IBC

Piggybacking off of tantalizing and suggestive data from our experiments at Tamera Solar Test Field with a black IBC insulated on three sides and covered with two layers of clear stretch wrap plastic on the south and west sides, we decided to take one of our soy-based polyurethane foam insulated biodigesters up to Kathy Puffer's Homestead Ecosystem location in Tillson NY, cut out the foam on the south facing side, paint the IBCs exposed wall black and foam in a double pane glass window. 

To launch our Green Faith Initiative in New York, Solar CITIES US team built the Empire State's first biodigester in a house of worship at the First Unitarian Church in Hastings New York on a sunny Sunday in mid June, making it a true Holy day for us.  The digester is of the Solar CITIES insulated IBC design and is situated at the church's community vegetable garden where its fertile liquid compost will turn food wastes back into nutritious food. 

 A couple of years ago a young man named Jorma Gorns from the Gymnasium Altenholz in Kiel, northern Germany,  wrote Solar CITIES a letter asking if it would be possible to intern with us on some project around the world.  A year later he took the train down and  came to stay with us in Essen and helped Culhane redesig the ARTI gas holder on the porch.  A year after that he raised funds from his school and came to work with Culhane at Mercy College in New York for a week and then in Niteroi and Rio in Brazil for a week, gaining expertise in IBC and Puxin designs.  Once back in Germany he and

Basic training opportunities in small scale biogas build confidence and familiarity with biogas before launching into a larger community size build.

On June 17th, Joseph Grimaldi and Christopher Lindstrom and T.H.

Envisaj Mercy, the Mercy College Environmental Sustainability and Justice League Biogas team traveled with Culhane to Lancaster Pennsylvania to build a backyard biogas system at the home of the Kelseys from Juice Plus.

In June of 2014, just after school let out, Mercy College students from the Envisaj Mercy Environmental Sustainability and Justice League joined Professor Thomas Culhane and Permaculture/Tower Garden experts Ed and Kathy Puffer and built America's first "basement biodigester" using the new " Solar CITIES indoor IBC design" that Culhane had pioneered first in Room 304 of Mercy College in the fall of 2013 and then at Kibbutz Lotan when the Envisaj team went on "the mother of all biogas tours" during winter break of January 2014 to Israel and Palestine.  Having established the safety and effi

Our second small scale biogas build in Turkey following the one I did the previous year at the same time with Yaşat Hacıbaloğlu -- the network of biogas investigating youth grows ever stronger and brighter -- things have been stalled here in the DIY realm because youtube is banned by the government so it isn't easy to access open source video instruction, but there is no substitute for face-to-face workshops anyway, so I am privileged to have been able to share a solution with the students of Koc University's Environmental Engineering Club this afternoon/evening.

We  built this Solar CITIES IBC/ARTI Hybrid Biodigester system on January 15th at Kibbutz Lotan after Culhane field tested the new design early in the fall at Mercy College. The new idea was to use buckets for the feed in and slurry out, simulating a Puxin or fixed dome digester using water displacement to allow for some gas build up in the IBC and creating water pressure to force the gas out. It also gives an ability to easily pour food waste in, acting as a "mega funnel".

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 dig