puxin

Solar CITIES is completing Florida's first community biodigester at the Bishop family farm Rosebud Sustainability Education project. This is the first of three and will be used as a proof of concept and training ground for the entire south, using biogas as the central technology that will include hydroponics, native plants, and Solar energy. USF Patel College students and faculty have been involved and it is hoped that the site will become a living laboratory for best practices in Sustainable Development that will influence the entire region.

Here we are developing a new biodigester concept using concrete rings ("Schachtringe") that are readily available througouth Europe.

This is our evolving sketchbook for ideas involving the use of these rings.

1. Horizontal concrete ring digester "The Ring"

The recent workshop continued work that Culhane had done with the team at Tamera in 2011 when we held a Global Campus workshop to build Tamera's first kitchen-connected Solar CITIES style modified ARTI (Indian floating drum) digester, a delightful living fire breathing dragon now named "Holda".   Holda is  a 4 cubic meter work-horse (play-dragon)  of a biogas system fed on kitchen scraps who (who, not which, since she is alive) has now been in continuous and successful operation for nearly four years, going from a crawling baby to a running toddler.

Situations like these are a daily occurrence in the South American 6-million-inhabitant metropolis. Especially the World Cup and the upcoming Olympic Games have intensified the conflict between the Brazilian government and the drug cartels ruling the favelas. In fact, the local residents appreciate some of their government’s more recent concessions like the garbage disposal or public transportation. However, what they appreciate even more is the form of personal independency that they managed to preserve over the years. Simply calling the favelas a slum would not do justice to them.