Projects
Across from the home of Ecovillage leader and organic farmer Fayez Odey Taneeb in the city of Tulkarm, Mercy College Envisaj students built a kitchen waste demonstration digester that the Taneeb family uses and monitors as part of our citizen science project with students from Palestines Polytechnic University.
In Farkha Ecovillage in the West Bank, which had been the site of this year's Ecovillage Design Education workshop (EDE) in cooperation with the Tamera Global Campus and the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN), Mercy College Envisaj Club students worked with the local villagers on the construction of the second passive solar heated Solar CITIES 3 IBC biodigester, choosing a roof space behind the solar hot water system and one building over from the kitchen.
The Solar CITIES solar heated IBC biodigester in Auja Bedouin Village in Palestine.
This was the first field deployment of our new "refugee camp" biogas system made from 3 IBCs with a passive solar heating window on the south side. We did field trials at Tamera Ecovillage in Portugal, at Kathy Puffer's Homestead Ecosystem in Tilsson NY and at Janice Kelsey's Homestead Ecosystem in Glenmoore Pennsylvania.
In 2016 Solar CITIES will be moving rapidly toward providing rapid deployment biogas systems for refugee camps and orphanages to respond to the crises of displaced persons exacerbated in extremis by the armed conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Palestine and other parts of the MENA region.
In April of 2015, T.H. Culhane of Solar CITIES travelled to Tamera Eco-village in Portugal to meet up with the Puxin molds he had personally bought and had shipped there as a gift to the Global Ecovillage Network in honor of fallen comrade Paulo Mellett. Culhane had announced his intention to make the Puxin molds available to all GEN members at the GEN 19 conference at Zegg Ecovillage in Germany, and followed up on the promise at Paulo's memorial service at Monkym Wyld Eco-village near Dorset England at teh end of 2014's summer.
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.
Biodigester "Stretcho" is a IBC tank system that was built during the Solar CITIES Biogas Workshop at Tamera, Portugal in April 2015. As part of the Experimental Week, that took place in August 2015, the IBC tank was wrapped with two layers of stretch foil with an airspace in between to increase internal temperatures of the tank. The results are amazing!
"Sao Paulo" is one of the two biodigesters that were built during the Experimental Week at Tamera Solar Village in August 2015. The system was inspired by Solar CITIES' 3 IBC tank system in Sao Paulo. The dual gas holder system is modified to avoid the use of a water pump. Instead required pressure is created by feeding, fertilizer and gas pipe that are as high as the the water displacement tank which is on top of the gas storage tank.
"Grace Kelly" is one of the biodigesters that were built during the Experimental Week in August 2015 at Tamera Solar Village. It is one of Solar CITIES' signature IBC biodigesters, insulated with a light straw construction, with a dual IBC floating gas holder.
What we believe is the world's first in-house in kitchen home biodigester was installed in the apartment of Blue Flame tour organizer and Solar CITIES team members Eimhin David and Chrissie Callanan, believers in the blue flame who decided to set a precedent for all of us in the movement by making the domestic dragon truly domestic, bringing it in out of the cold. As they say, "if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen"... but this stalwart couple and their community are proving once again "How the Irish Saved Civilization".
The sixth our seven Ireland Biodigester workshops took place at Carraig Dulra Permaculture Farm.
Working with the great men of the Men's Shed in Portlaoise we built a greenhouse based IBC biodigester.