A Filipino accountant, together with his partners, has developed a machine that can desilt shallow rivers, provide jobs to thousands of people and lead to the development of the local steel industry.
In 2013, Juan “John” Raña together with Eduardo Malasaga, an engineer, obtained a seven-year Philippine patent for the manual micro magnetic sand separator—a device that he believes can provide jobs to thousands of Filipinos in the countryside.
“Immediately, we can provide livelihood to 30,000 people,” Raña says in an interview, while pointing to the magnetic device that separates magnetite from the sand.
Raña, who is currently a communications director at the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process, says magnetite is a mineral used for the steel industry. He says while magnetite is mostly found in the coastlines and seabeds, the rivers in Pampanga, Tarlac and Zambales which were clogged by lahar from Mount Pinatubo have substantial amount of the mineral.
His son Jacob Luke Raña says the manual magnetic sand separator can collect magnetite with a metal grade of 57 percent to 60 percent, enough to meet export quality standards. China has a huge need for magnetite, but Raña says the raw materials can eventually support a local steel industry, once investors decide to come in.
Raña says for several years, he and his friends—Edgardo Vazquez and Louie Ramos—were trying to develop a machine that can harvest magnetite from the soil and the sand. While the initial idea was a big machine that runs on electricity, Raña says he decided to design a much smaller unit operated manually by one or two persons.
“I am not an inventor, but an accountant. I developed this machine because I wanted to help our poor ‘kababayan’. I thought there should be a better way to help them,” he says.
Raña says while Chinese sand miners were using big magnetic separators operated by only up to eight people, his device could employ hundreds, if not thousands of people. The device has a magnetic cylinder that can easily separate the magnetite from the regular sand. The by-product of the separation can be used for construction and hollow blocks making.
“We want to provide livelihood to as many people as possible. This is not only for the steel industry. It can help farmers and fishermen who become seasonally unemployed,” he says.
He says the storm surge caused by Yolanda in 2013 brought a lot of black sand ashore to the farms and productive lands. He says removing the magnetite from agricultural lands can make the areas more productive.
“We will provide the manual magnetic sand separator to the farmers and fishers for free. And we will buy the black sand from them. Their contribution is only manpower,” he says.
Their initial target are the rivers of Pampanga and Zambales. Raña says aside from providing jobs, the project would result in the desilting of the rivers in Pampanga and Zambales. “The riverbed became compact and silted because of the magnetite which is heavier than lahar. If you remove the black sand, the lahar will flow with water, stopping the clogging of the river,” he says.
He says Filipinos should be the ones earning from the abundance of magnetite in the country. “The Chinese black sand miners left cavities in the shorelines of Cagayan. And they are the only ones reaping the profit. We do not want that to happen. I developed this machine in search of a better way to do this,” he says.
Raña says this is why he invested in a prototype, with the support of his partners. “We spent a lot to make the prototype work and this is the thing that works,” he says.
Businessman Leonardo “Sandy” Javier Jr., the owner of Andok’s Corp., provided funding support for the project. “We built 7,000 machines that can employ 30,000 people immediately,” Raña says.
“We want to use this in Zambales and Pampanga. We can hire informal settlers in Metro Manila and bring them to those areas. We will build communities for them and we can provide them decent livelihood. This is our dream,” says Raña.
Vazquez, the inventor of modular housing and fencing technology called VazBuilt and an outdoor air-conditioning system called Misty Kool, describes Raña’s invention as revolutionary. “They will now bring jobs to depressed areas in Zambales and Pampanga, provide homes, livelihood and the means to live decently,” he says.