The Auspicious eco-friendly little yellow-brown Van of Dayalbagh

In this world rapidly transforming into a global village, transportation is an important need and a bond for us social humans. This sector is also one of our biggest polluters. There is an ever-increasing number of vehicles on the road and continuously dangerous levels of pollutants in the air. In the US, 27% of their Greenhouse Gas emissions are from transportation.¹

This week our post is a story of ingenuity and innovation, a story of preservation of air quality while wasting nothing, a story about the

“Auspicious eco-friendly little yellow-brown Van of Dayalbagh”.

The post below is by Ms. Sumati Singh, a proud alumni of Dayalbagh Educational Institute (DEI) working for a leading market research agency – Nielsen, with inputs from Prof. Ajay Saxena, Head of Electrical Engineering Department at DEI.

Over to Ms. Sumati.
Anurag
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Ms. Sumati writes...

From the Internet to the Ultrasound, many amazing innovations are products of professors and students working together in great universities around the world. Academic isolation is replaced by linkages and collaboration of institutions, industry and society enabled by technology.

At Dayalbagh Educational Institute active learning takes place even outside the classrooms. Innovative learning environments include group learning and practical applications, with conducive infrastructure and technology to facilitate.

Dayalbagh ensures very high air quality for its residents and encourages use of alternative energy sources. The residential colony doesn’t allow regular vehicles inside its campus and the tree lined roads encourage you to walk or cycle. Residents who find it difficult to do both need alternatives to regular gasoline vehicles for their commute within the sprawling campus.

This presented a unique “local” opportunity for innovation.

Seeing both the local Dayalbagh needs and understanding the global trend on cleaner emissions, Dayalbagh Educational Institute took up the challenge of creating a solar augmented, battery operated vehicle for Dayalbagh residents, in a collaborative project between Department of Electrical Engineering and Automobile Engineering.

A diesel van, which had been used for auspicious cross-country tours, was taken up. The vehicle was getting old with increasing cost of maintenance, increasing fuel consumption and other safety issues.

The project team was led by Prof. Ajay Saxena and Prof. Bhagwan Das along with a very capable and dedicated team of faculty, students and local volunteers², to convert the diesel van into a Solar Electric Van.

While designing the converted vehicle, the team decided to retain the original look adding to cherished memories of the van’s yesteryears.

The van was converted into a Solar Electric Van by replacing the diesel engine with a 25 HP electric DC motor powered by a 96V, 400Ah battery bank. The van batteries are charged by Solar photo-voltaic modules during sunlight hours and through grid power during the night. Roof mounted solar panels of 1.2 kWP in the constrained rooftop. There is also a manual single axis sun tracking system to optimize solar energy received.

Every day the van consumes 20 units from the grid (night time charging) and 5-6 units of solar power.

To minimize re-build cost, the body parts of the van were not replaced by lighter weight parts as is a norm in converted vehicles. The weight of vehicle without motor/battery/engine adds up to 3000 kg! Add to it the weight of 20 HP, 96-volt DC Motor of 90 kg, and 16 batteries (6 volt each lead acid type) of 800 kg.

The design and conversion was done in-house in Dayalbagh Educational Institute including fabrication of parts. A thorough study of similar battery vehicles was conducted by the project team when they undertook the challenge.

Costing Rs. 1.6 Lacs, through regular maintenance the battery has lasted all these years. The total expenditure on conversion of the van was about Rs. 6 Lacs!

The seating capacity of the vehicle is 20+ passengers and it is regularly used to ferry Dayalbagh residents within the Colony, collecting a nominal charge of a few rupees and has an average earning of Rs. 400 per day (by the way, the idea is not to earn money on it).  The vehicle is operating since 2009 without any major fault. Faults, if any, are rectified by Dayalbagh Educational Institute team.

The van also becomes a practical guide for the students. This has fueled further innovation and the students have already converted two Maruti vans into battery operated systems. One of Maruti vans has 450-watt solar panels mounted on the roof!

This is just the beginning, the next automobile innovation being taken up is that of converting a Mahindra Scorpio into a hybrid vehicle! One which can run only on diesel, or only on battery or run on both the power systems at the same time.

In all these models, there will be regenerative braking, where the batteries are charged back during braking, thus conserving energy. The idea is also to mount flexible solar panels, on the roof top to augment through direct solar energy, while the vehicle is parked or moving!

Again, this will be a first of its kind. A retro fitting, not just a stop-start hybrid vehicle, but one that can be driven within a city on battery and can be powered by diesel on the highways alleviating distance concerns and keeping the battery costs and vehicle weight down!

Notes:

1. Sources of Greenhouse Gas Emissions: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions
2. The project team included Prof. Ajay Saxena, Prof. D. Bhagwan Das, Mr. Vijay Malhotra, Mr. Majer Singh, Mr. Ram Chand Gupta, Dr. G S S Babu, Mr. Surendra Pal, Mr. Gopi, Mr. Padam Das and Mr. Goverdhan Dayal