tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13348496591638835272024-03-12T20:28:22.380-07:00SOLAR CITIESThis blog describes the activities of global nomad Dr. T.H. Culhane as he works on the Solar C.3.I.T.I.E.S. mission: "Connecting Community Catalysts Integrating Technologies for Industrial Ecology Solutions"T.H. Culhanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02974539190597507374noreply@blogger.comBlogger184125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1334849659163883527.post-20947362268867736102016-04-04T14:30:00.002-07:002016-04-04T17:39:55.144-07:00Culhane's Solar CITIES Presentation to the National Science Teacher's Association conference in Nashville, April 1 and 2, 2016<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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Hi I’m T.H. Culhane, a National
Geographic Explorer, a Google Science Fair judge for the past 6 years
and… a science teacher.<br />
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And this is a picture of me working in
“Garbage City”, a shanty town in Cairo Egypt where a proud and
brave people who were displaced farmers now live by collecting the
trash from the city’s 20 million inhabitants and carefully separate
the inorganic from the organic, cleaning and shredding and selling
the former to Chinese recycling companies, and feeding the latter to
the pigs, cows, sheep, goats, donkeys, cows, chickens, ducks ,
rabbits and pigeons who they brought with them when they were driven
off the land and who now live as refugees in the city with them in
their self-built urban apartment buildings.<br />
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While living and working
with these so called “Zabaleen” or “garbage people” in an
environment that is a public health nightmare, filled with rats and
flies and the stench of rotting meat and vegetables and the acrid
smoke of burning plastic, my task has been to help improve
conditions by working on the low-tech science of local household
waste transformation using a form of livestock that everybody has:
bacteria. My task has been to use simple applications of science,
technology, engineering and math to design with the “other 90%”
and make life better.<br />
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The innovations and technologies we’ve
come up with over the years since I started applying home-brew
microbiology to solving urban problems have taken me all over the
world and are now being applied to help other displaced people caught
up in the current refugee crisis.</div>
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I would like to share with you some of
the details of these experiments and show you how you can get
involved in these life saving efforts, but first I want to give you a
little background on my story.<br />
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I basically wear two hats:</div>
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Hat number one:</div>
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For the past four years I have been a
professor of Environmental Sustainability and Justice at Mercy
College in New York, leading annual student service learning trips to
the Middle East and the Caribbean to implement technologies we
develop and test at the college, and in September I join the faculty
of the Patel Center for Global Sustainability at University of South
Florida to continue the mission.</div>
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Hat number two:</div>
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I am the co-founder and director of
Solar CITIES Inc, a not-for profit organization we started 10 years
ago in the Islamic historical slums and Christian trash pickers
communities of Cairo Egypt, that ever since has been implementing
citizen science projects in developing countries and poor
communities, training trainers to turn sunshine, polluted water and
organic wastes from problems into solutions for fuel, fertilizer and
new nutritious food using local and low cost materials.<br />
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Prior to getting my Master’s degree
in Urban Agroforestry and Ph.D. in the microeconomics of sustainable
hot water demand, from 1989 until the turn of the century, I was a
high school science teacher, working in our nation’s inner city
schools with NASA’s Challenger Center, the Office of Naval Resarch
and the Junior ROTC, applying Howard Gardner’s “multiple
intelligence theories, creating curricula that would help students
perform at the highest levels of “Bloom’s Taxonomy” and
integrating interdisciplinary thematic, portfolio assessed vocational
and academic education, creating what we now call “STEAMM”
Education, Science Technology, Engineering, Art, Math and Music. I’m
sure most of you here have also been involved in this for years and
can relate! It’s quite a challenge!<br />
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Because of this history, It is
delightful for me to be back on stage at the NSTA because I was a
frequent presenter at these great gatherings in the early 90s, from
LA to Hawaii to Kansas to Puerto Rico – for years I made an annual
pilgrimage to convene with fellow science teachers and to share
techniques and ideas to help raise the bar for science education.<br />
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In those early days of my teaching
career, just as the “MTV era” was beginning, I was working with
students on two programs, one called “Melodic-Mnemonics” where we
brought our science textbooks to life through music and video, and
another called “DEMMO Productions, which stood for “Digital
Engineering for Multi-Media Productions” which we ran at Crenshaw
and Jefferson High Schools in South L.A. and at Hollywood High’s
academy for at-risk youth. What we were sharing with colleagues at
the NSTA each year was our successes – and sometimes failures –
to create not just think-tanks, but DO tanks, empirical experimental
environments where students attempted to solve the problems of
poverty, education alienation, drugs, gangs, crime, graffiti and
environmental degradation and injustice through APPLIED science and
art.<br />
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We did this by either trying to invent
hands on solutions to real world problems – from alcohol powered
trucks in the automotive department, to hydroponic food production in
the biology classroom, or by writing poems, short stories and songs
and making mini movies in which students solved science problems in a
science fiction context, such as our work on biospherics through
NASA’s Marsville program.</div>
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Those were marvelous heady days when,
despite the ethnic and class tensions made explicit by the L.A. Riots
of 1992 and the Earthquake of 1994, whose impact on infrastructure
and provision of energy, water, sanitation, food delivery services
and transportation was felt for months in the poorer parts of our
cities, we science teachers and our students felt that we could use
our spirit of inquiry, experimentation, exploration and open sharing,
to rapidly realize the promises of our participatory democracy and
guarantee a brighter future for all.</div>
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My mother is an Iraqi Lebanese
immigrant who lost everything in a series of civil and international
wars, and my father is an Irishman who told us of the unnecessary
suffering caused by monocropping and the distorted political ecology
of the potato famine, so when I left the US in 2003 for the middle
east as war broke out in Iraq to spend 10 years outside America
problem solving, I was determined to help improve science education
there with the same promise. In Egypt I helped build up and direct the
Wadi Environmental Science Center on a poultry and olive farm in
between the pyramids and the library of Alexandria where for years
we applied the same techniques to train both privileged and
underprivileged Arab youth in problem solving.<br />
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Much of my time was spent working on
low cost ways to capture and harness solar energy for water heating
and cooking until my study of 900 urban households in the crowded
city revealed that 12% of the population in my sample, representing
millions of people, had no direct access to the sun because of
shading from other buildings or poorly designed architecture. And
meanwhile, the winters were disturbingly cold and people were
resorting to burning what little wood was left from the denuded
landscape, or using polluting charcoal and kerosene, and often
burning trash just to heat their water.
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Did you know that over 4 million women
and children die from indoor air pollution because of dirty fuels?
And that the collection of wood and charcoal for heating water to
bathe and cook is one of the primary drivers of deforestation,
habitat loss, biodiversity loss, flooding and consequent topsoil
loss, to say nothing of risk of fire and burns caused by these
unstable fuels? It is sobering to think that something we take for
granted – heating water and cooking – can have such a huge impact
on human health, animal welfare and the state of our environment, but
this is one of those inconvenient truths. And I was determined to
help solve the problem.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfLx8C197ycEUcLa4rFIhKdDx0wNUlPBzw8jeAkpaqtsaSW55drlKIVAlYzWQyHBSNkpIkBouWz_fZO9YBakTeU_DUgoc1CXACs24hr1Rv9LRRmdN15b-_eufOf32QTdP6FcjRBDca9w/s1600/cleanenergy.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfLx8C197ycEUcLa4rFIhKdDx0wNUlPBzw8jeAkpaqtsaSW55drlKIVAlYzWQyHBSNkpIkBouWz_fZO9YBakTeU_DUgoc1CXACs24hr1Rv9LRRmdN15b-_eufOf32QTdP6FcjRBDca9w/s320/cleanenergy.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
Now you may have heard of the “clean
cookstove” initiative that Julia Roberts and Hillary Clinton and
others are working on, where, by providing improved stove designs we
can reduce both the firewood and charcoal consumption and the
attendant smoke by about 50%. And you have probably heard about
attempts to replace the charcoal and firewood with something called
“biochar” made from compressed waste straws or other biomass.
All of these things are good because they reduce the impact and
mortality. But here’s the problem: without the clean cookstove
initiative we have 4 million deaths a year; with it we reduce that
rate by half, which is laudable, but we still have 2 million deaths a
year, and that is unacceptable. As students and teachers of science,
can we really conscience settling for these losses?<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPk-rQ5OhkoV9DuehjeDGkl1QbllgbBsfgaxg0_uxwuAKC4vrX4YVYPBV5aOU8dwDXmGGfAQsjG99rYz9mGvy37Rs8Hwwpt4OBA-g4WXtMRKT3OKtHP19a5gAvg_F70T7mx-9-0GWCoA/s1600/foodgrinders.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPk-rQ5OhkoV9DuehjeDGkl1QbllgbBsfgaxg0_uxwuAKC4vrX4YVYPBV5aOU8dwDXmGGfAQsjG99rYz9mGvy37Rs8Hwwpt4OBA-g4WXtMRKT3OKtHP19a5gAvg_F70T7mx-9-0GWCoA/s320/foodgrinders.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
And this is to say nothing of the
losses of life and the suffering produced from the outputs of the
very bathrooms and kitchens where the hot water produced by unclean
fuels is being used. <br />
Let’s talk about kitchens and bathrooms
for a moment – think about it:<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
In terms of domestic use, Kitchens and
bathrooms are the where all the fresh water is being consumed and
contaminated. It comes in to our houses clean and goes out polluted
with potentially deadly pathogenic bacteria and with soaps and
detergents and chemicals that despoil our rivers and streams and
oceans. Our kitchens and bathrooms are surprisingly the primary
sources of disease and injustice, creating outbreaks of typhoid and
cholera and dysentery with the sewage they create, and attracting
rats and fleas and plague with the garbage they create. And this is
to say nothing about the plastic bags we used to try and dispose of
our organic wastes, which make their way to the landfill in diesel
smoke belching garbage trucks or get blown or washed into the ocean,
creating that horrible plastic vortex in the pacific.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg89JzoIrnQCAfF7wpU302dE8Nnmn2JI-AeVJ4BZA5uzfC0zK8wI8Gp4cjtE6-nZ0BiXC5b4JQpQWtrgSpBltEe7ZPD2WnFHghDv1tn9XzstBcmVg12gPuAkiK5byt3XG9hSlUKTNV6bQ/s1600/kitchens+and+bathrooms.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg89JzoIrnQCAfF7wpU302dE8Nnmn2JI-AeVJ4BZA5uzfC0zK8wI8Gp4cjtE6-nZ0BiXC5b4JQpQWtrgSpBltEe7ZPD2WnFHghDv1tn9XzstBcmVg12gPuAkiK5byt3XG9hSlUKTNV6bQ/s320/kitchens+and+bathrooms.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
All of this, because of the way we
conceive of our kitchens and bathrooms as spaces of consumption
rather than spaces of symbiotic consumption and production. I decided
to dedicate my scientific research to figuring out how to design
better kitchens and bathrooms and I moved into the slums of Cairo for
3 years to live the challenge. It was like being in a disaster zone
almost every day, with water and electricity being cut off all the
time and rats everywhere. In fact, rats killed the baby neice of a
friend of mine in her crib, looking for food which the family
diligently bagged up and put on the landing.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY3ssSR_G4Oz4ODmZmy8jdioUs3Lq-CzQtwNEqEvJt7vmbqaGynrZgiwLdNAkFwaKdWYP3lA4IM6_CEfJvAYnpMznTo1v6XJcSqRMTdEx3ej1Zdu_3U4DqX3WPCYkbPgDT6QjdLPb93A/s1600/ratsfull.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY3ssSR_G4Oz4ODmZmy8jdioUs3Lq-CzQtwNEqEvJt7vmbqaGynrZgiwLdNAkFwaKdWYP3lA4IM6_CEfJvAYnpMznTo1v6XJcSqRMTdEx3ej1Zdu_3U4DqX3WPCYkbPgDT6QjdLPb93A/s320/ratsfull.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Frustrated, the rats
nibbled the child’s ears and nose and eyelids and gave her a deadly
infection. This tragedy is not uncommon and I felt we had to stop it.
Poisoning or trapping the rats wasn’t working.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzNpFE_nfdsTzT3XfViveVMqlxom0U1LFlzYUac-G8vlYfgFMB7HaVJDomzMMQ5ekAqlNMeTYGtZ7jhQdibv6-M5__4sYubLtbHY0MFL24Gv0D8R27tR6ivR2EDHCYM4WqTNgpqqv67Q/s1600/ARTI.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzNpFE_nfdsTzT3XfViveVMqlxom0U1LFlzYUac-G8vlYfgFMB7HaVJDomzMMQ5ekAqlNMeTYGtZ7jhQdibv6-M5__4sYubLtbHY0MFL24Gv0D8R27tR6ivR2EDHCYM4WqTNgpqqv67Q/s320/ARTI.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
In January of 2009 my friends from
the Zabaleen school, where we were teaching kids the math and science
necessary to be better trash recyclers, asked me to go to India to
learn from their scientists how to better deal with urban wastes.
