Towards a green living environment

SGGP 07/03/2023 09:14

From 191 projects, works, solutions, and topics registered to participate in the 3rd Ho Chi Minh City Innovation Award, the council of experts in 7 fields met, evaluated, and proposed 59 applications to the next round. Among them, there are many highly creative projects and solutions that have been applied in practice, bringing practical results, contributing to solving urgent problems in the construction and development of Ho Chi Minh City.

Energy saving solutions for air conditioners

Air conditioners are an essential product that is present almost everywhere in life, especially indispensable in hot weather like today. This has caused the electricity bills of many families to skyrocket, as well as leading to serious power shortages. Forecasting future situations, nearly 2 years ago, a group of authors from BenKon Joint Stock Company launched a product to help air conditioner users solve the problem of saving energy.

According to Mr. Truong Minh Dat, CEO of BenKon, the BenKon SmartAir application acts as a smart control device for air conditioners through the app (phone application) or QR code scanning. Users can control multiple air conditioners remotely using their phones.

Mr. Dat shared that the device is a technological solution, so it requires time to develop and build a test prototype. His team spent nearly 2 years to build the product. And when bringing the product to market, the unit also encountered many difficulties due to the difficulty in reaching users immediately. However, when customers used the product, the effectiveness was very clear. Many businesses reduced a lot of electricity consumption and began to feel the environmentally friendly technology product.

In fact, the compact BenKon SmartAir device is mounted directly on the air conditioner and pre-sets the mode to manage the operating hours and operating modes of the air conditioner for the stores according to the specified time. This not only helps increase the life of the machine but also helps employees save time instead of turning on/off each air conditioner. In addition, with the smart schedule, the adjusted temperature can be automatically turned on early in the morning and turned off, reducing the temperature before the employees leave. Thanks to that, it can help save 20% -50% of electricity bills and save employees' working time.

In addition, the product provides managers with tools to monitor and intervene remotely, as well as an overview of the unit's electricity usage, giving warnings if the air conditioner operates beyond capacity or is due for maintenance. With its outstanding features, BenKon SmartAir has received many prestigious awards such as Startup Wheels 2022 champion, Top 20 Startup Viet, and Google For Startup training certification.

New directions for building materials

Persistence and creativity are what we see in the startup - Graphene Life Joint Stock Company with the project "Graphenel: Pioneer in production and research of Graphene material applications in Vietnam" which has just been nominated for the final round of the 3rd Ho Chi Minh City Innovation Award - 2023.

Representative of Graphene Life Joint Stock Company introduces graphene material flexibility testing machine in Korea

According to Mr. Le Minh Tuan, Director of Graphene Life Joint Stock Company, after the graphene material (ultra-thin, hard, light carbon, 10 times more conductive than copper and 200 times harder than steel) was announced, the world began to focus on intensive research on this material. Mr. Tuan has formed a group of young people with a passion for research to start researching graphene.

“We spent nearly 7 years pursuing research with the goal of providing the Vietnamese market with a material that meets the trend of the times,” Mr. Le Minh Tuan shared about his goal.

During the research process, Mr. Le Minh Tuan's team realized the limitations of the world's current mining trend, mainly using graphite as raw material, which is expensive and not environmentally friendly if applied to industrial development. Therefore, Mr. Le Minh Tuan's research team has persistently sought an alternative source of raw material, which is refined animal fat, using only salt and water, reducing the cost by 100 times and being environmentally friendly.

In 2018, graphene material was applied in practice and in 2019, Graphene Life Joint Stock Company successfully raised capital from large corporations to increase business capacity as well as invest in machinery and equipment, ready to expand scale and serve new material markets.

Most recently, Graphene Life Joint Stock Company has cooperated with Ton Duc Thang University to produce construction materials (graphene additives for concrete/unburnt bricks) with the first year's implementation scale of 1,500 tons of graphene additives (equivalent to 100,000 tons of concrete/year).

Applications of graphene:

* Energy: Graphene has the potential to create more efficient solar cells, fuel cells, and lithium-ion batteries. It could increase the durability and performance of renewable energy devices.

* Electronics: Graphene has the potential to create electronic microchips, computers and other devices that are smaller, faster, and consume less energy.

* Composite materials: Graphene has the ability to increase the strength and stiffness of other materials, increasing their durability and longevity.

* Medical: Graphene has the potential to create medical products, including sensors, medical diagnostic devices and advanced materials for surgery.

* Environment: Graphene can be used to produce biodegradable products, reducing waste and emissions during production.

Source: https://www.sggp.org.vn/huong-den-moi-truong-song-xanh-post695908.html