Grassroots Innovation: Energy Efficient Oil Expeller

The National Innovation Foundation (NIF), India, was established on Feb 28th 2000 by the Department of Science and Technology (DST). The main goal of NIF is to provide institutional support

By Rahul Anand

February 16, 2011

The National Innovation Foundation (NIF), India, was established on Feb 28th 2000 by the Department of Science and Technology (DST). The main goal of NIF is to provide institutional support in scouting, spawning, sustaining and scaling up grassroots green innovations and help their transition to self supporting activities.

NIF has been supporting and incubating a number of interesting innovations over the past many years. We aim to showcase some of these innovations here as part of an ongoing series called ‘Grassroots Innovation’.

This article is about an interesting innovation in the field of ‘Oil Expellers’.

An oil expeller is essentially a mechanical machine that squeezes raw materials under high pressure to extract oil. Conventional oil expellers are less efficient and consume significant amount of electricity.

Enter Mr. Kalpesh Gajjar. An incredible man who taught himself various complex concepts solely based on experimenting and developing ideas, prototypes and products on his own. Mr. Gajjar passed his SSC and had no further formal education. Yet, he has gone on to invent The Swastik Oil Expeller machine. This energy efficient oil expeller is noteworthy for following reasons:

It is 3 times faster than other oil expellers
It consumes two-third of the power consumed by other oil expellers
It is only half the size of the conventional oil expeller

The machine provides oil millers the highest efficiency in a compact shape. The motor transmits power to the crusher using a planetary gear system that provides high torque and average speed thus increasing the efficiency and reducing transmission losses by 200%.

The Swastik Oil Expeller machine

The oil expeller is designed to be able to crush all kinds of dry oil seeds, including cotton seeds. The machine is at least three times more efficient than any other oil expeller existing in Indian and international markets. The length of the machine is 3055 mm, width 1045 mm and height 2145 mm. The machine has now been patented in India and US.

For this innovation, Mr. Gajjar has received the Sarabhai award from Gujarat Government. GIAN has mobilised a grant from TePP programme to improvise his technology as well.

For more information about the innovator and the innovation please contact info[at]nifindia.org.

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