In January of 2013, just before heading to Mercy College in New York to teach, Culhane was invited to do a biogas workshop at Damanhur Eco-community in northern Italy. Simon Westermann, who had assisted Culhane in his biogas workshop in Budapest a year earlier, surprised Culhane by taking him to a laboratory in one of the nucleii where he and Damanhurian scientists had constructed a couple of Solar CITIES IBC based biodigesters and were experimenting with running a small generator from the gas then bubbling the resultant CO2 through an algae tank and then feeding the algage back to the digester -- a very effective way of closing the loop indeed! (Note that the biogas digester itself, besides needing to be insulated to stay warm, absolutely needs to be opaque or algae will grow in it, produce oxygen, and kill the methanogens!)
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