For generations, the babaçu (type of palm tree) coconut breakers (quebradeiras) in northeastern of Brazil have been working with artisanal methods to extract the almond and develop products such as oil, flour and soap. Young students from the family of some of these quebradeiras have been following this process for a long time, and they asked themselves: how to optimize the drying process of the fruit and increase the diversity of sale of these women, who are often responsible for the sustenance of their families?
Thus was born the BabaçuTech project, winner of Solve for Tomorrow Brazil. The group of students from the State Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Maranhão (IEMA) – Full Itaqui Bacanga Unit, in São Luís city, developed an automated solar oven that helps dry mesocarp, the fleshy part of the babassu coconut, which serves as a raw material for making flour for various culinary purposes.
“The project is born of pain and an opportunity. If you travel on the roads of the interior of Maranhão state, you see the coconut babassu’s mesocarp drying at the roadside for days, in a long process and that can go very wrong if it rains. Two of the young people, who have family coconut quebradeiras saw that and thought about how to optimize this process”, explains the mediator teacher Felipe Borges, who teaches robotics and coordinates the FabLab, an innovation space dedicated to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) within the school.
The idea of the solar furnace was the first that had the group of students in the third year of technical secondary school, the last one of compulsory schooling. The knowledge came directly from the Institute’s curriculum, which works on engineering, electrical and robotics skills, and work was divided among the group: while young women focused on the oven architecture, the only boy in the team worked on the automation of the prototype.
Listening to the quebradeiras to create the oven
The Design Thinking methodology guided all the stages of the BabaçuTech project, and qualified listening was the initial kick-start. The students had the opportunity to talk with a quebradeira’s leader, who told about the drying difficulties of mesocarp. To transform into flour, this part needs to remain three to four days in the sun, in a process that, besides being unhealthy, can be interrupted by rain, compromising production.
“Since the problem was that of drying, we ended up focusing even on the solar oven, which was an idea that could optimize the work of quebradeiras and be made with simple and cheap materials”, recalls the educator. “From the initial idea, we were thinking about several possibilities. How to ensure easy construction, how to make drying faster, and how to automate the process.”
The first version of the furnace consisted of a cardboard box lined with aluminum plates to capture sunlight. She was brought to the Cooperative Mixed Family Agriculture and Extractivism of Babaçu do Vale do Itapecuru (COMAVE) and the Association of Coconut Quebradeiras for a joint assembly, to understand what worked or not in the initial idea. Together, they discovered that the oven shortened drying time from four days to four hours.
During the mentorship of the Solve for Tomorrow program, students were reminded to consider the seasonality of Maranhão, which has six months of sunshine and six months of rain. This led the team to build a hybrid prototype: it works both on the basis of sunlight, but also has a closed version with clay, using coconut husks as biofuel.
Finally, it was important that the women did not have to stay near the oven waiting for the seeds to dry. “We installed a temperature sensor, which warns how long it takes the mesocarp to dry,” explains Borges. “Since most breaker associations have internet, we created an application based on this sensor that warns the cell phone when the mesocarp is dry. We also installed a sensor that alerts the removal of the oven from outdoor areas with a rain forecast”.
On the road for a new test for the solar oven
With the hybrid oven finished and automated, it was time to leave for the quebradeiras settlements and test the products. The young people and the teacher traveled hundreds of kilometers in the interior of the state, visiting quebradeiras in the cities of Anajatuba, Itapecuru Mirim and Chapadinha, and showing how to build and use the furnace.
“That was one of the big differentials of the project, right? What we do in the laboratory is innovation, but if it does not leave the walls of the school, if it does not change the reality of people who need it, it will not achieve its main goal”, emphasizes the teacher.
“And there I believe that reaching these quebradeiras, working in partnership with them, receiving feedback, listening, making improvements based on what they needed, was the great differential of BabaçuTech”, he adds.
For the teacher, this generation’s encounter with the most experienced breakers was well worth it. “There was this exchange of experience, everyone sitting on the floor, doing a workshop on a makeshift table, exchanging ideas. The students being protagonists, very interested. Starting with caresses, and then seeing that they can help and work together with the breakersquebradeiras “, he says. “They have become much more protagonists of their story than before.”
Now, the future of the BabaçuTech project lies in its dissemination. The group is in contact with the Brazilian Agricultural Research Company (Embrapa) to be able to work with quebradeiras outside of the Maranhão region. Since it is not always possible to travel, they are also producing a booklet and an online course so that the installation of the stove can take place in other settlements, positively impacting the work of the quebradeiras.
