We headed to the NIF fablab again. Jaydeep went to Gandhinagar and Ahmedabad to get the required materials for the machine. Meanwhile the other group members continued reading more about banana waste utilisation, to see if there was any other way to make banana waste utilisation more lucrative for farmers. We looked at other machine designs. We saw entirely manual fibre separators also. This led to another discussion on possible machine designs. We thought that we could make an attachment to our machine that would help to reduce the effort required on the part of the labour.
Tarun read some research paper and came to know about the possible uses of banana fibres in cement block. So he tried various and new arrangements of fibres and also changed the consistency of the brick. The actual consistency is 3:2:1: where the 3 parts is gravel ,2 is the sand,1 part is cement and water is the rest part also the purity of water defines the strength of the block .He changed the consistency by changing the ratio from 3:2:1: to 2:2:1 in which the gravel part was decreased in the brick. He tried various arrangements like spiral, reinforced, tangled and layers structures. The results are awaited. Once the cement blocks are dried and ready, various testing will be done on the block/brick for the strength and durability and resistivity.
We came across another interesting possible use for banana waste: electricity. When banana stem decomposes, it produces citric acid which when connected between two cathodes can produce electricity. We decided to explore more about the topic when possible, and to check if this could be a feasible application.