Communication Aid For Hearing and Speech Impaired developed by the team from Sahardaya College of Engineering, Vadakara, is a two-way communication system in which the sign language shown by the hearing and aurally impaired can be converted into text and speech signals and vice versa.
The motion replicator robot, a system that can find its use in areas of communication and defence, developed by the team from Amal Jyothi College of Engineering, Kanjirapalli, replicates movements and gestures.
The Autocom: Automatic Brain Tumour Detector, designed by Sudhanshu Chekar and team from Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, uses a number of backend algorithms to detect tumours in MRI images at a faster rate and more accurately than the existing system.
The best projects selected after the final screening will be eligible for incubation support from T-TBI and the winner will take home a cash prize of Rs.1 lakh at an award ceremony to be held at 3.30 pm on Friday.