What I found in the slums of Pune, India, two hours from Mumbai,
astonished me and changed my life forever.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/GDdW5dBNd0E/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GDdW5dBNd0E?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I would like to share this music-video,
this melodic-mnemonic we made, with you that shows what we found.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTSq8Ruww3hd1fKGrkVgxl5kW_M14LGyDFIdcLCMkGMTEW-7Y4M4bcJDBs5z9wYLdNv2KYUUGasvqIvfoJwpxOpstPi6HdX_b8K0F3wJT3AA3SyQFaLo-CgCdazCCAtpMeltL3ZIHDMA/s1600/biogas_puzzle_1.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTSq8Ruww3hd1fKGrkVgxl5kW_M14LGyDFIdcLCMkGMTEW-7Y4M4bcJDBs5z9wYLdNv2KYUUGasvqIvfoJwpxOpstPi6HdX_b8K0F3wJT3AA3SyQFaLo-CgCdazCCAtpMeltL3ZIHDMA/s320/biogas_puzzle_1.jpg" width="320" /></a> </div>
<br />
At Solar CITIES we put home and community scale biogas at the center of our sustainable development efforts. It is the missing piece of the sustainability puzzle. It is the solar plexus of sustainability, the literal "guts" of any system that tries to reduce, reuse, recycle and thrive. All the other forms of renewable energy struggle with intermittency problems -- the sun doesn't always shine, the wind doesn't always blow, there isn't always rain or snow and the rivers don't always flow. But toilet wastes and food wastes and organic residuals, these are always with us. And they need to be dealt with, so they pay their own costs, turning from problem to solution.<br />
<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0ifVRdKAB9E0dd6AIJjsf3r1GQweHv-Tat0MmCFtpZUuiwCPbBk_lnxDfrIU4j2cmO-jO7lDdfD_yA8GKc7pqNuG4bHHJ8UWd0DBLTgdn41W1HqNg15UMJgvzjfZAI36zddj4-dbZrg/s1600/homebiogascycle.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0ifVRdKAB9E0dd6AIJjsf3r1GQweHv-Tat0MmCFtpZUuiwCPbBk_lnxDfrIU4j2cmO-jO7lDdfD_yA8GKc7pqNuG4bHHJ8UWd0DBLTgdn41W1HqNg15UMJgvzjfZAI36zddj4-dbZrg/s320/homebiogascycle.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I am now convinced that the small scale
urban biogas solution is the single most important intervention we
can make in improving life for all of us, everywhere. They are easy
to make and effectively eliminate all organic wastes, turning them
from problem to solution.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg04el561ojLwUGXRPlIDnZBNoWxX7m3URi6C6znfPAd21A-XF1pDG1ivE8_G_VQEcH98Kn4Ip8Pjf4JvQtn6yLdPQbz1U6ZRrHgQZJHHkOu9v8xsHwlawPQQRniRmArdMPIaUkkie-iA/s1600/solarcitieswebsite.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="149" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg04el561ojLwUGXRPlIDnZBNoWxX7m3URi6C6znfPAd21A-XF1pDG1ivE8_G_VQEcH98Kn4Ip8Pjf4JvQtn6yLdPQbz1U6ZRrHgQZJHHkOu9v8xsHwlawPQQRniRmArdMPIaUkkie-iA/s320/solarcitieswebsite.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Over the last 7 years, as you can see from
this interactive map on our website, solarcities.eu, I have built and
trained people to build systems out of every possible material…
from plastic water tanks to cement monoliths to pvc bags, and in
places from Alaska to Botswana, from rural villages and urban
apartments to schools and colleges and hospitals.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdNLK65eJemZqV3It8ENdh5vd4bscx-QX5kCsxaCKiyl7KPWhCqwYgOLFy-ty7JXRikQB84E7QJqeAFPVvI8KiTdJ3MOT7ou_WZ9-tEHjuM-id8pshyphenhyphenuhig2QLx-uP32J8RcQ-6rIs_Q/s1600/facebook.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdNLK65eJemZqV3It8ENdh5vd4bscx-QX5kCsxaCKiyl7KPWhCqwYgOLFy-ty7JXRikQB84E7QJqeAFPVvI8KiTdJ3MOT7ou_WZ9-tEHjuM-id8pshyphenhyphenuhig2QLx-uP32J8RcQ-6rIs_Q/s320/facebook.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
We are part of an
international movement; our facebook group, Solar CITIES Biogas
Innoventors and Practioners, has over 7000 active members and we are
all seeing the same results. On our community website,
Biogascentral.net, people are doing citizen science and putting their
projects on the map. We just need more science teachers and students
and practioners doing this work, improving the systems. As we like to
say, “we are science teachers and students, not waste management or
energy professionals – so please DO try this at home!”<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisEpdeQw2FaioTMq7nLTUIRZP2ns43gdQvouLkY3txVC_B0D1xrBMvoXZqtipYfJSx1Q7ITxnFE0dDSkZ3V4aReH7HZ0NLHv3MKon0r5jUO3dmIXIx6FbnuwYNdbaIUbpXcW9dwIKL7g/s1600/basement.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisEpdeQw2FaioTMq7nLTUIRZP2ns43gdQvouLkY3txVC_B0D1xrBMvoXZqtipYfJSx1Q7ITxnFE0dDSkZ3V4aReH7HZ0NLHv3MKon0r5jUO3dmIXIx6FbnuwYNdbaIUbpXcW9dwIKL7g/s320/basement.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
One
of the major focuses of our research, that my students and I have
been working on for the past two years, is the creation of literal
“try this at home” “in-house” biodigesters, basement biogas
systems like this one in a middle class house in New York and this
one in a Menonite basement in Pennsylvania and this one in an
ecolodge in the wilds of West Virginia, where all the food wastes are
ground up in the insinkerator in the upstairs kitchen and then go
down to the basement to be fermented so that within 24 hours of
feeding the clean cooking fuel goes up to the kitchen and the rich
liquid fertilizer or “compost tea” goes to the garden or to porch
and rooftop soil free hydroponic and vertical aeroponic systems.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAVVoloRs6quLAuI23j8iciC0tK8q8aPTMgN5COVJBn0bQ7yJ5uBrwgowWJT-f6Px4Al3PDmQqkHu3HMAyrgEcr9-GcbVvF51Lw7Ra8vFqrVIjliosiFjDFUbiP7ynBzjG1WEeVLjAfQ/s1600/composttoilet.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAVVoloRs6quLAuI23j8iciC0tK8q8aPTMgN5COVJBn0bQ7yJ5uBrwgowWJT-f6Px4Al3PDmQqkHu3HMAyrgEcr9-GcbVvF51Lw7Ra8vFqrVIjliosiFjDFUbiP7ynBzjG1WEeVLjAfQ/s320/composttoilet.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Recently, in my bathroom in New York in
the city, based on work I pioneered in Germany, I’ve been working
with a toilet waste biogas system that enables me to keep all of my
toilet material in the apartment, providing solutions in case of
earthquakes like the one I experienced in Los Angeles where sewage
pipes were broken or long term power outages I experienced in the
slums of Guatemala and Cairo and Ecuador that made it so the toilets
couldn’t be flushed for weeks. This research expands on and makes
practical theoretical work I was doing with my students in my high
school classroom in south central when we were working with NASA to
simulate living on a spacestation or the Moon or Mars, when we turned
the classroom into a simulated biosphere. The only difference is
that now we are working with a new NASA Next Gen Kitchens project
trying to make it real. Biodigesters turn out to be the foundation
of this simple approach to sustainability.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtNcLuFe9TmYgW-RstzS-HRAmNvYYS0r0H0xc14ZOOxqyGzvCM64WGtvWdA9wKRg76FBR9p1WIltoes4MCteaXGXiv15Ao7EBbXdz4zkRlVSHkAUpC6p7IZb9u1O04NMFtr0EVML9R4Q/s1600/homebiogasmontage.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtNcLuFe9TmYgW-RstzS-HRAmNvYYS0r0H0xc14ZOOxqyGzvCM64WGtvWdA9wKRg76FBR9p1WIltoes4MCteaXGXiv15Ao7EBbXdz4zkRlVSHkAUpC6p7IZb9u1O04NMFtr0EVML9R4Q/s320/homebiogasmontage.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
And I would like to convince you that
while you may not want to deal with toilets at this point because of
cultural taboos, when it comes to food wastes from your home or
school cafeteria, the idea of teaching “applied microbiology to
meet our sustainable development goals” is so easy to do, so safe
and so accessible, and meets so many of our STEM and STEAM goals,
that having students in schools everywhere experiment with this
solution to so many problems should be a formal part of every science
curriculum.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVVArVAqDALLZjq2qDa0mHgylpt7NPFb7rT28J-gQFW5habJQAsaew0gduZB7ED-_sFHuEGkT8JYPIDB0ZJJpG0GvLTGUbRGw4uXb3q_0dC01dz2n96f_hhHSF1Uiku86PvZDI4ctxIA/s1600/shenzhenhigh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVVArVAqDALLZjq2qDa0mHgylpt7NPFb7rT28J-gQFW5habJQAsaew0gduZB7ED-_sFHuEGkT8JYPIDB0ZJJpG0GvLTGUbRGw4uXb3q_0dC01dz2n96f_hhHSF1Uiku86PvZDI4ctxIA/s400/shenzhenhigh.jpg" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Millions of students in China and India
and Nepal are already basing much of their curriculum on the benefits
of anaerobic digestion of organic material. In one high school I
visited in Shenzhen China with 3000 students and 700 faculty and
staff, they had two digester systems. 100% of the food wastes from
the cafeteria was being transformed into 100% of the cooking fuel for
the cafeteria and much of the salad greens, while all the toilet
wastes were being transformed into gas for electricity generation and
landscaping fertilizer.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsKfLD3u4eKTPrhXIOU43bAUtwO3fSbyb4Uk8wkhdcQYg-vK67sPzamGyP3Ss7Ao6CfTdqTJQk2y46vbHvCpuQIHybJs_WiDqGKS7cTVSfhO-r2RfBO3Jf4VW8WL0cnfvgeCpzR9Lpxg/s1600/puxinUS.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsKfLD3u4eKTPrhXIOU43bAUtwO3fSbyb4Uk8wkhdcQYg-vK67sPzamGyP3Ss7Ao6CfTdqTJQk2y46vbHvCpuQIHybJs_WiDqGKS7cTVSfhO-r2RfBO3Jf4VW8WL0cnfvgeCpzR9Lpxg/s320/puxinUS.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I have been blessed to be able to bring
this same medium scale system, called the Puxin digester, to a
school for abused girls in the Phillipines, a school built by
Architecture for humanity in the favelas of Brazil, a muslim shrine
in Iraq, an Ecovillage greenhouse geodesic dome in Sweden and several
college research sites in Pennsylvania and New York.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI4d6E4k2yXTEopE83KjGIKSfY0t8xS6N4y6hNP7Lr3je3jU42t5d53NuQivoCVKJJiisSkN53ZISUj_esHoGMGolSHSxydcoN3UvNNZb1WzZ1xlkXGKEcscWLCnkpgCDxnZ2NIA9TEQ/s1600/highschools.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI4d6E4k2yXTEopE83KjGIKSfY0t8xS6N4y6hNP7Lr3je3jU42t5d53NuQivoCVKJJiisSkN53ZISUj_esHoGMGolSHSxydcoN3UvNNZb1WzZ1xlkXGKEcscWLCnkpgCDxnZ2NIA9TEQ/s320/highschools.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
Meanwhile we
have been building our simple Solar CITIES IBC tank based system in
homes and schools, like this high school in Alaska and this one in
inner city DC.<br />
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And our latest model is this simple
salchicha or “sausage biogas” system made of a single sheet of
hand welded PVC which fits in carry on luggage and can simply be
rolled out, filled with a slurry of cow manure and water and then fed
with ground up food wastes to provide up to two hours of cooking a
day.</div>
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We will be deploying this system in
refugee camps starting with Pakistan and Lebanon and Turkey this
summer and fall. We are excited because this system that we’ve
devised uses a self regulating heat coil that can be run on solar
energy to keep it warm and productive on cold nights.<br />
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And the fertilizer that it creates is exactly what we need to close the cycle, growing rooftop and urban jungle gardens of nutritious food on a liquid fertilizer that is replaces all commercial fertilizers and is perfect for hydroponics, aquaponics and vertical aeroponics.<br />
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The basic point of all this is that
these life saving interventions didn’t come out of some corporate
laboratory or government think tank. These are innovations that come
from citizen science, when students and teachers work together to
explore the possible and refuse to let environmental degradation
continue while waiting for politicians or experts do the solving for
us.<br />
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We are science teachers. We teach a new generation to explore,
to experiment, to create, to solve problems. We are science
teachers. The world is in good hands when we work with our students
to make a better world. We are science teachers. We got this.</div>
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Thank you!</div>
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T.H. Culhanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02974539190597507374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1334849659163883527.post-70103920644158811172015-03-23T04:11:00.001-07:002015-03-23T04:13:56.002-07:00Let's Put On A Show: Sustainability and Learning Science Like National GeographicIn my classroom, where we attempt to teach serious environmental science, the emphasis is on fun, on action, on exploring. The emphasis is on doing, creating, mapping, world building. This is the National Geographic Way.<br />
When it comes to science education and tackling the big environmental challenges of our time, old industrial age educational paradigms must give way to a more nuanced understanding of the way our brains work.<br />
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In my classroom we imagine ourselves, students and instructors alike, to be explorers and to be producers. We follow the "prosumer" mentality of futurist Alvin Toffler, who urged that we all be simultaneously producers and consumers, for this is the way that nature operates.<br />
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The problem's with education are summarized by the four lower levels of Bloom's taxonomy, which start with rote memorization and move up through Understanding, Applying and Analysing. It was assumed that students needed to get those foundational skills first before they could move on to Evaluating and Creating. It turns out that this isn't so. <br />
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In fact the pyramid is upside down. </div>
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So in my classes we start with the creative act.<br />
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Our idea is that the creative process itself inspires evaluation, analyses, application, understanding, and, yes, memorization. But we also take inspiration from leading play theorists throughout history, like German philosopher and naturalist Karl Groos who studied and wrote about the survival function of play in both non-human animals and humans in the early 1900s, and anthropologist Brian Sutton-Smith. All have emphasized that in the training phase of learning, the learner needs to be doing it for the intrinsic fun of it, not for some extrinsic reward, even if that reward is survival. Groos oberserved "If the player were playing for a serious purpose, much of play's educative power would be lost." <br />
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As a National Geographic Explorer and Science Educator I am aware that the problems we are trying to solve are quite serious. But to get meaningful results I turn what I am doing into creative play.<br />
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<b>Survival Horror as a way to learn to Survive</b><br />
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The public is quite enamored with survival horror fiction these days, from video games to television programs like 'the Walking Dead', doomsday scenarios are hugely popular. Even in the latest special edition of Newsweek Magazine, in which my own work turning toilet and kitchen wastes into clean renewable energy and fertilizer is featured, the magazine ends with the section "10 things I learned from the Walking Dead".<br />
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As a science educator I can certainly make good use of this phenomenon. There is no hook better for discussing the scientific and technical realities of providing reliable energy, food, water and shelter with students than an imaginative journey into the apocalyptic landscape of The Walking Dead. Every semester we have two thematic projects -- how you would survive a Zombie Apocalypse and what kind of Eutopia you would create if you had the means to build your own community. Both flights of fancy are remarkably effective in getting students to consider the real engineering and philosophical challenges involved with making a better world, and it actually works better than trying to confront "real world" issues like climate change, species extinction, pollution and health issues.<br />
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But we take it much further than merely creating a "Talking Dead" dialog or discussion, for that is too theoretical and violates Confucious' principle "I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand."<br />
