 The Engineering Students’ Design (ESD) Competition is an annual program that aims at empowering Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) students through hands-on skills building. It helps the students to identify challenges and needs peculiar to communities and develop appropriate innovative technologies to solve them. The method of the ESD competition is centered around the design process. ESD competition therefore introduces the students to the design processes and principles, practical application of what is studied in classrooms, unleashing their creativity and building their confidence to be innovative and creative. The Technology Consultancy Centre (TCC) of KNUST has been organizing this competition annually in collaboration with the Ghana Engineering Students Association (GESA). The focus areas for this year’s competition were Energy and Food security.
This year the competition saw the participation of six (6) teams applying with different ideas. Some of the teams included:
1. RAB Team.
Revamped Atmospheric Box (RAB) is a device that provides farmers a safer, healthier and more secured way of preserving and maintaining the freshness of food crops especially tubers. This project is to use gases from the device to inhibit the growth of micro-organisms that cause tubers to rot in a short period.
2. Inno Coal Team
This project will address the issue of energy security by converting waste material (paper) into coal. Waste papers will be shredded into pieces and soaked in water. An amount of saw dust will be added and left for a day or two. This will then be packed into a paper brick maker to shape the paper coal which will be left under the sun to dry.
3. Green Fire Team
This project is about producing biofuel from waste biomass and plastics using a co-pyrolysis reactor. The project is addressing inefficient use of environmentally friendly sources of fuel and improved ways of waste management.
4. Barter Trade Meter Team
This project is a cashless microfinance which deals with exchange of goods between farmers. Farmers will be able to reduce post-harvest loses by exchanging goods for goods (Barter System).
 5. Evatech Team
This project is to build an evaporative cooling unit for storing vegetables and fruits after harvest. The unit will be built with low cost materials that can be built on farms and homes of farmers.
6. Energy Team
This project seeks to address issues of affordability, durability and cost-effective means of generating energy for commercial uses. Their project brings together known principles of science and mechanism of engineering which are already established to propound a contraction that will generate electricity without depending on solar, forces tapped from flowing river and wind.
The final exhibition of prototypes was held on 3rd of November, 2016 at the CoE auditorium. In attendance were the acting Provost of the college, Heads of departments, mentors, workshop supervisors and managers, representatives from selected organizations, the media and students. The Chairman for the function was price of GHC 700 and GHC 500 respectively. The fourth, fifth and sixth positions went to the Inno coal team, BT meter team and the Energy team. These teams also made away with a cash price of GHC 200 each.
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