The rural people of our country mainly depend on agriculture as India is an agrarian economy. Thus, there exists a huge mass of unemployed youth who are facing constraints to continue their existence. Rural youth can find self-employment opportunity by fabricating low-cost renewable energy technologies and energy efficient devices. So there are two simple renewable energy technologies and energy saving devices, i.e., evaporated cooler and insulated food cabinet that can be used for the same. Efficient energy use, sometimes simply called energy efficiency, is the goal to reduce the amount of energy required to provide products and services. There are many motivations to improve energy efficiency. Reducing energy use reduces energy costs and may result in a financial cost saving to consumers if the energy savings offset any additional costs of implementing an energy efficient technology.
Energy saving devices would surely boost rural entrepreneurship by effectively saving energy and that is the need of the hour today. Two of such energy saving devices are given below:
· Evaporated Cooler
The cooler operates on the principle of evaporative cooling. Thus the system decreases the temperature and increases the relative humidity in the interior of the cooler.
ü The door, back wall, top and bottom sides of the cooler box are fabricated by GI sheet with 12 mm thick ply board outside layer used as insulation while two sides of the cooler box are made of layers of jute.
ü Water from overhead PVC water tank keeps both side jute pads wet by a drip system through perforated PVC pipes.
ü The system uses a small fan of 22 W power, which draws air through jute pads.
ü When suction fan draws warm air from outside through the wetted pads, water evaporates and draws energy from surroundings which produce considerable cooling effect and increases humidity inside of storage chamber.
ü The cost of fabrication of prototype is Rs.2,000.
· Insulated Food Cabinet
The food cabinet consists of two one-side open aluminium inner boxes kept inside of a one side open GI outer box and two-inch thick glass wool insulation is provided in between the gap of two boxes in all sides and bottom. Lower inner box is supported at its bottom by two wooden blocks. Door is provided at the open side of the inner boxes.
Each bottom pot is filled with 2 l of hot water and each top pot is filled with 1.5 l of hot water and then pot lids are closed. Cabinet doors are closed after placing pots inside. Temperature of the hot water is measured 98°C during filling (Ambient temperature- 28°C). After six hours all pots are taken out and temperature was found 45° C to 43°C in various pots.