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To truly work our way to deep understanding, we have to DO. But this is much easier than one would think.<br />
In my class, once students have gotten their creative juices flowing, doing is all they want to do. Creating begets creating, and we end up Blending Realities -- Creating Eutopia by Blending the Virtual and the Real. Sometimes we create in the virtual world, using pen and paper, using computer screens and software, like Blender 3D, a free game engine and animation and modelling and video production software. And sometimes we create in the real world, using cardboard and wood and solar panels and tanks and plumbing supplies. Often, like any good theatre or Hollywood stage crew or special effects department, we blend both.<br />
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Sometimes this results in fantasy that feels real, like when we create a survival scene in a home-made zombie movie, and sometimes we create realities that feel like fantasy, like when we create real functioning solar hot water systems and biogas systems and hydroponic and aeroponic soil free food growing systems and emergency electric light systems made from aluminum cans and LEDs and realize that we have solutions to some of humanity's biggest problems right at our finger tips.<br />
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At my college we have created a club called "Envisaj Mercy: the Mercy College Environmental Sustainability and Justice League" that is dedicated to this approach to science education. We are working on instructional materials that help teach others how we feel it is best to approach learning real and important skills... through play.<br />
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<br />T.H. Culhanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02974539190597507374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1334849659163883527.post-84634091369057695932014-11-05T22:46:00.003-08:002014-11-09T00:37:22.555-08:00“Mumkin!”: National Geographic's sustainability explorer shares successful environmetal education ideas and optimism for a future bright with possibilities!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The video below shows the solar panels we use to power our traveling environmentally themed rock bands:</div>
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When I was an inner city high school science teacher in the early 1990s, working with African-American and Latino immigrants, I used to attend ESL or English as a Second Language conferences. In those meetings, trying to figure out the best ways to reach students from different backgrounds, we would call props like this solar panel I'm holding in my hand “realia”. We used realia -- real objects that illustrated concepts -- as a bridge between levels of the learning pyramid using the old Confucian adage: "I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand."<br />
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Our goal was to "bring the textbook to life". We wanted our students to do demonstrations, have discussions and practice doing. We created a "trainer of trainers" model of student teacher partnerships where the students got involved teaching others. We were revising Bloom's Taxonomy, showing that teaching students how to CREATE was the most important cognitive skill:<br />
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Our teaching method was to embrace the multiple intelligences of each person and provide something for every style of learner: something visible for the visual learners – images accompanied by text, for example -- sounds for the auditory learners, and something tangible for the kinesthaetic learners, students who learn better by actually touching things. So I would always bring something I could pass around, like this folding photovoltaic panel that we use on our solar powered musical tours.<br />
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In a refugee camp in Palestine back in 2006 we used it to play musical chairs – one student would hold the panel to the sun while I played the guitar and others danced around in a circle. When the student closed the panel the electricity would stop and the music would stop and the kids would scramble for a chair. In this way, through hands on experience, they could literally get in touch with physics and electronics.<br />
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When I left the West Bank after these workshops I would leave behind the solar panel so the kids could continue satisfying their curiousity, hands on. Nobody who touched that panel and made music through the magic of sunlight ever forgot the word "photovoltaics" or even "Copper Gallium Indium Diselenide thin film solar".<br />
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So, Hi, I'm Thomas Taha Rassam Culhane, and I do indeed live curious.<br />
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I started my teaching career in the inner city “ghetto” schools of
Los Angeles where poverty, gang violence and drugs were making effective
learning a particular challenge.<br />
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I learned that for us as teachers to
compete with MTV, for example, we needed to use its techniques, speak
its music video language. So I started a program called
“Melodic-Mnemonics” Science Education through Music and Video”
and used the magic of green screen technology to put my students
inside the pages of national geographic, transporting them to the
jungle and on Mars and inside the human body. We put the vocabulary
into poem or song form and used subtitles to reinforce the vocabulary.
The idea was to stimulate every sense so the lesson made sense to all
parts of the mind. </div>
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The first music video I made with my class, in 1989, was designed as a way to bring the textbook to life and to take the bottom of Bloom's Taxonomy, Rote Memorization, and make it a joyful activity, realizing that the act of repetition worked much much better when it was set to music. And movement. We also learned that in the process of rehearsing for a music video nobody minded going over the material again and again. We moved easily up the levels, remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating and creating.<br />
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I was content teaching science this way, traveling around the country and the teaching the melodic-mnemonic method with the National Science Teacher's Association, until 1994 when the earthquake hit Los Angeles and took out our electricity and water and gas, collapsing freeways and making food deliveries impossible. In the poor areas where I taught the disruptions lasted for weeks.<br />
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That is when I realized we had to teach science in a different way -- making it not just fun and effective, but RELEVANT to survival issues.<br />
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This was the beginning of my mission with my students, making videos not just about the science others did, but doing the science of sustainability and then making videos to share what we learned.<br />
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I love solving problems and, as a college professor and former high school teacher, I love sharing the skills of problem solving with my students. Let me start by having National Geographic introduce me on location so you can get an idea of who I am and some of what I do! <br />
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When I think about it, I realize that my entire education has really been about learning some kind of language that was once foreign to me, and what I do now as an educator, as a college professor and National Geographic Explorer is essentially teach people to speak and understand different types of languages, for example the language of science and math and philosophy, but in a way that has grown in sophistication through my work around the world with Nat Geo, experiencing so many cultures different from my own<br />
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My geographical reach has expanded, from an Arab American kid growing up in a big city in the Midwest of the US -- reading National Geographic magazines and dreaming of visiting other cultures and seeing wildlife -- to becoming an explorer who spends time working in at least 10 different countries every year, from the jungles of Borneo to the Ministries of Baghdad...<br />
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And in the same way my definition of languages has expanded, so that I now am beginning to understand how Society and the Earth and the Oceans speak to us through the logic of economies and ecologies. I have learned how to read the world through science and technology, engineering, art and math and music. We once called these subjects STEM education, and there is a movement to integrate them all, but now increasingly we call them STEAMM education. STEAMM education explicitly asks us to bring art and music back into all subject areas so we employ all of our intelligences and capacities.<br />
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I teach my students to be able to read the world, to make it legible. I pursue world literacy through animation and video and comic art, through computer games and simulations and through creative projects where they can bring their own deep knowings and interests and personalities to interact with knowledge, focusing on solving real world development problems.<br />
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One thing we do in my classes is use computer game engines and 3D animation software like Google Sketchup and Blender 3D and google earth and maps to make simulations of the places we are working in the world. This video we made shows the school we were working in in old Cairo and our apartment in the slums.<br />
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I try to teach my students to improve their English and to explore Spanish and Arabic and French, and the Latin and Greek that form the foundation of what we call science speak and that make science classes so hard for so many. But I also teach them how to speak 3D, that is, how to use today's technology to illustrate concepts and ideas not just in words or mere two dimensional diagrams or pictures, but in objects.<br />
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So, for example, when I wanted to teach my Egyptian friends how to make a solar hot water system, I sent them this:<br />
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And when I want to teach them how to build a simple biodigester that can turn kitchen scraps into fuel and fertilizer, I sent them this:<br />
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And then my students helped us come up with this, an even more sophisticated engineering design which we then built at schools around the world because the animation made it so easy to understand:<br />
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A 9th grader taught me much of what I know about how to speak 3D -- he was an inner city kid who learned Blender on his own because he loved computer games. He had been considered a failure in many subjects and a slow learner until the computer science teacher discovered Benjamin's passion for 3D animation. Kid turned out to be a genius who just didn't like the way school was taught.<br />
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So, If a picture is worth a thousand words, an object that can be rotated and manipulated may be worth 10,000. I teach my students to create 3D objects on the computer and to build them in real life. And I try to teach them how to speak and understand 4D – using animation and process technology – robotics and environmental sensors, to gather data over time and to communicate what they are learning in time.<br />
These are all things that National Geographic has used to communicate effectively for decades in their own educational materials. What I try to do is get students to learn how to create their own materials this way too so that they are creating their own living textbooks and own the material. Why not? The technologies exist and are now affordable and easy to learn. <br />
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I guess you could call what I do “teaching the National Geographic way!”. In effect I see my role as a teacher being to transform all my students into members of our National Geographic E-team – our team of National Geographic Explorers and Educators.<br />
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There is a picture of me on the right scratching my chin by my solar panel trying to figure out how we can synergize to save the planet.<br />
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This work led me to becoming one of the
creative directors of the Wadi Environmental Science Center in Cairo
Egypt. There we taught students from rich and poor areas alike not just how to make the textbook come to life in a fun way, but literally how
to make their own solar hot water heaters and how to do recycling and
grow food and we built a solar and wind powered concert and
presentation stage. We used video production for the students to
present what they were learning, and through the narration and titles
they learned English in a thematic interdisciplinary way.</div>
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Here is a clip from the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwTdP3AA6bM">documentary film "Solar Circus"</a> that shows what we built at the Center. </div>
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One of the critical components was
that our program centered on realia. For example, we made two music
videos called “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bed0CCPn2QY">welcome to the coral reef</a>” and “Nahmy El Nil”. To make them we had the students compose poetry about the Nile and the Sea and then created a song out of the best poem. But we realized they weren't really going to understand the topics or the language associated with it unless we gave them first hand experience. So we gave the students video cameras and a notebook full of vocabulary in English and Arabic -- mustalihat -- what we called technical terms for development -- the language and ideas they would need to discuss water issues -- and took them all over the country to videotape and document water problems and participate in workshops with international agencies. <br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5J_ofPw_OF3O2SlydsVbdXLFhMtIJd0vSqtrbLT86odbMIfRWtU66QY5vlaHF2-3zYZxRpuuz9KQP5fiFLKwyxSQMjPBRLdo-IFw0tG7bPDRfl8Uhv6Tsyp09ga8Bbj9ihs3I4cL9fQ/s1600/wesc.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5J_ofPw_OF3O2SlydsVbdXLFhMtIJd0vSqtrbLT86odbMIfRWtU66QY5vlaHF2-3zYZxRpuuz9KQP5fiFLKwyxSQMjPBRLdo-IFw0tG7bPDRfl8Uhv6Tsyp09ga8Bbj9ihs3I4cL9fQ/s1600/wesc.JPG" height="261" width="320" /></a> </div>
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Allow me to show you one of the videos the students created.</div>
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At the end of the project we took a group of the youngsters, who came from a poor village on the Nile and
had never seen the sea, to Sharm Al Sheikh to a UNESCO conference.
After they did their presentation on protecting coral, we took them
in the water to actually see it and photograph it for themselves. One young girl who had never
learned to swim, had the courage to put on a life vest, got in the
water, put a mask on her face and let us tow her out over the coral.
She suddenly started sobbing. We said “are you afraid? Do you want
to go back to the beach?” And she gasped, “La, la … Al Morjan
.. innahu Jameel Jiddan – The Coral, It is so beautiful... I had no idea from the
photographs or videos... I cannot believe how wonderful Allah's
creation is, how blessed we are to have this. This is why I am
crying! I had no idea there was such beauty in the world”.</div>
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From these experiences I have begun to
understand that there is an interdisciplinary, international
geographic ecology of education that we can invite our students to
participate in, what the Greeks called “The Great Conversation”.
It is an endless story of the quest for Eutopia, a participatory
adventure where everybody can be a hero helping to make the world a
better place.
