Earth Enable
Dirt floors make children sick, and 1.4 billion people live and sleep on a dirt floor. These floors harbor parasites, bacteria, and pathogens that children across rural Africa are constantly exposed to inside their homes. Replacing a dirt floor with a concrete floor reduces diarrhea by 49% and parasitic infections by 78%, but concrete is both environmentally destructive and unaffordable to the world’s poor.
Earth Enable is a Research & Development partnership and addresses this problem by installing sustainable and affordable earthen floors that have 90% fewer carbon emissions than concrete, and are also a third of the price of concrete. These floors are made of compacted earthen material (a fine sand and clay layer is troweled onto a compacted rocky soil that also has lots of clay content), and sealed with a proprietary linseed-oil based varnish that turns into a resin when dry (see process below). While our product has found a huge market of families who are eager to upgrade their homes, we have significant challenges that we are eager to partner with teams of students to address!
There are four subjects students can contribute to in the minor:
- Resin Hardness
- Resin Curing Time
- Floor Color
- Stabilization of the floor
Research activities: Combination of desktop research and experiments
Level: Minor research
How you will be supervised: A coach and experts from Earth Enable will coach you and collaborate with you to developing the results and your professional skills required for this project.
Prerequisites: Chemistry, Engineering, interest in sustainability, interest in biobased materials
Partners: EarthEnable
Client: Gayatri Datar
More information and contact: Joost Vette
