Efficient grain processor destined for Africa — and Mars
Efficient grain processor destined for Africa — and Mars
Magazine Section: | Change The World |
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College or School: | CoE |
Article Type: | Article |
“NASA wanted a way to process food on Mars because it is so expensive to ship food there, something like $200,000 per kilogram,” says Martin Okos, professor of agricultural and biological engineering and one of the project’s leaders. This led to the development of an extruder — a piece of equipment that uses friction to heat and cook soybeans (in this case), and separates oil from the beans. When the soy material is pushed through the extruder, it creates a rope-like substance that can be dried to make flour or combined with other products to make pastas and snacks.
But, along the way, the technology transformed into more.
After working on the NASA prototype, Okos and graduate student Amudhan Ponrajan modified the extruder to work with other types of grains — including pearl millet, teff, corn, rice, wheat, sorghum, chickpeas and lentils — many of which are more widely grown in developing countries. The modifications were required because different grains require different levels of friction to cook the product.
“You want to make sure you’re cooking the product, but at the same time you want to make sure you’re not burning the product,” Ponrajan says. “There are formulations now for grains grown in Ethiopia, Ghana and Pakistan.”
And when those grains are pushed through the extruder, form the rope-like substance and are dried, they can be mixed with water, which forms an instant porridge.
This is significant because those grains are often milled in traditional African porridges, but they are labor-intensive. A crew of 10 women in Niger can make 30 kilograms of couscous in a day using current methods. But the extruder, with the same crew, could make 300 kilograms a day.
It brings down price, too. In urban areas, consumers are demanding more convenient foods than labor-intensive couscous, among others, but imported goods are expensive. The modified extruder for Africa was designed to be relatively inexpensive. Large-scale extruders in U.S. production facilities today cost up to $200,000 and can process hundreds of kilograms per hour. The Purdue-modified extruder can produce 35 kilograms per hour, but it only costs $20,000.
What follows is that the lower prices improve the lives of entrepreneurs. “The processors have a big demand for these products, but they cannot meet the demand,” says Moustapha Moussa, a Purdue doctoral student in food science who is one of the leaders of the effort to introduce this technology to African markets. “With this equipment, we think it is going to scale up that production significantly. The product will be available for consumers who need it, and for the producers who have more efficiency to meet the demand.”
More market research is needed, and researchers are working to identify formulations that will allow the extruder to be used with even more grains. The device meant to feed astronauts on years-long journeys to Mars may one day set off into space, but its impact will likely be felt on Earth much sooner.
“The overarching goal is to improve markets for local farmers growing traditional grains and meeting the changing demands of consumers,” Bruce Hamaker, distinguished professor of food science at Purdue, says. “This has the potential to improve the lives of entrepreneurs and expand the market for healthy cereal grains.”
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