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When I realized that we weren't getting
enough participation by bringing people to our education center, I
decided to move with my wife into the slums of Cairo, into the old
Islamic community of Darb Al Ahmar, across the city of the dead, Al
Maqabr, from Manshiyet Nasser, home to the Zabaleen garbage
collectors to finish my Ph.D.</div>
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It was there, working with their school, that I learned a new
language, the language of the informal community, and learned to listen to voices that had been marginalized or silenced, and learned to see the world through new eyes. Because, you
see, prior to that, I still believed there was such a thing as
garbage. I heard the vocabulary word “Zabala”, “Waste” or Qimama, Trash, and I
thought it refered to something real – to something that was
worthless and undignified.</div>
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But when I lived with the Zabaleen and
worked with them at the Roh El Shabab recycling school, living in
Garbage, I learned there was no such thing. These people eke out a living by taking all the so called trash from the rest of Cairo and turning trash into cash. Sure, they need infrastructure and support to make the process cleaner and healthier, but with their animals in the city they actually do a better job of recycling than any other city on earth -- and they eat meat every day since they keep goats and chickens and cows and rabbits and sheep on their rooftops and inside their apartments. </div>
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The students there worked with me on a music video called Talking Trash that explored the economics of recycling from the perspective of those who live in so-called garbage, proving to me that "one mans trash can be another's gold". Somehow the vocabulary words I had been taught growing up no longer made sense.</div>
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Let me take you briefly into their world in this clip:</div>
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And so this is where, for me, as an National Geographic Explorer, having lived in slums and remote villages all over the world, language and education really need to come into coherence with realia, with lived experience and with geography. We need to look beyond the garbage in the streets and see the garbage in our minds. We need to be able to read the world as it really is and as it could be and teach them to see beyond first appearances to find the solutions hidden but accessible to those who live curious.</div>
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The most profound transformation that has happend in my life as an educator occurred when the so called "Swine Flu" scare caused the Egyptian authorities to eliminate 350,000 pigs which the Zabaleen were using to manage all of the organic wastes of Cairo, turning it into leather goods. With no more pigs to eat the garbage the garbage pickers began to leave it piling up on street corners, causing disease. So my Egyptian colleagues and students who could not travel, sent me off to India to find a solution. And there, in a slum in Pune, I learned that in fact it was very simple to turn all organic residuals -- that's what we call it now, not trash but "residuals" -- into free clean methane gas and liquid fertilizer to grow healthy vegetables, to make more food, in a perpetual cycle. Best of all, I learned from the urban "poor" that ANYBODY can make these biogas systems at home or at school, systems that are simple, inexpensive and REALLY WORK, turning a bucket of yesterdays food waste into two hours of cooking, every day, forever!</div>
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Here is a section from a melodic mnemonic I would like to show that explores the science behind this revolutionary technology: It totally transformed my life, trying to find ways over the past 5 years to communicate the good news that, "aywa, Mumkin" -- we can solve all of our problems in a simple way.</div>
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Today I teach Environmental Sustainability and Justice to students from around the world at Mercy College in New York and I go all around the world teaching communities how to build their own food waste to fuel and fertilizer and fresh food renewable energy systems with National Geographic. We are teaching that we can turn all that waste not just into clean fuel but that we can use it to grow food in the desert, that we don't need soil at all. At my college and in Cairo we use it to produce food from hydroponics and aeroponics in rooftop gardens.</div>
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So to the question "Can we make the world a better place? </div>
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Can my education make me and everyone else better off?"</div>
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My message is simple: Aywa, Mumkin. </div>
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Yes, we can. Together we can improve education and literacy and solve all the worlds problems, and we can do so in a simple way. We have the technology, and if we live curious we can make things work for everyone. </div>
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And, of course, in true melodic mnemonic fashion, I would like to end with a song about exactly that:</div>
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<br />T.H. Culhanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02974539190597507374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1334849659163883527.post-67161916325556801842014-06-07T12:20:00.002-07:002014-06-09T10:31:50.142-07:00Home Biogas for New York -- Where do we start, and what's next?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>So you want to build a home biodigester?</b><br />
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In my opinion the best place to start here in the Northeast of the United States (where I am currently a visiting faculty researcher at Mercy College New York) is with a Solar CITIES IBC DIY system as a base digester and a modified ARTI floating drum as a gas capture/storage system. I developed this in Germany at home, built one with my students at Mercy College in New York and then built one at the Kibbutz Lotan Green Apprenticeship Program. <br />
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Most recently we have built a two IBC home system in New Paltz New York in a basement, insulated and plumbed with PEX heating coils, to test throughout the winter (we have a similar twin IBC system at Mercy College which ran great all winter of 2013 indoors for a semester but was then moved outside with styrofoam insulation for the winter of 2014 and froze solid during the polar vortex months).<br />
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We favor 2 IBC tank (twin IBC systems) because each IBC is one cubic meter in fluid volume and this permits a maximum gas output of 1000 liters of uncompressed biomethane each day when fed approximately 25 liters of ground up food waste at 35 Celsius. 1000 liters of biogas permits approximately 2 hours of cooking on a single burner at a medium flame height. Since the reaction and production rate is temperature dependent and feedstock dependent (with an upper limit to how much you can feed) and both of these variables fluctuate, we have found that 2m3 is the best working volume for home biodigesters serving the cooking needs of 4 to 6 people. Two IBC tanks fit nicely into basements and are quite safe as they are always filled with liquid (water and ground up food waste after initial start up with animal manure as a source of microbial innoculant). We collect the gas in a floating drum outside the basement in the yard or porch where the liquid can be given anti-freeze properties by adding salt or other chemicals. One can also collect and store more gas in PVC bladders or baloons as they do in China (Puxin sells them via the internet) or in truck inner tubes or even air mattresses. To get the gas out then one needs a biogas pump, also sold on the internet from Puxin in China.<br />
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We at Solar CITIES favor jumping into the biogas field by building an IBC system because it is relatively inexpensive and robust, using ubiquitous found materials (used IBC tanks for between $135 to $175 each found on Craig's List, 2" and 1/2" PVC pipes, 2" inch and 1/2" Uniseals for tank penetration, PEX tubing for heat exchange, 2" inch and 1/2" PVC valves, elbows and unions, styrofoam insulation and stretch wrap.) <br />
A 2 IBC system can be built, labor excluded (we're assuming you "DIY" Do-it-Yourself with friends and make a party of it like we do!) for about $600 or $700 in parts, depending on how much plumbing you have to do (this doesn't include the food grinder which you should really have for effortless push button feedstock preparation, which adds another $150 to $250 to the cost, and possibly a sump pump if your installation area isn't below your sink).<br />
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The nice thing is that you get into the game and learn to appreciate the physics, engineering, chemistry and biology of biogas systems this way, and you can't lose because you are really creating a liquid compost solution, regardless of how much gas you get or what temperature (above freezing) you keep the biodigester at. And the liquid fertilizer that comes out is superior to aerobic compost in many ways (retains all nitrogen and micronutrients, is maintenance free, with no turning or lifting needed and easy transport in buckets or pipes and hoses). So with a home biogas system you don't have to compost outside anything but twigs, leaves and branches and other woody material (whose aerobic disintegration is facilitated when biogas effluent is poured on it).<br />
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The Solar CITIES IBC Biogas system, which I've made an open source project* to encourage a community of biogas enthusiasts around the world to use collective intelligence to continue to improve, is one of the best ways for tinkerers to get involved in this evolving field of home waste-to-fuel-and-fertilizer production. But while I will always want to continue training people in the construction and use of DIY home made systems, things are rapidly changing in the commercial biogas world.<br />
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<i>*(at the bottom of this post are some of the materials you need to build your own Solar CITIES style IBC based biodigester). </i><br />
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<b>Overview of some Commercial Home Biogas Systems on the Market and on the Horizon</b><br />
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The world of home scale and intermediate scale biogas users is finally growing to the point where we are gaining traction not only at the tinkerer/bricolage level but in the marketplace at well.<br />
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Several home biogas companies are appearing outside of China and India (where there has been successful market penetration for some time now) and expansion is even occurring in the north temperate zones where seasonal temperature variations had previously discouraged people from taking an interest in this simple and effective technology (Northern European countries like Germany, Sweden and Denmark have been leading industrial scale biogas efforts for the past decade and a half, with million Euro facilities taking in both agricultural and municipal organic residuals; their size and thermal mass makes it feasible to utilize between 17% and 40% of the gas won each day to provide adequate heat in the colder months; it was generally considered that smaller scale systems located outdoors required too much investment in insulation and heating, and suffered too much heat loss due to surface area/volume ratio to make it worthwhile).<br />
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This equation is now changing.<br />
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<a href="http://hestiahomebiogas.com/">Hestia Home Biogas</a> in the Oregon/Washington area of the U.S. which has been building <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNuL5wAc8vg">home biogas units using concrete forms for several years</a>, is launching a<a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10203804771818265&set=o.123817927676842&type=3&theater"> rotomolded 2m3 home biodigester</a> this August that has a patented design enabling lightweight plastic (polyethylene) units to be stacked for shipping with all parts inside. They can be set up in a couple of hours. <a href="https://gust.com/companies/hestia_home_biogas">The Hestia systems</a> initial cost for early adopters will be about $2,495 for a basic uninsulated system and $2,895 for insulated systems with PEX heat exchangers designed for outdoor location in winter. The heating can be done by vacuum tube or flat panel solar HW circulation, of any other source of hot water (gas burner, electric heated water, groundsource heat pump, recycled shower water) circulated through the radiant heating coils. The systems are made to be as eco-friendly as possible, using a significant amount of post consumer recycled plastic in the rotomolding and enabling insulation from recycled polystyrene (styrofoam).<br />
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(In a recent <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10203842107591636&set=o.123817927676842&type=3&theater">facebook post</a> to our group <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/methanogens/"><span class="entity _586o" data-fulltext="Solar CITIES Biogas Innoventors and Practitioners" data-group="all" data-icon="null" data-select="group" data-si="true" data-text="Solar CITIES Biogas Innoventors and Practitioners" data-type="ent:group" data-uid="123817927676842">Solar CITIES Biogas Innoventors and Practitioners (</span> https://www.facebook.com/groups/methanogens/</a>) Hestia CEO and inventor Warren Weisman wrote:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption" id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" tabindex="0"><span class="hasCaption">"</span></span><span class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption" id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" tabindex="0"><span class="hasCaption">New
York City area biogas enthusiasts, if you are interested in a
premanufactured home biogas digester, our company Hestia Home Biogas
will have our 2 cu.m. home units available in July, 2014 and we will
have a distribution center in Brooklyn. Anyone willing to drive their
own car and trailer/pick-up to pick up their unit will be able to save
shipping. <br /> <br /> The units are $2,495 for the uninsulated un<span class="text_exposed_show">its
and $2,895 for the insulated "Arctic Pak." Both come with a double
burner Puxin stovetop and come fully assembled. You only need to add
water once you place it within view of your kitchen window so you can
see the inflatable top and know how much gas you have. <br /> <br /> The
digesters have a built-in pressure relief system that allows them to be
left alone for days or weeks and safely release gas."</span></span></span></blockquote>
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As the market grows and mass production kicks in the goal is to bring the units down to the $1000 price point that WTP surveys suggest will reach the late adopters and make household biogas a household name. <br />
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<a href="https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/t1.0-9/s403x403/1891180_257041064472773_1490565608_n.jpg">In Israel at present</a>, where temperatures get quite hot in summer but where winter lows have included snowfall, the start-up company <a href="http://www.ecogas.co.il/">Eco-gas Home Biogas</a> has launched commercial biodigesters for the<a href="http://www.homebiogas.com/contact.html"> home and small institution</a>.
