Solar Dehydrating Temple Flowers to make Handmade Paper
Author : Mahi Agarwal
City Montessori School, Cambridge Section, Gomti-Nagar Extension, Lucknow
Abstract
Flowers from temples are dumped in rivers and cause a lot of water and land pollution. Instead, they can be utilised to make useful products such as recycled paper. The flowers can be used as a raw material by dehydrating them. To aid the process of dehydrating the flowers, a solar powered dehydrator is discussed in this study, harnessing the heat availability in the city of Lucknow. Also, to make the project more sustainable, the study concentrates on three models made using easily available materials such as CDs and home aluminium foil and tests their comparative efficiency.
The objective of the study is to propose a plan to utilise flowers from temples and use them to make paper by testing certain efficiency-defining variables in three models of solar dehydrators.
The methods followed in the study are constructing the solar-dehydrator prototypes and measuring and recording data sets for each model. Using the dehydrated flowers as raw material, handmade paper is manufactured at the Army paper-mill in Lucknow.
After analysing the data, it was found that the solar dehydrator made with old CDs showed least efficiency, while the models made with aluminium foil interior and black interior performed much better. The flowers provided a good substitute for raw materials in handmade paper manufacturing.
Finally, it was concluded that using flowers from temples as raw material can significantly improve the conditions of flower pollution and using a solar-dehydrator as an intermediate step can aid the process of making the product.