In June, Burn Design Lab team members Elaine Vu-Phan and Eric Duah Boateng joined executive director Paul Means for the first Shea Roaster field testing trip in Tamale, Ghana. This field prototype testing trip was an important step in the Shea Roaster project timeline, and was a reflection of the hard work and creativity that’s been underway since the project began in 2018.

In Ghana, over 900,000 women work in the shea butter processing industry. One step of the production process requires these women to roast shea kernels in a rotating drum. The current roasting process, which uses wood fuel and an open fire, exposes women to harmful smoke, heat, and ergonomic risks. Additionally, the fires require large quantities of wood which the women must dedicate valuable time and energy to collecting. To address these problems, Burn Design Lab is developing a more efficient roaster that would require less fuel and emit significantly less smoke. By testing the prototype in the field, we can adjust future designs according to the feedback from the women who will actually use them.
 
The engineering team faced an impressive challenge – as the project lead, Vu-Phan had only six weeks after joining the BDL team to work with and improve upon initial designs created by BDL alumni Bryan Gylland and Peter Hamlin, in addition to constructing a physical prototype. June was a crucial time to visit Ghana and test the Shea prototype, because the busiest processing season is during the summer months. Looking back on the process, Vu-Phan said, “With my arrival to BDL in April of 2019, I had a tight schedule to learn, design, and manufacture a working field prototype.  It was hard work, but thanks to the invaluable support from the BDL team and local community partners, a working prototype was ready for testing in time for the trip”.
 
“During my time in Greater Tamale, I saw firsthand how inefficient and harmful the current roaster method was to women processing the shea butter,” Vu-Phan explained. “As the women were roasting nuts and boiling the nut oil at these processing centers, my eyes would consistently burn and I would cough heavily from all the smoke that accumulated in the open room. I experienced these conditions for six days straight and I thought to myself, ‘These women experience these conditions every day because they depend on this industry as their livelihood.’”

Reflecting on the process and the testing trip, Vu-Phan shared: “For me, the Shea Roaster project is the perfect example of an innovation that is born from adversity. While getting up to speed proved to be a challenge over the first few weeks, it has been vastly rewarding. I had the opportunity to meet some of the women I was helping and witness firsthand the challenges they were facing on a daily basis. It was humbling experience to realize how my engineering skills can improve the lives of others around the world.” The experiences and feedback from the women who tested our improved roaster prototype will serve as the linchpin for our subsequent designs back in the lab on Vashon.