The units we visited in Mikhmoret with Envisaj Mercy Environmental
Sustainability and Justice League students in January were 1 cubic
meter, 2 cubic meters and 7 cubic meters in size; they build up to 12
cubic meters. Originally they were using <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyB9z8nyjco">fiberglass for their home units</a>; now they have patented a vinyl flexible digester design that is easier to ship and can be set up in a couple of hours.<br />
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family units currently sell for about $2500 to $3000 for early adopters as they
grow their market but with mass production they estimate they will
eventually get the costs down to below the $1000 price point. Shipping
the fiberglass and plastic units outside of Israel previously limited
the expansion of the market elsewhere but because the units now fold up into a rather small and lightweight box they should be able to rapidly penetrate other areas. Insulation ideas are now in development to make these systems work in colder climates.<br />
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Across the continent of Africa, inventor and social entrepreneur Dominic Wanjahia has been rapidly expanding the business for his patented<a href="http://www.biogas.co.ke/"> Simply Logic Flexi Biogas systems</a> from their home base in Kenya to a dozen other nations. Flexi biogas, as the name implies, provides PVC systems that can be rolled up with the installation pipes and put on the back of a motorbike or bicycle, making it easy to get them to a remote village at a low cost in rural areas, which has been the target area for the company. <a href="http://www.ruralpovertyportal.org/country/voice/tags/rwanda/rwanda_biogas">The whole system, including the hoop shade house for protection, is about $500. </a><br />
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In China and India, of course, we find the widest variety of market entrants into the small biogas field.<br />
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The Chinese Puxin 2.5 m3 household digester is the one that I have worked with and imported to the Philippines and to Iraq.<br />
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While the model above is intended for manual introduction of food waste, another one of the models is intended as a septic tank replacement, to be plumbed to both the toilet and the kitchen sink (via a food grinder):<br />
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The cost of these systems, made originally from fiberglass but now increasingly Polyethylene, ranges from $1500 to $2500. They are uninsulated as they are made for subtropical regions (Shenzhen, where they are produced, is near Hong Kong). The difficulty in adopting them in the US is the cost of shipping, but a West Coast company is now meeting with the Puxin group in China to discuss bringing a large shipment in to the US to keep costs down.<br />
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In India there is the widest variety of home biogas systems available for the market. <a href="http://biotechenergy.wordpress.com/"> Biotech India</a> is one of the best known, with its innovative water seal for the floating drum. <br />
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With my students in Israel we visited a<a href="http://www.biotech-india.org/biotech_brochure.aspx"> Biotech unit</a> imported by Eco-gas Israel's Yair Teller. It performs well during the warmer months but is not insulated for winter; though the unit cost for the 2m3 family size is fiarly inexpensive, once again importation and transportation fees have made it hard to catch on in markets outside of India. <br />
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<a href="http://www.sintex.in/solutions.html#4">Sintex,</a> the Indian rotomolding company, has some <a href="http://www.agritv.net/agri_company_details.php?dir_id=107&subdir_id=56&comp_id=1030">new home biogas designs</a> that look promising; again the uninsulated nature of the products, designed for tropical regions, and the size and thus costs of shipping, make them difficult to get momentum behind in the north temperate markets.<br />
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At the intermediate to institutional end of the scale, the India Company<a href="http://www.greenelephant.in/23_Operations_The%20Green%20Box.html"> Green Elephant Energy</a>'s new Green Box, a standardized prefabricated system that can fit on a flatbed truck like a 40 foot container and dropped into place, pioneered at the Volkswagen plant in Mumbai, is emerging as a cost effective solution for handling 1 ton of organic "waste" per day.<br />
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The units cost between $100,000 and $150,000 and are currently distributed in the US by <a href="http://hestiahomebiogas.com/gallery-2/">Hestia Home Biogas</a> on the West Coast. <a href="http://hestiahomebiogas.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/GreenBox-Customer-Pitch.pdf"> A spec sheet pdf describing their features and operation can be found here. </a><br />
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Meanwhile, my not-for-profit organization Solar Cities Solutions (currently undergoing a name change) has imported into New York the Chinese<a href="http://puxinbiogas.en.alibaba.com/product/328166154-220440868/Puxin_10m3_small_biogas_digester.html"> Puxin steel mold concrete forms</a> for building 4, 6 and 10m3 biogas systems from poured concrete. The molds cost us about $10,000 with an additional $5000 to $7000 for for add-on supplies and shipping and customs. But the molds can be used hundreds of times.<br />
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A 10m3 system made from the molds, assuming the molds are already paid for, costs whatever the market price is for approximately 35 bags of cement and the necessary amounts of gravel and sand, plus the cost of a fiberglass gas holder (approximately $250) plus the cost of rebar and plumbing supplies, as well as labor and any machinery needed for construction not already on hand (we've built them using hand shovels and hand mixing of cement, but it is easiest with a backhoe and cement mixer). In Brazil we paid approximately $3000 for each 10m3 unit including all labor and machinery; in the Philippines where all labor was donated and we did things by hand we were able to make a 10m3 for about $1500 (but it took longer). We will be building on in Pennsylvania and another at the Permaculture Design Institute in Ellenville New York by October and testing insulation and heating and determining what the additional costs to make them perform well in the Northeast US will be.<br />
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Regardless of size or feedstock, the small scale biogas field is exploding, with many many options appearing that ultimately can ensure that ALL organic residuals, from toilet waste to yard waste to kitchen and cafeteria waste, to agricultural and market wastes, are no longer wasted but can be simply and effectively transformed from problems into solutions. And why not -- a biodigester is simply a stomach and can be made from anything that holds water, literally. So for people to say that small scale biogas "doesn't hold water" as a solution to our garbage problems is garbage. When we conceive of a biogas system as a living animal whose microbiome simply treats organic material as it feeds, we see the world has plenty of room for these rapidly evolving methanogenic and "fertilogenic" creatures at all scales -- a new addition to God's creatures, great and small.<br />
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<u><b>How to build your own Biodigester the Solar CITIES way:</b></u><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/t4muHwRtdTE" width="560"></iframe>
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The animation I made shown above (created in<a href="http://blender.org/"> Blender 3D</a>) will work as a general overview of the systems we now advocate. It does however suffer from a couple of pre-revision mistakes.<br />
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1) The first is that it shows the gas output as a half inch valve located directly on top of the IBC. This works but leads to effluent spills when the gas is used up. In all of our builds now we use a 60 cm 1/2 piece of PVC extending from a half inch uniseal mounted in the same location on top of the tank, but extending up above the height of the influent and effluent buckets. This way even when the gas is all gone and the buckets are full there is no chance for fluid to fill the gas pipe. Simple and effective.<br />
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2) We are finding that sometimes the 1/2 gas out pipe gets clogged with floating debris from the original horse or cow manure innoculation. While this can be fairly easily cleared by blowing back into the tube, we want to avoid all hassles. We now recommend using a 1 inch uniseal for the gas out with alength of 1 inch pipe rising up to the height of the bucket and a reducer to half inch before the valve, which can be half inch. This way the pipe is less likely to ever get clogged.<br />
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3) Two IBCs are much better than one -- two cubic meters is more reasonable for producing good quantities of gas and by having two chambers, if one gets overfed and goes acid you still have a working system and can use the active tank to reactivate the inactive tank.<br />
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4) The animation doesn't show the PEX coils (100 feet rolls of red half inch PEX per tank) that we use as a heat exchanger to keep the tanks warm. These we insert through the IBC caps using 1/2 inch uniseals and PVC; it would be better to use CPVC, which handles the heat (PVC deforms at around 80 degrees) but we haven't found CPVC in the right sizes so far, so we compromise. Copper fittings would also be better but they are expensive.<br />
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5) The animation doesn't show insulation -- insulation is necessary to retain the heat (and you need to do warm water feeding when you feed). We use styrofoam sheets and stretch wrap and sometimes bubble wrap but there is a lot you can use. Just try to insulate the heck out of the tanks, particularly the tops (you don't have to worry much about the bottom as the IBC is on a pallette which creates an air gap.)<br />
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6) You don't have to build an ARTI style digester/floating gas holder to capture the gas. You can use used truck inner tubes and PVC balloons or bladders. The only problem there though is easily getting the gas out at a decent pressure. We use the PVC bags and <a href="http://puxinbiogas.en.alibaba.com/product/881011578-220435925/Puxin_solar_biogas_pump.html">biogas pumps </a>supplied by Puxin from China for optimal results. See <a href="http://puxinbiogas.en.alibaba.com/product/316977761-22043592/Bio_gas_storage_bag.html">http://puxinbiogas.en.alibaba.com/product/316977761-22043592</a><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/null">/Bio_gas_storage_bag.html</a><br />
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If you do use a floating collector you can make smaller ones out of two trash cans (the Rubbermaid Brute cans work okay, but you'll have to cut the handles and tops off of the smaller telescoping one, and you won't get much more than 40 to 60 liters of gas storage at a time which equates to about 7 minutes of cooking; you would need four to do anything meaningful since it takes about a half an hours worth of stored gas to do any significant cooking).<br />
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If I were you and you can't wait to bring a dedicated bag in from China, I would use an air mattress!<br />
Try for at least 200 liters of storage (that's your half hour of cooking as it usually works out to be 15 minutes for every 100 liters). You will still need either a pump or some weight to get the gas out -- I've used throw rugs and occasionally simply asked the kids to lie down on the gas mattress while I cook...<br />
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7) If you make a floating gas holder you will probably have more reliable results for the central stabilizing pole using a bucket with cement to hold the pole. I didn't have cement/concrete when I built mine so I made the rickety metal stand out of galvanized plumbing pipe shown in the animation.<br />
It works, but isn't ideal.<br />
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Now to the parts you need.<br />
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1) The first thing is of course two IBC tanks. Find them on Craig's List for between $125 and $175 each, used; some people provide free delivery if you buy two or more so that works out nicely.<br />
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2) You need to order Uniseals. Outside of Palestine and Israel I've not been to a hardware store that sells them (in Istanbul Turkey this past April we found some two inch rubber fittings that worked okay, but nothing for 1/2 inch or 1 inch). You can order them from <a href="http://www.aussieglobe.com/uniseal1.htm">Aussie Globe http://www.aussieglobe.com/uniseal1.htm</a> and from <a href="http://www.usplastic.com/catalog/item.aspx?itemid=89951">Unites States Plastic Corp http://www.usplastic.com/catalog/item.aspx?itemid=89951</a>,<br />
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You should order at least 12 2 inch uniseals, 5 1 inch uniseals and 15 1/2 uniseals. If I were you I would also order 5 3/4 inch uniseals while you are at it. They come in handy for lots of things. You aren't going to use them all, but in Israel at Kibbutz Lotan last January we destroyed a couple doing the installation and in New York a couple of weeks ago we found a damaged one in the shipment. They are rubber. Best to have extras on hand.<br />
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You will be using 4 of the 2" uniseals for each of your IBC tanks (one for the inlet and one for the outlet of the tank and one for the bottom of the inlet bucket and one for the bottom of the outlet bucket) so that makes 8, and you will use one for the floating gas collector feed in pipe if you decide to build that. That makes nine and leaves you with only three extra. <br />
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The inlet and outlet buckets will both need a half inch uniseal and the gas out will either use a half inch or a 1 inch or a 3/4 inch uniseal depending on how you decide to build. The PEX heat exchangers will each require two uniseals. The gas holder will have two 1/2 inch uniseals. So figure that each IBC will use up 5 1/2 inch uniseals and the gas holder 2 and that leaves you with 3 extra.<br />
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You may (and probably should) use 1" uniseals for the gas out of the tanks (for the reasons I described above to prevent clogging), you would thus have 3 extra of those if you order 5. And you can decide to do 3/4" as well... a lot of this depends on what size pipes and valves you can get, and if you can get reducers -- the smaller valves are much cheaper than the larger sized ones. Much bricolage is based on compromise and whatever local materials are available! <br />
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3) You need at least four 5 gallon buckets (or larger; we used 10 gallon buckets in Israel; in Turkey we couldn't find ANY for sale if you didn't buy them with paint or something else in them, and in both Germany and Turkey many of the buckets that did store liquids were oval in shape and none had sealable lids). The 5 gallon buckets at Home Depot are good, especially if you can get the<a href="http://www.homedepot.com/p/Leaktite-5-Gal-Screw-Top-Lid-5GAMMA6/203205720"> Leaktite watertight screw lids that most Home Depots carry for $6.97. </a><br />
You can also get them from Amazon.com where they are known as<a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Gamma-Seal-Lid-Black/dp/B0089QJQTS"> Gamma Seal Lids</a>, but they are more expensive (10 to 13 dollars)!<br />
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You are going to use one bucket on each IBC for the food waste to enter and one on each IBC for the slurry/supernatant/effluent to gather; these also act as hydraulic pressurizing or "water displacement" systems to force the gas out; I designed it this way so the IBC could function somewhat like a Puxin 10m3 system in miniature. You end up storing the same amount of gas in the IBC as the liquid you can displace above the IBC so this gives you about 20 gallons (80 liters) of cooking fuel in the tank which can be between 10 and 13 minutes of cooking fuel. Obviously the larger the buckets you use, the more gas you can store in the tank.<br />
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Note that if you are connecting your biogas system directly to the kitchen sink via the food grinder ("garbage disposal") you don't need an input bucket and if the rise of the pipe is tall enough (as it is when you build a system in your basement below the kitchen) you will still get water displacement through the pipes connecting the inlet of the tank to the upstairs sink. This is how we did it in New Paltz New York (see pictures at top of post).<br />
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4) You will need at least 30 feet of 2 " PVC pipe (<a href="http://www.homedepot.com/s/pvc+pipe+2?NCNI-5">$7.49 each for a 10 foot pipe at Home Depot</a>); each IBC uses about 10 feet -- approximately 5 for the feeding inlet and 5 for the outlet pipe, so that is 10 per tank, plus whatever you need to connect to your food grinder wherever it happens to be!).<br />
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5) Get 5 two inch elbows and 3 two inch T's. At least. You will need 2 two inch PVC elbows and 1 two inch PVC T to create the manifold for the feed in pipes connecting the twin IBCs together (2 elbows and 1 T) . But then you need to connect this to your plumbing. For this you usually need at least 3 more elbows and two more Ts. <a href="http://www.homedepot.com/s/pvc+pipe+2?NCNI-5">The elbows are 90 cents and the Ts are $2.96 each unless you get the sanitary T's which are only $1.40 each and work just fine .</a><br />
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6) Get at least 4 2 inch PVC valves and 10 1/2 inch PVC valves. You will want to valve each of the feeding pipes to each tank independently and valve the whole feeding system, and a bypass drain in case you don't want to feed your tanks for some reason. And you need a half inch valve for each of the gas outlets and for each of the effluent buckets, as well as valving inbetween to the drain or garden. You can never have too many 1/2 inch valves I've found. <a href="http://www.homedepot.com/p/Homewerks-Worldwide-2-in-PVC-Sch-40-Slip-x-Slip-Ball-Valve-VBVP40E8B/202369989">The 2 inch valves are about $13 a piece</a> and the <a href="http://www.homedepot.com/s/half%2520%2520inch%2520pvc%2520ball%2520valve?NCNI-5">1/2 inch valves are about $3 each</a>. Make sure you get slip to slip valves and not threaded.<br />
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7) Get at least 20 feet of 1/2 inch PVC pipe for the effluent overflow. Also get about 10 feet of 1 inch pipe.<br />
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8) Buy a 1 inch to 1/2 inch reducer.<br />
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9) Buy PVC primer and glue<br />
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10) Buy two rolls of 100 foot 1/2 inch PEX tubing and buy connectors to connect with 1/2 inch PVC.<br />
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11) Get two wheelbarrows worth of gravel and/or small stones/volcanic rock/bits of concrete/zeolite, whatever you can put at the bottom of the tanks in a layer about 10 cm deep for the microbes to live on.<br />
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12) Get at least 200 kg (like an oil drum or two worth) of fresh cow or horse manure for the startup innoculant of methanogenic microbes.<br />
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13) Get at least 4 1/2 inch threaded to 1/2 barbed brass nipples.<br />
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14) Get at least 4 1/2 inch female slip to female threaded connectors that you can screw the brass barbs into.<br />
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15) Get at least 30 feet (10 meters) of 5/8" outer diameter clear plastic hose to carry the gas. <a href="http://www.homedepot.com/p/Watts-5-8-in-x-1-2-in-x-100-ft-Clear-PVC-Tubing-RVKI/100178393">You can get 100 feet for $16.</a><br />
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16) Get at least 10<a href="http://www.homedepot.com/p/Watts-5-8-in-x-1-2-in-x-100-ft-Clear-PVC-Tubing-RVKI/100178393"> 6 packs of polystyrene insulation panels at $7.25 each</a>. This is for the sides of the tank. If you spend more you can get better insulation; this is the cheapest suggestion. You want to keep heat in!<br />
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17) Get a roll of stretch wrap <a href="http://www.homedepot.com/p/Pratt-Retail-Specialties-20-in-x-1000-ft-Stretch-Film-5005002/202029370">(1000 feet for $22.97 </a>usually does the job, but it doesn't hurt to get more) <br />
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18) Get at least two packs of <a href="http://www.homedepot.com/p/Super-TUFF-R-1-2-in-x-4-ft-x-8-ft-R-3-3-Foam-Insulation-268413/100322369">rigid foam insulation</a> for the top of the tank at $11.98 each. This stuff won't crack when you put things on top of the tank as inevitably you will!<br />
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There will be variation and you will probably have to make several runs to the hardware store to complete your installation, but this gets you going. I will update this post with more details as time permits.<br />
<br />T.H. Culhanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02974539190597507374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1334849659163883527.post-73518823507586043002014-05-24T10:45:00.002-07:002014-05-24T16:06:45.296-07:00Sh*t happens. We can deal with it.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Most northerners don't know sh*t.
