The Sunday Mail
Garikai Mazara
Derision, laughter, pity and empathy — these are all reactions that have been part of Bernard Munikwa’s journey since he decided to turn his ideas into reality.
“I remember when I made my presentation in 2011 at the Research and Intellectual Exposition, I left the lecture room a disappointed man. I could not convince the gathered engineering minds that what I was presenting to them could, one day, turn around the country’s energy needs,” said the 55-year-old last week in Masvingo.
No one is laughing now. Munikwa has patented his ideas. And they are working.
“All along I was afraid that, in my bid to explain myself to a misunderstanding audience, someone would steal the idea behind my back, patent it and make money. But now that I have patented the ideas, I can sleep easy and pray for the day that I will get a lump sum and produce the prototype.”
Munikwa’s invention, which he says has somehow missed human thinking and attention, uses the same principle that drives windmills, only that he uses weights.
Unlike the conventional planter, Munikwa’s plantivator, a cross between a planter and a cultivator, is not ox-drawn
Christened the auto-cyclic weight mill, the invention manipulates weights, placed in such a combination that once motion is initiated, the resultant force drives a set of wheels, which in turn drives a gear which produces the motion, which can turn a generator or water pump.
“The country is at the centre of an energy crisis and this could be one of the solutions to our energy problems. The problem is that no one has taken time to listen to me, and those who have listened have dismissed this invention. But I know with time, I will be proved right.”
At face value, one might be tempted to dismiss Munikwa. This is a university drop-out and he studied commercials — and not STEM subjects — at Advanced Level.
But listening to him gives a different perspective.
He explains the theory behind his invention with so much conviction and clarity, the same clarity that he said he carried with him when he made his presentations at the 2011 RIE, prompting Professor Christopher Chetsanga, who was chairing the presentations, not to over-explain.
“I remember Professor Chetsanga intervening and advising me not to over-explain my idea, otherwise it would be taken by someone. When I came back home, I started working on refining the idea and I now have what I believe is a product that can be shown to the world.”
Munikwa says since the time of Galileo, there has been a search for perpetual motion, and his auto-cyclic weight mill is the answer.
The autro-cyclic weight mill is based on a certain weight units which use their mass to act under the influence of gravity to produce energy.
The energy can power household, industrial or agricultural units, including generators, water pumps, boreholes, grinding mills, conveyor belts, crop-processing machines and peanut butter making machines.
“The good thing about my invention is that it uses gravity so it does not have any running costs, except for the occasional oiling and greasing of the moving parts.
Whereas the windmill uses wind energy and solar uses the sun, the advantage of this invention is that come rain or thunder, the cyclic mill will be operating because it does not rely on the weather but on gravity.”
Though Prof Chetsanga, who is chairman of the Research and Intellectual Exposition, which meets annually in September to share research papers, acknowledged that continuous motion is possible where there is constant supply of energy, he does not remember the Munikwa’s invention.
“While I cannot confirm remembering that specific invention, because of the time lapse as well as the number of inventions that we see annually, what I can safely say is that from last year’s expo, we elected a committee that makes follow-ups on commercially viable inventions.
“So this year, as we prepare to meet in September at the National University of Science and Technology, that committee should be compiling a report to present on which inventions have shown commercial viability.”
Now retired, self-employed and focused on inventions, Munikwa has another idea: the plantivator.
But because of his modest financial means, he has not been able to roll it.
“The idea of the plantivator came to me when I was at Mushandike Irrigation Scheme and I figured there could be ways and means of doing work much more easily. Where about 15 people were needed to sow, the plantivator needs two.”
What makes the implement — a cross between a planter and a cultivator — attractive is that as compared to generic planters, Munikwa’s model is not ox-drawn, but human-pushed.
“If the land is well tilled, even a 10-year-old can use the implement. It does not need any animals to draw it . . . When I went to the 2011 Expo, the plantivator was the one I had finished conceptualising and it was in physical form, whereas the auto-cyclic mill was a concept on paper.
“So it was rather more difficult to explain the mill, but now that I have finished assembling it, what I am itching on is having enough funding to make a commercial prototype, which will, all things being equal, be the genesis of energy revolution in the country.”
How the auto-cyclic weight mill works
A turning force is created by descending weight units suspended onto a crank wheel in a set of weight units. The force is amplified by a mill wheel. The mill wheel works against a recycling wheel within the system to move the third weight unit in a set upwards back to the crank wheel.
It also works against other work with less force than it has during the series of turning intervals of all the wheels in the system.
Two weight units weigh down the crank wheel for them to get to the bottom.
The crank wheels turns under the weight and drives the mill wheel.
The mill wheel turns under the weight and drives the recycling wheel.
The recycling wheel turns from the force and moves the third weight unit in a set at a time from the bottom on the crank wheel and move the weight back to the top of the crank wheel for it to repeat the cyclical movement of each weight unit.
The wheels in the system turn slowly but there would be a large force on the mill wheel to cause enabling gearboxes to turn machinery at the requisite speeds.
