Engineering Students Develop an Economical Solution to Solve Stubble Burning & Crop Residue Problems

One of the main reason for the deteriorating air quality of Delhi and NCR is Stubble burning in Haryana and Punjab.  Everyone including the government is trying to find a solution for crop residue which would help both the farmers and people.

The much-needed solution to this serious problem has finally been discovered by a group of Mechanical Engineering students of Chandigarh University. They have developed a 'Multi-purpose Crop Residue Manager', an economical approach to get rid of stubble burning & its consequences. The engineering students from Punjab, Navej Sindhi, Ranjan Kumar, Dilpreet Singh, Urvish Agnihotri & Sahil from Himachal Pradesh have created an inexpensive crop residue manager that can help growers to cut the crop residue from roots in the farms.

One of the student, Dilpreet Singh said that "Farmers of India are already under heavy loan debt and therefore they cannot invest in expensive machines like Happy Seeder which costs around Rs. 1.40 lacs and as a result they find it easy & economical to just burn the crop residue in the fields itself that causes environment pollution". He added that "This is how we started to work on this project and got all support from our mechanical department in the university".

About the technique

Dilpreet told that "We have attached a handle to the movable machine that runs on a 14.25 hp engine & has the efficiency to harvest one acre of land in around 40 minutes consuming just one liter fuel."

The machine comes with 3 attachments and can be used depending on the type of crop, can deeply cut the crop residue from the root, leaving no residue is left in the field.

Another student, Navtej said, "The total cost for our research to invent the machine was Rs. 25000 that is currently manually driven but we working on the project to improve it so that it can be attached to the tractor. Once the commercial production of the machine begins we can further cut the cost price of the Multicrop Residue Manager to around Rs 18,000, providing an economical solution to the farmers in India".

He added "The multipurpose machine can also be used for shredding & mowing by the farmers which will further decrease the burden to own multiple machines".