Equating a biodigester to an heroic baby dragon, Janice Kelsey and Jody Spangler of Solar CITIES, Inc. will give a simple explanation of biodigestion and how to build a Solar CITIES Design IBC Tank Biodigester to produce cooking fuel and fertilizer using manure and food waste.
After our successful experimentation week at Tamera Ecovillage in Portugal August 2015, Martin Funk and Sandra Ihmhof conducted a biogas buid workshop at the Skala Eco-vilage with Niko who had participated in the builds at Tamera, launching the first of many small scale biogas build opportunities to help Greece attain regional self sufficiency in the wake of the economic crisis.
The full report on the project can be found here:
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"
Data Logging is a crucial part of our work, but achieving the capability to do it reliably and cheaply isn't so easy.
Before I left for Florida I set up an Arduino with RTC (real time clock) powered by a solar panel for the internal digester in our Mercy College shed. It started on May 18 and apparently lost power after 5 days on May 23. I just powered it up today, June 4, and got one reading.
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.
A year after our Envisaj Mercy team went on the "mother of all biogas tours", a faculty-led service learning expedition to Israel and Palestine, visiting Eco-gas Isreal and the Palestinian Wildlife Society and introduced our Solar CITIES IBC/ARTI hybrid biodigester to the Green Apprenticeship Program in Kibbutz Lotan, we found ourselves on a "student-led" service learning expedition in the Dominican Republic where several of our Envisaj Mercy club members have family.
