Student Uses Pedal Power to Create Novel Machine

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100528101548.htm

ScienceDaily (June 1, 2010) — An innovative bicycle-powered water pump, created by a student at the University of Sheffield, has proved a huge success and is now in regular production in Guatemala, transforming the lives of rural residents.

Jon Leary, 24, a MEng student in the University´s Department of Mechanical Engineering, took his bicycle machine design from a Steel City drawing board to the heart of Guatemala as part of his dissertation, which required him to `make something useful out of rubbish.´

During his four month stint in Guatemala, Jon spent time improving the design for his bicibomba movil -- a mobile bicycle-powered water pump to be used for irrigation and general water distribution -- by working with the Guatemalan NGO Maya Pedal, who design and build a variety of weird and wonderful bicycle machines using abandoned bikes sent over from the US and Canada. Maya Pedal´s aim is to produce machines which can improve the daily lives of locals, without them having to resort to expensive electrical or environmentally damaging fossil fuelled machines. Their machines, which are human-powered sustainable energy sources, range from the bicilavadora (bicycle washing machine) to the bicimolino (corn grinder).


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