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.
The problem: dirt floors.
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!
The Earth Enable innovation: sustainable and affordable earthen floors.
The installation process of earthen floors.
There are four subjects students can contribute to in the minor:
- 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
Dirt floors make children across rural Africa sick, and 1.4 billion people live and sleep on a dirt floor. Replacing a dirt floor with a concrete floor reduces diarrhea and parasitic infections, 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 fewer carbon emissions than concrete, and are also a third of the price of concrete. 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! You can work on subjects like: floor color, resin curing, resin hardness, and stabilization of the floor.
- Startdatum
- februari 1, 2019
- Einddatum
- juni 30, 2019
Subprojecten
| Project | Startdatum | Einddatum | Samenvatting |
|---|
| Floor Color | 1 februari 2019 | 30 juni 2019 | Experimenting with ways to color the varnish using environmentally sustainable materials or making more environmentally sustainable floor paints. |
| Resin Curing Time | 1 februari 2019 | 30 juni 2019 | Trying to accelerate the curing time of our varnish through adding additional chemicals, experimenting with the base oil or experimenting with our manufacturing process. |
| Resin Hardness | 1 februari 2019 | 30 juni 2019 | Improve the hardness of the floor’s varnish layer through experimenting with adding hardeners and cross-linkers, different base oils, or a different manufacturing process. |
| Stabilization of the floor | 1 februari 2019 | 30 juni 2019 | Researching and experimenting with various natural and affordable materials that will improve the stability of the backfill and/or laterite layers of the floors. |
