A team of students from the department of electrical and electronic engineering of Independent University, Bangladesh won Silver Award in the Efficiency for Access Design Challenge 2023-24, UK for their solar-powered gear pump, designed to increase the efficiency of pumping water for irrigation.
The announcement was made on Tuesday during the grand finale of the competition, held virtually from the UK by the organisers, Efficiency for Access Coalition and Engineers without Borders UK. This remarkable result comes on the back of two consecutive Gold Awards, won by two other IUB EEE teams in 2022 and 2023 in the same competition.
The silver winning team comprised Celestine Gomes, Sayed Alam and Sabrine Islam. Their innovative project design, titled 鈥楧esign and Construction of Solar-powered Gear Pump鈥�, promises to increase water flow rates and reduce energy consumption compared to conventional pumps, making it a sustainable option for irrigation and fluid transfer in remote areas with limited access to conventional power sources.
Three other teams of EEE students from IUB competed in the competition. Of them, three teams 鈥� the silver winning team and two other teams 鈥� received a total of $4,350 as grant from UK Aid and the IKEA Foundation to develop prototypes, which they eventually presented in the Grand Finale on Tuesday.
The three other IUB student projects were Solar-Powered Portable Oil Extractor, Solar-based Air Conditioner Using Variable Frequency Drives and Solar-Based Biogas Production in Anaerobic Digester with IoT. All four projects were developed at IUB鈥檚 Green Energy Research Centre and supervised by its director and EEE professor Khosru Mohammad Salim. Over the past eight months, the teams were trained, guided, and evaluated by IUB alum Siam Ibne Masud, research assistant under professor Khosru and member of the 2023 Gold Award winning team of the same challenge.