Freshmen honors engineering students Garret Gardenhire, Kevin Le and Matt Annis inherited a simple machine and a big idea: develop an inexpensive, efficient solar-powered food dehydrator to combat food insecurity in developing countries. The idea is not new – subsistence farmers spread wet grain on stone slabs to dry, but the grain is susceptible to mold, germination and theft. Other products on the grain-drying market tend towards high-cost, high-output systems that require both gas and electricity to operate.

The team’s prototype, nestled in a verdant field next to the biological engineering design studio north of campus, consists of a solar pyramid constructed from greenhouse plastic over black sheet metal, a duct, a drying container and “about 30 percent duct tape!” jokes Matt Annis, a civil engineering major. All that it needs to do the job is a sunny day.

Other engineering students designed and built the prototype last year – this team was tasked with proving that it worked and developing a business plan. Their project’s emphasis on teamwork and entrepreneurship is key to the new “Innovation Track,” which provides another option to the traditional research project required for honors freshman engineering students.

“About 80 percent of our graduates go out and work as engineers,” said team mentor Scott Osborn, an associate professor of biological and agricultural engineering who co-founded BlueInGreen, a water treatment company that has contributed more than $18 million to Arkansas’ economy. “The idea was, can we create a track that exposes them to what they do as engineers – inventing things and creating solutions for problems – that’s also entrepreneurial? I started my own company, and I wasn’t prepared at all. I talked with them about investors, who want to know not just does it work, but how can I make money from it. You have to think that through.”

“We started with proof of concept – we had to make sure it worked,” Annis said. The engineering behind the solar-powered food dehydrator is pretty simple: the sun heats up the sheet metal, which warms the air trapped between the metal and greenhouse plastic. The hot air rises into the pipe and then flows into the drying container filled with grain. “We were able to reduce moisture content in the grain from 25 to 30 percent down to 12 percent,” said Garret Gardenhire, an Honors College Fellow and a double major in biological and mechanical engineering. “We were also hitting about 60 percent efficiency, better than a solar panel, which has only 25 to 30 percent efficiency,” added Kevin Le, an Honors College Fellow majoring in industrial engineering.

Their prototype cost $500 to build; the final product, which would include a drying shed, would run $4,500 – far more than a subsistence farmer could afford. Their solution: market to philanthropic organizations such as the Gates Foundation or Heifer International.

“The Gates Foundation spends $400,000 on agricultural development each year, and Heifer has $30 million cash on hand,” said Annis, who spent Spring Break researching market data that would justify production. The team ultimately developed a two-phase business model. In phase one, they would sell 1,000 units priced at $7,500 each to a non-governmental organization. “That would establish a foothold, develop connections, and generate $3 million in profit that we could use for the next phase, the development of a second-generation product,” Annis said.

The team envisions solar panels on a shed as the next step. “They can store energy, so the system works on cloudy and sunny days,” Le said. “We also expect solar panels to improve in efficiency during the time we’re marketing the first product.”