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Most of us don't understand sh*t.</div>
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But I know my sh*t.</div>
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I know my sh*t, not because I'm a
“professional”, but because I try things at home. And when something works for me at home, then and only then do I take it "on the road" and work on implementing what works for me in other communities around the world . Rather than having the hubrus to "think globally" and then act locally (which always seemed backwards to me!) I "think locally" and then, by solving my own problems and openly sharing the results - the successes and failures - with my worldwide social network through our facebook group "<a href="http://facebook.com/methanogens">Solar CITIES Biogas Innoventors and Practitioners</a>" (http://facebook.com/methanogens) we find that in fact we are acting globally. We get to know our sh*t together, collectively, iteratively, through trial and error and shared experience rather than hearsay, fiat and decree.<br />
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<a href="http://humanurehandbook.com/downloads/H2.pdf" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivr-iRU9jgTs8VPzrgSYHKmHkb0HxuyML5QGRfJEQuPTMrcZopqgDDqv8pGcnJk5Ll9vUjF_-1H_F2vWDNq4ROK0J0ZLZx76LJkvg-wKGDts2PQy6Fu-zT4E9zb3f1IiK3QS_tfVAI2g/s1600/HumanureHandbook.JPG" height="320" width="250" /></a></div>
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<br />
I know my sh*t, not because I'm
an “expert” but because I take care of my own sh*t. I've been
building and using my own composting toilets and biodigesters for
more than 15 years.In my apartment in the Los Angeles Eco-village I started getting into deep sh*t with the paint bucket toilet system found in <a href="http://humanurehandbook.com/downloads/H2.pdf">Joseph Jenkins Humanure Handbook (you can get the entire book free here. It has all the data you need to understand how easiy it is to safely deal with humanure, a.k.a. "sh*t")</a>. Since then I've strived to avoid letting the results of my
consumption become somebody else's problem.<br />
<br />
Sometimes, like everybody
else, I'm full of sh*t. But when the sh*t goes down, it is quickly
and safely recycled into the precious life giving organic matter it
was intended to be. That way the sh*t never hits the fan. Mine
doesn't get distributed over hell and high water, giving hell to
others. My sh*t can never be a source of filth and disease, odor or
infirmity. My sh*t stinks like everybody else's upon production, but
because of the way I treat it at home it never releases its thiols/mercaptans and phenols and sulfuric compounds to the environment and
will never attract flies or permit the transmission of cholera,
dysentary, typhoid or E. coli contamination. What goes on in Vegas
stays in Vegas, and what goes on en mi casa will never affect tu
casa. I don't give my sh*t away to nobody. You'd have to fight me
to steal my shi*t. I take care of my sh*t. Most northerners don't.
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Southerners used to understand sh*t.
Probably many northerners too. But south of the border, down Mexico
way, and in all of the countries between the tropics of capricorn and
cancer, the recycling of shit was so fast that it rarely posed a
problem prior to the absurd human and “pest species” population
growth that characterized the 20th century. After all, every animal
that lives and that ever lived (and the tropics had the lions share
of every phylum) sh*ts in its environment, and none had waste
treatment plants. Fish and aquatic mammals sh*t in the very water
they drink, and that we drink too, but their sh*t is so quickly taken
up as food by other organisms that it rarely if ever permits the
accumulation of pathogenic microbes in threatening quantities. Our
own sh*t, released into an environment rich in biodiversity, also
became immediate feedstock for plants and animals and fungi. And
when we concentrated in certain places, as long as we kept our sh*t
out of our immediate drinking water supplies, it posed no threat.
Safety came from efficient cycling. As long as we didn't overwhelm
the absorbtive capacity of a given ecosystem dealing with sh*t was
easy.
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I had a teacher once who chided those
of us in the eco-village movement for thinking we could use natural
processes to deal with sh*t in tropical countries. In the late 1990s
we showed her a video of the John Todd Living Machine that I had
learned about at Harvard in 1980 when I visited the New Alchemy
Institute on Cape Cod (I and my Mercy College students visited a
functioning version of the technology called the “Eco-Machine” at
the Omega Institute in New York a couple of weeks ago). My professor
told us “you can't apply these biological processes to the tropics
and sub-tropics; you will end up killing people”. When we asked
why, she said “you obviously have no understanding of the ecology
of the south, in hot humid environments disease runs rampant.
Bacteria grow everywhere. Flies will breed like... well, like flies.
These living machines will be a disaster”<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_D5xMgz3IM7K9eFdYV4DGFFk49hokJLm03ZEyHothIMNKWTjRH_r-1coG9d9RMe81ngB14iH4OTqF1adkdZZkBAxEnVis30yOLywdzFHuCuhebkx19AAkdMsvEMvDFXltbjJ8646pkQ/s1600/livingmachineoutsideomega.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_D5xMgz3IM7K9eFdYV4DGFFk49hokJLm03ZEyHothIMNKWTjRH_r-1coG9d9RMe81ngB14iH4OTqF1adkdZZkBAxEnVis30yOLywdzFHuCuhebkx19AAkdMsvEMvDFXltbjJ8646pkQ/s1600/livingmachineoutsideomega.JPG" height="204" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The outdoor wicking beds at the Eco-Machine at the Omega Institute with returning cattails and other constructed wetland plants emerging after the spring thaw. These wicking beds, we were told on our recent visit, are the heart of the effective waste-water treatment that goes on at Omega in New York. By summer time this will look like a naturally wetland, thick with greenery The inside part in the building is the sexier "finishing" part of the process, but the beautiful vegetated gravel pits are where the real heavy lifting occurs, eliminating any problems that so called "black-water" might cause. The inside section helps to eliminate the problems associate with the more difficult issue in waste water: soaps and detergents, NOT sh*t.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1NFVRhCw4KIQeofZ_Myy-uJcBW6dSxksZbcxIxB0CejGV5xTs8fQlmJ2O9blQ7GTafhWsebYPbhkrh2Uq8rYOOY6jRLrLOoUNbbbigX7G9ARTWhQa2ll3iCrJ5LtjJKTW_T5WaB_n7w/s1600/20140512_150352.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1NFVRhCw4KIQeofZ_Myy-uJcBW6dSxksZbcxIxB0CejGV5xTs8fQlmJ2O9blQ7GTafhWsebYPbhkrh2Uq8rYOOY6jRLrLOoUNbbbigX7G9ARTWhQa2ll3iCrJ5LtjJKTW_T5WaB_n7w/s1600/20140512_150352.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The inside of a John Todd style Eco-Machine or Living Machine at the Omega Institute in New York. It uses plants, fish, snails and microorganisms to create clean water from toilet wastes and washing and cleaning wastes, treating both "black water" and "grey water".</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<br />
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
She was well intentioned
but ignorant of the facts. In fact the rapid growth of all organisms
made possible by the warmth and wetness of the southern latitudes
makes living machines much more effective there than in the north. If
disease is spreading in the south it is because, following the
“western” model of development, people have radically diminished
the transformative capacity of the ecosystem by cutting down forests,
altering watersheds, monocropping, spreading poisononous herbicides
and pesticides, impoverishing biodiversity, overfishing, poisoning
lakes and streams and rivers and oceans with soaps and detergents,
causing eutrophication and hypoxia. Under these conditions, along
with the extra warmth and wetness, can pathogenic and pestulent
creatures experience out of control population explosions? Si, se
puede! But those same conditions also give complex ecosystems an
edge, enabling the establishment of regimes that make short work of
errant “bad guys”.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It is for this reason that waste water
treatment using the schmutzdecke system (a German description of a
natural process that occurs in ponds in the warmer latitudes) works
so well in the south. In a schmutzdecke system a rich population of
interrelated organisms (microbes, algae, protozoa, water insects) is
cultured above a slow sand filter and contaminated water is dripped
in slowly enough that it doesn't disturb the complexity of the
aquatic ecosystem. This shmutzdecke (which means “dirty layer”
and needs to be about 20 cm deep) actually cleans the dirty water by
eating all the pathogens. Residual microbes are trapped by
electrostatic and mechanical forces in the fine sand layer (which
needs to be at least 75 cm deep for proper effectiveness).<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_yvjcg_9OgNnsNYzvpQiyItFcXb2stfP1yWTTe5A3xnG9ZS6GV6tKWgIsuoGEjlqt80ulKpGGAsqc9c35goZXt_tf9e2qeac9UNmUy81iKD2lBnaiGtmRlwcZTE0PontVTWgIO5RZcg/s1600/biosand-environmental-infographic-800x571.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_yvjcg_9OgNnsNYzvpQiyItFcXb2stfP1yWTTe5A3xnG9ZS6GV6tKWgIsuoGEjlqt80ulKpGGAsqc9c35goZXt_tf9e2qeac9UNmUy81iKD2lBnaiGtmRlwcZTE0PontVTWgIO5RZcg/s1600/biosand-environmental-infographic-800x571.jpg" height="228" width="320" /></a></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
When I
tried making one at home in Germany it worked pretty well in the
summer but stopped working in the winter. Of course. And while it
appears to take care of bacteria that can cause disease (development
agencies are using them effectively in Afghanistan) it does nothing
to eliminate the awful smell and taste of greywater. My experiments
with my Shmutzdecke system convinced me that if anything, dealing
with soap is much harder than dealing with sh*t! And I would have
continued my experiments except that living in the north made it so
hard to harness the biology properly. No wonder northerners are so
down on biological treatment – we rarely get a chance to see it
work. Hence the culture of chemical extermination we've created and
promulgated around the world.</div>
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<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=0JS5uXGa4_c" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-nWGKJXLOG3VvKH_2ii7a4MuUx2yjRTqkDzyEqISDxAlb-jqA-p0eqdoQKEtHrNK-isZRge39ezON2s8Z84Ffs7imSPuK31syKw7MMV-3DioV4ho-AKCKgd-NcxGjgDYbqxUKl7ZCpw/s1600/shmutz.JPG" height="233" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The author experimenting with his own home scale schmutzdecke system. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=0JS5uXGa4_c">Video here.</a> </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
So-called Western culture, (which,
given the rotation of the Earth along a north-south axis, and the
distribution of major landmasses above and below the equator, is a
misnomer), has evolved an unfortunate fecophobia that is coupled with
a certain conversational smugness that inhibits rational discussion
of sh*t. The fact that I feel compelled to use an asterix in place
of the letter I in the word is testimony to the taboo we have in our
society – I don't want to risk offending anybody by calling the
result of eating by its vernacular.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Later on in this essay I will resort
to using Latin descriptions like 'feces” or “fecal matter” but
parsimony suggests that when writing expositions like this it is
better to use four letters (even if one of them is a symbol) instead
of five or eleven. Westerners are supposed to be appreciative of
efficiency.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Anyway, the society in question is
really northern hemisphere society, not western. The native
Americans were as west as you can get from England and many of their
members told the anthropological psychologist <a href="http://psychology.jrank.org/pages/222/Erik-Erikson.html">Erik Erikson</a> that they
found the European practice of crapping into rivers and streams an
abomination. Indigenous peoples around the world were the inventors
of some of the first composting toilets; Eriksson reportd that the
native American habit was to do your business in the forest, as far
from bodies of water as possible, so that the insects and worms could
quickly recycle it back into the forest. Does a bear sh*t in the
woods? You betcha!</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I am asserting that perhaps northerners
didn't get sh*t and its transformative properties (with the very very notable exceptions of people like Joseph Jenkins and the Austrian artist/artchitect/activist Hundertwasser whose<a href="http://lunaphoriagarden.blogspot.com/2008/05/hundertwassers-shit-culture-manifesto.html"> "Shit Culture Manifesto"</a> should be on every development program's reading list) because they didn't
understand biology and how to deal with winter. Sh*tting on snow
leaves a prolonged and unsightly mess, particularly when accompanied
by the yellow stain of urine, and it is a mess that will last for
months until the spring thaw. At that time biological systems are
struggling to re-establish themselves and it is easy for ecological
systems to get out of kilter. If the sh*t is too concentrated in an
area and there isn't enough biodiversity hopping to balance the flow
of nutrients, the “bad guys” can predominate. How much more
convenient to sh*t in a river and let the lumps of digested food
waste become somebody else's problem. “Not in my backyard”
became “why not in everybody elses?”. The tragedy of the commons
reared its ugly sh*tty head … as well as the tragedy of the less
fortunate downstream.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
There were those, of course, who did
try to contain their sh*t, but most northerners, sh*tting into an
outhouse pit or ditch, trying desperately to hide the “shame” of
their defecation, never seem to have figured out that they could
simply use a bit of insulation (straw would have done fine, sawdust
and ashes are the norm, grass and green leaves are even better) to
line their pit, do their business, and then throw some more straw or
grass or leaves on top, increasing the carbon to nitrogen ratio to
the point where exothermia sets in, creating a thermophilic compost
pile that rapidly turns sh*t back into soil (the original source of
sh*t, transduced through plants to animals to sh*t and back to soil
again through solar energy). When it comes to the basic biology of
soil formation, most northerners apparently never got the memo, and
where sh*t wasn't being flushed away into rivers and streams causing
deadly outbreaks of cholera and dysentary and typhoid and E. coli
poisoning, more or less contained outhouses all over stank to high
heaven, the stink attracted numerous flies, and contamination of
ground water become a historical life threatening problem. It never
had to be that way.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Of course I can't indict all
northerners. In the Himalayas in Nepal I visited plenty of
traditional Sherpa villages on our National Geographic expeditions
where they have been doing composting toilets for thousands of years
– forget digging a ditch (the soil is too rocky and frozen), the
clever Sherpa built toilets elevated above a stone chamber filled
with rhododendron leaves, and provided piles of rhododendron leaves
next to the toilet hole for “flushing” with the pleasant smelling
cover material and used the heat of decomposition to partially warm
their houses. But then, nobody really considers the Nepalese
northerners or westerners. With both terms we really mean “the
descendents of the Europeans” and it is, I believe, our cultural
hegemony that makes dealing with sh*t so messy.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Northerners don't know sh*t. We've
created a culture of flush and forget, relegating the transformation
of sh*t nto non-sh*t to a few engineers , most of whom have been
schooled in chemical obliteration as the solution to everything.
