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UWI TODAY
– SUNDAY 14 MAY, 2017
MECHANICAL AND MANUFACTURING ENGINEERING EXHIBITION
Because Trinidad and Tobago’s economy
has been and
continues to be heavily dependent on the petroleum
industry, there is an urgent call for diversification.
In terms of global trade for petroleum products, new
sources have led to over-production in the last three years
and this has forced the price of oil and gas downwards.
From a high of over $100 per barrel it went down to
around $40 a barrel. It is now rising and fluctuating around
$50 per barrel.
These changes can be destabilizing at many levels and
we have to look at developing non-oil sectors urgently,
particularly in the areas of manufacturing, tourism and
agriculture.
The UWI can be a major catalyst in diversification
through our teaching and outreach programmes.
MANUFACTURING
In the early 1960s, there was an attempt to stimulate
manufacturing by setting up industrial estates and
encouraging the establishment of “screwdriver” industries
(assembly-type).
Fifty years hence, many of those industries have
either collapsed or are not sustainable because they could
not respond to external factors, the major one being the
inability to compete in a global free trade scenario.
In consultation with our stakeholders in
manufacturing, we have set up MSc Degree programmes
in Production and Manufacturing Engineering, with the
primary focus of making companies more competitive.
For the Open Day exhibition, students have worked on
designing and building equipment in the following areas:
Motion and Dynamics, Agriculture and Agro-Processing,
Automotive Engineering, Environmental Engineering,
Controls and Automation, Thermodynamics and Heat
Transfer, Solar and Other Renewable Energy Sources,
Medical Engineering and Manufacturing with Emphasis
on CNC and Robotic Engineering. In their final year, the
students will undertake to solve an engineering problem
by designing and building a piece of equipment in one of
these areas.
Design. Build. Break Free.
B Y R O D N E Y H A R N A R I N E
Mr. Harnarine is a development engineer at the Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, at The UWI, St. Augustine.
As part of the exhibition, demonstrations of 3D
Printing and CNC Machining will be set up in the CNC
lab.
AGRICULTURE
Trinidad always had an agricultural economy based
on plantations producing cocoa and coffee, sugar, coconuts
and rice, but since the 1960s there has been a steady
decline and many farmers found it difficult to survive in a
competitive commodity market. More so, there has been a
steady decline in the availability of labour for agricultural
production.
The Faculty of Engineering has been designing and
building equipment that adds value to agricultural produce
while simultaneously facilitating storage, especially when
produce is seasonal.
In the last 10 years we have designed and built
equipment to process coconuts, both green and dry;
cassava; plantain; sweet potato; cocoa; dasheen; pigeon
peas, and other crops.
Cocoa is a special case; we produce high-grade cocoa
and export it to developed countries where buyers convert
it to high-grade chocolate attracting premium prices on
international markets. The Faculty is trying to bridge this
gap in the production of high-grade chocolate.
The Faculty of Agriculture has teamed up with the
Faculty of Engineering and we have been able to build
several pieces of equipment for the cocoa production
industry.
We were able to build a successful cocoa pod splitter
and to the best of my knowledge this is a first in the world.
Most of the equipment has commercial potential.
COCOA POD SPLITTER:
We have developed a machine
to split the cocoa pod so that the beans can be removed
without any injury to the seeds. When fully operational,
this machine will separate the seeds from the pod with a
minimum of effort. The machine is portable and can be
transported to the field.
CASSAVA PEELER:
Composite flour consists of starches
up to 20% that is non-wheat. This is healthier and more
nutritious than pure wheat flour. Cassava, breadfruit, and
sweet potato are grown locally and are good candidates for
composite flour. We have built a cassava peeler that will
remove the skin mechanically.
BREADFRUIT PEELER:
Breadfruit is a starch rich in
nutrition and fibre. To facilitate the processing we have
built a breadfruit peeler that will mechanically remove the
outer skin.
FISH SCALER:
Because of the high price of fish,
particularly during the Easter period, the production of
fresh water fish has been on the increase and in order to
process the fish for the retail trade, a fish de-scaler was
built. This device will de-scale a fish in seconds.
COCONUT WATER EXTRACTOR:
A coconut water
extractor was built for persons selling coconut water to
the public. It has the capability to drain the coconut water
into a sterilized container and then cut the shell into three
parts for those who may want to eat the coconut jelly. With
proper sterilization of package and tools, a shelf life of 10
days can be realized without refrigeration or cold chain.
AUTOMATIC COCONUT GRATER:
This is a useful
piece of equipment to have in the kitchen to grate dried
coconut meat to be used in cooking or for the production
of coconut oil.
Cocoa bean grinder.
From the 2016 exhibition: Oranges peeled with zest.
Coconut water extractor.
The Faculty of Engineering will be holding its fourth annual
conference and exhibition on May 25 at the St. Augustine
Campus. The exhibition will be open from 8am to 5pm at
the JFK Auditorium and the conference will be on from
9-11.30am at Lecture Theatre 1, Chemical Engineering Block.
For more information
, please contact the Mechanical
and Manufacturing Engineering Department or
Rodney
Harnarine
at
