Arava Institute, Israel 2014

In 2011, at the end of the Arava Institute Alumni Conference in Aqaba, Jordan, at which T.H. Culhane was the keynote speaker, a team of alumni and Culhane crossed the border to Israel with Arava biogas expert Yair Teller, and built two "salchicha" flexible bag type digesters at the Arava Institute in Kibbutz Lotan. In January of 2014 Culhane brought his students from Envisaj Mercy (The Mercy College Environmental Sustainability and Justice League), Abigail Franco, Tasheem Hall, Shamir Hyman, Lauren Lipp her mother Michelle Casper-Lipp, and Brazilian graduate of the Kibbutz Lotan Green Apprenticeship Program, Leo Adler, to visit the Arava and inspect the biogas system. While it had been negelected for some time, it was still producing plenty of gas!

Event date

Monday, January 13, 2014 - 12:00

Salchicha

Fat Beet Farm Biodigester: Florida's first Commercial Restaurant Scale Puxin Biogas System

Fat Beet Farm is the food service commissary and microgreen hydroponic and raised bed production farm serving the 5 Curci Family Noble Crust restaurants in Tampa.

Located in Oldsmar near the bridge to Dunedin and the Race Track, not far from the University of South Florida, Fat Beet Farm serves as a sustainable practice model for the Food Energy Water Nexus Zero Waste Initiative where Patel College Interns work for credit to put sustainable development theory into practice.

Working with fellow National Geographic Explorer Dr. Luke Dollar, Chair of the Center for the Environment and Catawba College's Department of Environment and Sustainability and his students, T.H. and Enas Culhane built a "twin dragon" Solar CITIES IBC tank digester system with floating IBC tank gas holder inside the greenhouse on campus. The system has 100 foot of pex coil in each tank connected to a propane gas water heater to circulate hot water in the system and will eventually be switched to biogas.