Disinfection is the mantra of the northern world in response to the
workings of biology at the digestion or “production' end of the
tube that is the human animal, just as pesticide and herbicide and
fungicide and sterilization is the mantra at the consumption end of
the tube. Kill everything you can before you put your food in your
mouth and kill everything you can when the results come out (and
don't forget to use mouthwash and antibiotic soaps and take your
antibiotic pills to disinfect your whole body in the in-between while
you are at it!).
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
In these troubled times, with the
legacy of historical colonialism and the nightmare of neo-colonialism
still impeding self-determination in southern countries, the
north-south vector of development aid and “expertise” is a most
unfortunate thing. Because most northerners don't understand how
small a problem sh*it really is, and how easily solved, the
descendants of the colonized in tropical and sub-tropical countries,
where proper temperatures and biodiversity can turn sh*t back into
soil in a matter of days, emulate the sh*tty practices of their
colonizers, having forgotten how easy it was and is to avoid all the
problems sh*t entails and actually make of it a value added
enterprise.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Sh*t looms large in the consciousness
of Euro-American culture, particularly North American culture, like
the shadow of a hand puppet that looks like a giant marauding bear on
the wall until you have the courage to turn around and see it for
what it really is – a really precious feedstock for the very
process of life, rich not only because of its chemical constituents
but because of the very bacteria and other microbes (Archaens aka
“methanogens” – a life form distinct from and much more ancient
than bacteria that transsubstantiate sh*t into recoverable energy in
the form of methane).</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
An illustration of the difficulty most
northerners (and most of their descendants, wherever they may live
after the conquest) have with understanding sh*t comes from my recent
work in Brazil where we are trying to solve grave waste management
and sanitation problems. I will be blunt and politically incorrect
and say that most of the white people I work with around the world really believe that
sanitation is a difficult technical issue that requires long
processes of technical study and huge investments to solve. They
look to investment intensive and massive centralized waste-water
treatment plants for the answer to the filth that flows into the
lagoons and bays of Rio de Janeiro. They frown uncertainly when it is
suggested that all the sh*t related problems can be dealt with much
more simply and effectively using small anaerobic digestors and
wicking gravel beds and compost bins or aeration tans. They balk at
the idea of open constructed wetlands and the use of banana trees for
transpiration and nutrient uptake, somehow offended by the idea that
sh*t can be taken care of without the use of chemical weapons –
“germicides” like chlorine (the famous chemical in the deadly
mustard gas of World War I). The thought that organic material and
chlorine combine to form carcinogenic compounds that persist in the
water barely crosses their minds – as long as we “obliterate”
the invisible enemy they call “germs” we can let the hospitals
deal with the suffering of the survivors of our “carpet bombing”
strategy for disinfection.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR8WnK0NS3-1tSdWx3X1xF2J8b4AGkAYJoms60bDZ3_33m9iwJSx234sg73p3bU2zAtiZeePRD_DR-rUkjzYLg1lD_juEqzGcmSMZOhq6zF0ncSL4iagco1AoL5IRidEN3dFO8cXCMSg/s1600/20140325_141502.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR8WnK0NS3-1tSdWx3X1xF2J8b4AGkAYJoms60bDZ3_33m9iwJSx234sg73p3bU2zAtiZeePRD_DR-rUkjzYLg1lD_juEqzGcmSMZOhq6zF0ncSL4iagco1AoL5IRidEN3dFO8cXCMSg/s1600/20140325_141502.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Constructed wetland for treating toilet waste built by the community at the Alemao Verdejar Favela in Rio Arguably much prettier than a septic tank or waste water treatment plant.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu7LXwpbB1HV4TidES7-8QZfBpeqQ3aEznlU5boSI2CAt444hZ5x_rr7dsGHhCZwdoMIQER0EqqQg4wbXvaRFL4Vw4wPIzxnLHlZXuE4Z-f7PaGD33-J6tPmFfgNDF5Iz3MH7S4gjRZg/s1600/20140325_141513.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu7LXwpbB1HV4TidES7-8QZfBpeqQ3aEznlU5boSI2CAt444hZ5x_rr7dsGHhCZwdoMIQER0EqqQg4wbXvaRFL4Vw4wPIzxnLHlZXuE4Z-f7PaGD33-J6tPmFfgNDF5Iz3MH7S4gjRZg/s1600/20140325_141513.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Another view of the constructed wetland at the Alemao Verdejar Favela in Rio</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIeRqX0PKjKf6zm2HcslDw62gXYstUXDxJJecGct5ghLQL7BtaXqiwWtHxyuycEH2vpGCa6gExOhvMSamlH6Uv4MqggQuM3YjWRys2xRA-XL4PjjGQZV6O6LkiixjXVc1j2tfTUeD4UQ/s1600/20140325_141519.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIeRqX0PKjKf6zm2HcslDw62gXYstUXDxJJecGct5ghLQL7BtaXqiwWtHxyuycEH2vpGCa6gExOhvMSamlH6Uv4MqggQuM3YjWRys2xRA-XL4PjjGQZV6O6LkiixjXVc1j2tfTUeD4UQ/s1600/20140325_141519.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Constructed wetland at the Alemao Verdejar Favela in Rio</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEEQtOJANnp5Iu4LCNpukJtDaXufWaGlAcBR3wBg-OeaUZYOBv45CM-3LsJRiVrAK1MyRZTIcdhH9K_FVp0D_Iw5EyG4-cljChVSqU80_KTqOozhzA-Kvl2yglDQLnzvl_JpHZI8mYpg/s1600/20140325_141539.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEEQtOJANnp5Iu4LCNpukJtDaXufWaGlAcBR3wBg-OeaUZYOBv45CM-3LsJRiVrAK1MyRZTIcdhH9K_FVp0D_Iw5EyG4-cljChVSqU80_KTqOozhzA-Kvl2yglDQLnzvl_JpHZI8mYpg/s1600/20140325_141539.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Constructed wetland at the Alemao Verdejar Favela in Rio built by the community uses a bed of used automobile tires and gravel cemented into place and planted with banana trees and other vegetation. It processes toilet wastes from the community creating fertile soil while the banana trees transpire and evaporate the liquids.</td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghf7vzdKtJVRySSKKYDEmYkvA61K_DTTu5_Ua2NcyQFSFF0WOfe42nrKat0r9BcqPSSVpe51wjHzAmBIocf1SLXYnqX-qdINd4hxc2MIlnxNf_Qmg04Pd2Ic3KD0Rb_RQR2efqtefgIg/s1600/20140325_141622.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghf7vzdKtJVRySSKKYDEmYkvA61K_DTTu5_Ua2NcyQFSFF0WOfe42nrKat0r9BcqPSSVpe51wjHzAmBIocf1SLXYnqX-qdINd4hxc2MIlnxNf_Qmg04Pd2Ic3KD0Rb_RQR2efqtefgIg/s1600/20140325_141622.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLXySe_zZ9nw7kVQ9BeqoUNdRQ3-zkSFWbOvnblzKjDEnHsX7t8fCDmzu9Vpfs87q_a9Nzy7EiWDwHsKp4UJGmxoyM70Pua7lx0zp5lAO9bMa1PTbY9G30je6XSeFPftVoFHhOELy6yA/s1600/20140325_141630.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLXySe_zZ9nw7kVQ9BeqoUNdRQ3-zkSFWbOvnblzKjDEnHsX7t8fCDmzu9Vpfs87q_a9Nzy7EiWDwHsKp4UJGmxoyM70Pua7lx0zp5lAO9bMa1PTbY9G30je6XSeFPftVoFHhOELy6yA/s1600/20140325_141630.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Constructed wetland at the Alemao Verdejar Favela in Rio</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_iHYBoFAx3Jrnt-MlgsDtqieZnLBPK8tMmQ78oDuWHK3jDVSTjkECMD0JQV_BGp46m7Tx5Q-cdsWuKYK8O9scDoxYOJ2ZS0SkWBn_StIBwFksjGbpzdLzsAbUIQlTBefk0BdCXaMuhA/s1600/20140325_154329+-+Kopie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_iHYBoFAx3Jrnt-MlgsDtqieZnLBPK8tMmQ78oDuWHK3jDVSTjkECMD0JQV_BGp46m7Tx5Q-cdsWuKYK8O9scDoxYOJ2ZS0SkWBn_StIBwFksjGbpzdLzsAbUIQlTBefk0BdCXaMuhA/s1600/20140325_154329+-+Kopie.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A hand made mini kitchen biogas system designed and built by Solar CITIES on a travel grant from Solar Cities Solutions in Alemao Verdejar from a Rotoplas tank.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTvDRNFYw682kUfnsp0iYMMcs1yK8yVwHZOHfUxtFJrKTrLqqM-KzfKVUFLBeOqxC29oKo7LaVVW-ClHvtubC0V8jUGIVBsmvtKn5EThxLFaQ7PU64224GC810JDGfHTlYRwab0feg7A/s1600/20140325_154412.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTvDRNFYw682kUfnsp0iYMMcs1yK8yVwHZOHfUxtFJrKTrLqqM-KzfKVUFLBeOqxC29oKo7LaVVW-ClHvtubC0V8jUGIVBsmvtKn5EThxLFaQ7PU64224GC810JDGfHTlYRwab0feg7A/s1600/20140325_154412.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The hand-made Solar CITIES Rotoplas mini biogas system for kitchen waste with a food grinder donated by Insinkerator corporation to assist in the biodigestion.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkF61CInvXj_ir45BNPo96PFPQG0Qn8o7wVT9rwa1UMWlQhRMFVRRUn_GxfVEmMBt-hXYW63xxSC05vcQD3Nud8daqpY7ymZa7KiDouK7fLxKq0OytjguDYLIQFg6zoh8MlvCkYkf5kA/s1600/20140325_155208.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkF61CInvXj_ir45BNPo96PFPQG0Qn8o7wVT9rwa1UMWlQhRMFVRRUn_GxfVEmMBt-hXYW63xxSC05vcQD3Nud8daqpY7ymZa7KiDouK7fLxKq0OytjguDYLIQFg6zoh8MlvCkYkf5kA/s1600/20140325_155208.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">On the left is a three drum vermicomposting system that the favela had already installed in the kitchen. Behind it is the hand-made Solar CITIES Rotoplas kitchen digester prototype built by T.H. Culhane and Luis Felipe Vasconcellos when T.H. was visiting on a trip funded by Solar Cities Solutions in the summer of 2013 to explore larger Puxin type community digesters for treating toilet and food wastes in Niteroi and Rio. An Insinkerator food grinder sits in the foreground which will be used to feed the digester.</td></tr>
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Ironically, some of the most dreaded
consequences of improperly processed sh*t actually aren't so hard to
manage. Yes it is true that one of the weeks I was in Nigeria
building biodigesters for schools and hospitals with former president
Obasanjo to help turn sh*t into safe fuel and fertilizer, 900
children died due to a cholera outbreak in the city of Lagos when a
sewer pipe broke and fecal material contaminated the drinking water
supply. Also, flooding in the city while we were there due to plastic
bags filled with food waste clogging the sewer drains backed up fecal
laden water into the streets. All of this death and misery could
have been avoided if both sh*t and food waste were routinely placed
into biodigesters. But what is far too infrequently told outside of
medical clinics in the “third world” is that cholera and other
water-borne illnesses aren't really the danger they appear to be and
are readily treatable. The reason for so many tragic deaths from
fecal contamination is usually dehydration. Babies, children and the
elderly will get cholera or shigella from contaminated water and
these organisms produce toxins that inhibit water retention so that
they can pass through the body and back into the water to complete
their life cycle. The body responds through diarrhea, eager to flush
the invaders out. If the diarrhea is not deposited back in the
water, the infection dies out. If the body of the host is kept
hydrated with a solution of electrolytes (the right sugars and
salts) the infection can run its course without mortality. Millions
and millions of lives can be saved by simple interventions of
rehydration and monitoring.</div>
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If sh*t is causing nightmares in
developing countries it has more to do with our lack of investment
and attention in proper affordable and available medical treatment
than the true danger of the pathogens in sh*t. Most of them are much
more benign than the pathogens that can result from organisms dining
on our food waste – the plagues of Europe were the result of
improper treatment of high-energy organic residuals preyed upon by
flea bearing rats, not improper treatment of sh*t. Airborne
infections, like influenza and other viruses carried by absurd
concentrations of domestic animals (avian flu, swine flu etc.) are
what I fear most when I travel, along with salmonella and other
forms of food poisoning, almost all the result of a paucity of
diversity in our food supply and our tendency to crowd animals and
plants of the same species together. Death by proximity to another
person or animal scares the sh*t out of me. I can avoid most of the
diseases and problems sh*t brings by boiling or purifying my water
and washing my fruits and vegetables and, if necessary, hydrating
myself when I get ill. Diarrhea I can deal with.</div>
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For my part, having lived and worked in
areas with poor sanitation for many years, I've never had such a
phobia for feces. Fecophobia, which is extant in the north, doesn't
seem to be a part of the “threat level orange” response of most
people in the south because, as mentioned, most sh*t degrades rather
quickly in a landscape filled with worms and insects and fish and
reptiles and birds and mammals and a trillion different kinds of
protozoa and bacteria and archaea that we haven't even begun to
identify (all of which are sh*tting too, every day). The scarab
beetle, sacred to the ancient Egyptians, is actually the dung beetle,
and one of the reasons it was sacred is because of how quickly and
effectively it carried off our sh*t and turned it back into life
giving soil.
