USF System President Judy Genshaft, USF Trustee Nancy Watkins and members of the media listen to USF Associate Professor of Engineering Daniel Yeh explain the functionalities of the NEWgenerator. Photo by Aimee Blodgett
TAMPA, Fla. (Oct. 6, 2015) – After more than a decade of development, a device created by USF Associate Professor of Engineering Daniel Yeh and his team of graduate students, will soon take the next step toward solving several serious issues facing countries around the world.
In their quest to help communities with a lack of sufficient sanitation, clean water, food and reliable energy, the team will ship their first NEWgenerator unit to India for field-testing later this month.
The NEWgenerator converts waste into Nutrient fertilizers, renewable Energy, and clean Water, providing a modular and self-sustaining machine that operates completely off-grid (no water, power or sewer system required).
Paul Sanberg, Senior VP for Research, Innovation & Economic Development, and Daniel Yeh with the NEWgenerator. Photo by Aimee Blodgett
In this next phase of the project, a field test unit will be shipped to a community in southern India. The USF team will install the unit and USF Civil & Environmental Engineering PhD candidate Robert Bair, the technical lead on the design and fabrication of the unit, will remain in India for about one year to operate, test and collect data on the NEWgenerator. He will develop design changes for the next version of the unit based on his findings. These design changes will likely lead to the commercialization of the NEWgenerator.
The project is funded by the Indian government and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. To date, USF has filed three patents on the NEWgenerator, with more expected in the future.
The USF group also earned $50,000 for winning the Cade Museum Prize in 2014.
(l-r) Sr. VP for Research, Innovation & Economic Development Paul Sanberg, USF Trustee Nancy Watkins, Graduate students Onur Ozcan, Robert Bair, Peter Zydek, Judian Duran, Jorge Calabria (kneeling), USF System President Judy Genshaft and USF Associate Professor of Engineering Daniel Yeh. Photo by Aimee Blodgett