Projects
The system at the St. Petersburg Eco-village was built on a USF Interdisciplinary Grant awarded to Dr. David Randle for collaborative research in the UN Observatories areas he established. This is a project being conducted with USF and Patel College Dean Richard Berman and Dr. Louis Zunguze with the team of Ecovillage Permaculture Leader Cristy Abbot and founder Chris Kenrick.
At the Rosebud Continuum, working with students from Professor Thomas Culhane's Food/Energy/Water Nexus class and the great crew of the Bishop Construction Company lead by Ervin Sonny Bishop, Brian Bishop and Maryann Bishop, we completed Florida's second Puxin 10m3 digester, next to the first one we had built above ground, called the Solar CITIES dragon, several months prior. The second one is half buried underground with only the neck standing out.
Solar CITIES Inc. and Home Biogas stand with our First Nations brothers and sisters at Standing Rock and with all indigenous and other oppressed, marginalized or hegemon-impacted people around the world who want to reclaim sovereignty and self sufficiency. After our Thanksgiving trip to Oceti Sakowin, Rosebud and Sacred Stone camps at Standing Rock, Solar CITIES board directors T.H.
On New Year's Day, 2017, T.H. Culhane and Enas AbdelRahman presented to facutly staff and students at the Arava Institute on their continued work adapting biodigesters to cold climate situations, as well as a history of how Solar CITIES got started.
Photo: Using a metal plate, 40 1inch screws and RTV sealant we turned a 1000 gallon water tank into a Digester.. Everything else is the same as with our signature IBC digesters only bigger.
Dr. Thomas H. Culhane, professor of sustainability at the Patel College at USF is now running this Israel HimeBiogas unit for student demonstrations, connected to a backyard barbecue. It was innoculated with RidX and other commercial septic powders from Home Depot (4 boxes) and took five weeks to start making gas. It is fed on grass clippings and food waste.
Florida now has a 10m3 Puxin, our 5th build in the USA.
Working with Peggy and Pat Rebol and Janessa Gans Wilder and family we built this digester in the parking lot of city hall in Redding at the Whole Earth Festival amidst a series of presentations at the festival, at the Turtle Bay Science Museum and at the Methodist Church, and then set it up at the Garden of Hope.
https://www.facebook.com/thculhane/media_set?set=a.10156791771605551.10…
The Solar CITIES Palestinian Pickle Barrel Biodigester was built at Beit Jala at the Talitha Kumi Evangelic Guest House during the Arava Institute Alumni Conference. It was dissassembled and brought by bus to the Arava Institute at Kibbutz Keturah near Eilat and commissioned with horse manure and slurry from the Home Biogas system at the Institute. Within 24 hours the 40 liter pickle barrel had begun to produce gas from approximately 1 liter of food waste each day. It makes a nice student demonstration and is set up behind one of the student caravans.
Solar CITIES' board members T.H. Culhane and Christopher Lindstrom introduce the Solar CITIES' IBC biodigester system to the Puerta de la Vida Ecolodgie and Retreat Center in San Isidro, Costa Rica, near Miramar, and to the world of sustainable eco-tourism.
Solar CITIES ventures deeper into the sustainable tourism industry with this signature biodigester at the Lone Oak Lodge in West Virginia, and ecotourism destination run by and built with Brock Smith.
Brock writes that this sustainable tourism initiative, which has home biogas at its center, "is dedicated to pointing West Virginia in a new direction for economic development and a better quality of life for the state we love and the people we love!"
Solar CITIES, Envisaj Mercy and Palestinian Polytechnic students worked together on January 13 and 14 to build our "refugee camp" IBC based biodigester in a greenhouse at Hakoritna Farm. The previous day we had built an identical system, with passive solar heating windows, across the street from Hakoritna farm owner Fayez Odey Taneeb's house in the city. We also felt it imperative to build a system at the farm where previously Imad Atrash from the Palestinian Wildlife Society and Global Campus leader Aida Shibli had constructed the Solar CITIES variant of the ARTI India fl