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I can never forget living in the
jungles of Borneo for a year on a Harvard University research team in
the mid 1980s and marvelling nights when I squatted over our dung
pits in the forest near our huts watching the ruby red eyes of the
dung beetles magically approach as soon as I had done my business.
With a gentle whir of their wings they would dive bomb between my
legs, quickly roll up a ball of sh*t larger than themselves and then
take flight, whizzing up and out with a tickle of air on my bum,
taking the gift of my sh*t to their lairs to cultivate with the aid
of fungi into food for their larvae.
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On other occasions in Borneo we found
ourselves in pools of flowing water where it was actually appropriate
to sh*t in the water because hungry fish were waiting and as soon as
you dropped your load they snatched it up in a flurry of writhing
scales and fins. This interest by fish in human feces was well noted
by Indonesians; in Sumatera we visited a restaurant built over an
artificial fish pond that had bird cages also suspended over the
pond. The birds were there to feed the fish with their feces, but on
inspection I noticed that the toilet for the human patrons also
discharged directly into the pond. I was told that the fish we were
eating were also fed by us. Cooked properly, they assured me, it was
quite safe. I'm not sure about that (even I have my limits when
trying to suspend disbelief) but I finished my meal and I didn't get
sick, nor did anybody else.</div>
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In a Dyak village in Kalimantan Timor I
dined with a tribal chief whose hut was built on stilts in two
stories with the bedroom and bathroom on the second floor. The
toilet was a hole in the slotted wooden floor underneath which the
chief's “babi hutan” or forest pigs lived. They ate all our sh*t
and we in turn dined on them, and so the cycle completed itself.</div>
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During visits to Quitos, Ecuador and
the Meskital slums of Guatemala city I used composting toilets that I
built using the Jenkins “Humanure Handbook” paint bucket method
to avoid problems when the electricity would go out for a week and
none of the flush toilets worked, and I used the same system for
three years in my apartment in Los Angeles at the Urban Eco-village,
planting trees with my “wastes” so they wouldn't be wasted”.
I've since used my own sh*t, and that of my two children when they
were in diapers, to start and continue to produce methane in home
built biodigesters on our porch in Germany and in New York. I've
taken 100 liter tanks and filled them with sh*t on my porch and run
air through them and watched as algae grew and completely removed all
smell and danger in a matter of weeks.
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Basically sh*t doesn't scare me. It is
the least threatening output of the human condition, much more
tractable than the chemicals we use routinely to spray our food and
the produce of our gardens before we eat them and turn them into
sh*t. And I would argue that sh*t is much less of a problem than food
waste as an engineering problem although that too has a simple
solution. And both are really trivial compared to the “grey water
problem” – that grey area in waste treatment where you have to
deal with the awful effects of chemical soaps – basically salts and
fats and perfumes and antibacterial toxic inhibitors – on
waterways. Yet that too can be simply, if more expensively solved,
using the “living machines” or “eco-machines” a la John Todd
that I spoke of earlier (basically constructed wetlands and tanks
with lots of plants, algae, fish and snails, wonderful snails). The
right quantity and diversity of life forms in the right formations
can take care of everything organic we throw at it. It is the
inorganic material – the poisons we put in our environment – that
is the only real threat.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3grvc7LgqND87XxDcA2nB4UmOjZRFmE6MhzyQvSGdlpHrOL82JLkGqYV1WCLpzwdY-qKAEVjS0LSQSPtTLF4yIKfU0jqPmxje5l8-fIt_WsTf1HB1K8YA09N5wYYFf4J2k8NiPZhaUg/s1600/20140322_171306.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3grvc7LgqND87XxDcA2nB4UmOjZRFmE6MhzyQvSGdlpHrOL82JLkGqYV1WCLpzwdY-qKAEVjS0LSQSPtTLF4yIKfU0jqPmxje5l8-fIt_WsTf1HB1K8YA09N5wYYFf4J2k8NiPZhaUg/s1600/20140322_171306.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The two Puxin 4m3 toilet waste digesters and one 10m3 food waste digester built by Solar Cities Solutions at an elementary school in Niteroi, Brazil. For maximum efficiency the two systems should be connected but concerns about safety of the toilet digesters require that we keep them separate until we can prove zero pathogenicity.</td></tr>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Meanwhile, in Brazil, as “foreign
experts” riding in on our decidedly white horses to save the day in
our bid to “help the poor” in the favelas, we are arguing
endlessly about how we are going to “deal with” the “sanitation
problem”. As if it hadn't already been solved. And while we Norte
Americanos try to call our engineering acumen into play, negotiating
with agencies and drawing up plans and planning public relations
bonanzas to level up our projects once we have our “first
successful demonstration”, the Central Americans, Mexicans in
particular, are quietly going about their business in how to treat
the result of us “doing our business” (sh*tting), creating
business empires at the same time as they save lives in communities.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6fKqouH0sKUtlD34rg-MMjsJDyV7OMnIQfnkVo7oZkjDySYwyUQNNZ9ozeMBzmNLQBcHrX_TJS5yRm3PsVqfiR7Z3wC1zFQPosXHpDGhgSbDhQAxdJhsfDJlzfdXnKEMkm4O1I3dZGg/s1600/20140323_115638.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6fKqouH0sKUtlD34rg-MMjsJDyV7OMnIQfnkVo7oZkjDySYwyUQNNZ9ozeMBzmNLQBcHrX_TJS5yRm3PsVqfiR7Z3wC1zFQPosXHpDGhgSbDhQAxdJhsfDJlzfdXnKEMkm4O1I3dZGg/s1600/20140323_115638.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The two toilet waste treatment digester tanks before infill. The first tank, on the left acts as a settling chamber and primary digester. The supernatant flows into the second tank where internal surface area further cures the liquid, which then flows back out to a constructed wetland that Solar Cities Solutions team member Marcello Ambrosia is building proposed by team member Yair Teller in discussions with Executive Director Gail Richardson and Creative Director T.H. Culhane and funded by the Insinkerator corporation.</td></tr>
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Around the world many companies are beginning to understand sh*t and providing effective low cost solutions to what was once a scourge of humanity. One huge Mexican company in particular –
Rotoplas - has already installed more than 200,000 “Bano Dignos”
in Latin America with the support of the Mexican and Brazilian
governments, completely eliminating the threat of human waste from
each household by working incrementally, household by household. They will soon be up to half a million installations.
Eschewing the idea of large treatment plants for economic,
topographic, logistical and social reasons, they simply provide to
families a complete home scaled system called the “Bano Digno” or
“dignified toilet”. It consists of a rain water collection tank,
a manual pump, a fiberglass molded outhouse with flush toilet and
gravity feed water storage container and a small biodigester system
that in turn consists of a 1300 liter plastic rotomolded anaerobic
chamber, a contained wicking bed (gravel filled plastic chamber of
about 400 liters) and a sludge collection tank of a couple hundred
liters that enables “self-cleaning” of the digestor and yearly
home processing with lime powder to provide good soil for growing
plants.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/76JyLCIHJZ8?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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Each part of the system is modular and can be installed all
at once or iteratively, depending on the circumstances and need. The
systems scale up for larger families and institutions and can be
installed in a day. 600 liter systems are available for families of up to 5 people, 1300 liter systems for families up to 10 people, 3000 liter systems for community centers with up to 20 people, and 7000 liter systems for schools and institutions with up to 60 people. Multiple systems can be concatenated for larger institutions. While the complete systems may be too expensive for
most poor families to afford as an initial capital outlay, the
governments of Mexico and Brazil and other countries subsidize most
of the cost as part of their role in supplying social welfare
infrastructure and microloan programs are being considered.</div>
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The Rotoplas Bano Digno Biodigestores are already sold in Rio De Janeiro at Leroy Martin and other chain hardware stores all over Brazil so there is no technological or logistical hurdle involved in eliminating current scourge caused by improperly treated human wastes. The issue now is purely financial and this is where governmental, non-governmental and other organizations can focus. <br />
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The Rotoplas Bano Digno biodigestor intervention is so simple and elegant and readily available that for dignity focused projects like the one that the Brazilian NGO Catalytic Communities is creating with favela community leaders in Muzema it would make the most sense to immediately become part of the program the Rotoplas company already has with the Brazilian government to install hundreds of thousands of household digesters at a subsidized cost and work from there. Can we do this? Si, se puede!<br />
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<span class="userContent">Anybody who doubts the potential of home scale
biodigesters to rapidly enter the market and positively impact sustainable
development also severely underestimates the power and magic of
Mexico. This will be the real revenge of Montezuma, when his people end dysentery. cholera and other waterborne diseases all while also giving clean
reliable fuel and fertilizer to make deserts bloom once those features are added to the existing solution set. </span> <br />
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I have now had the pleasure of working
with the good folks at Rotoplas to help improve the home scale
biodigesters they manufacture and deploy by adding two dimensions to
their project – 1) to slightly modify the existing systems so the
methane they naturally produce can be captured and utilized (for
example, to cook and boil water, and improve the temperature of the
digester so it can process more effectively, insuring that disease
does not spread if it is present) and 2) to radically increase the
amount of useful methane they produce through the addition of ground
up food waste, spoiled fruits and vegetables, flowers and other
energy rich organic residuals (thereby increasing the utility of the
above). A third improvement is the use of solar heated or gas heated
water (post consumer use in showers) to further raise the effective
temperature of the digestor to get maximum output. But regardless of
whether we add heat or other organic wastes to the system and thereby enable people to have clean, smoke free biogas or just leave
them the way they are to more slowly treat the human wastes alone,
the simplicity of the system makes a mockery of many of the brow
furrowing long winded discussions going on in the north about how to
solve sanitation problems in the south. As the Emerson Electronics
slogan goes, “consider it solved”.</div>
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And of course, adding solutions like
the Emerson/Insinkerator food-grinders (or local equivalent) to the
Rotoplas Bano Digno solution really does add dimensions that can
really radically improve their efficiency. High calorie organic
residuals are a huge benefit to biodigestion processes while being a
bane to society when simply discarded.</div>
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I will continue to argue (and here I
depart from many of my fellow northern specialists) that food wastes
actually are more of a burden to society than toilet wastes.
</div>
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Looked at from one perspective (a non
fecophobic perspective) toilet wastes ARE food wastes – food wastes
that have been “pre-digested” because they have been digested by
us. In this sense toilet wastes are already broken down by the
appropriate microbes using our stomachs and intestines as the
anaerobic reactors for partial hydrolytic, acidogenic, acetogenic and
methanogenic processes. This is why you can use your own sh*t to
start an effective biogas system (I used my babies' diaper wastes).
We are biogas systems. We are anaerobic digesters. Yup, the proof
that we are, in fact, biogas yielding biodigesters is that we fart.
Our flatulance (another subject consider risibly taboo in polite
discussion) is the indication that much of the energy found in our
food does not make it to our cells. We release it into the air every
day (I know, I know, ladies, you never pass gass, but we men do
right?).</div>
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When you look at human beings as a
tubular plug flow biodigester you see why our fear of sh*t is so
unfounded – we've already started the process of transubstantiation
of food back into soil. All our sh*t needs is more processing time
in the airless phase and then a bit of time being exposed to aerobic
bacteria, insects and worms and plants for finishing. To have
allowed sh*t to have become a major health hazard (which only happens
anyway when a few people with unbalanced internal and external
ecosystems allow the invasion and growth of pathogens and then
discharge them directly into drinking water supplies or onto
vegetables – most people's sh*t is actually pathogen free!) is
unconscionable. Treated at its origin through simple systems like
the Rotoplas Bano Digno what was stupidly seen as the scourge of
mankind can readily be turned into its greatest promise.
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On the other hand I argue that food
waste, which still contains an enormous amount of high calorie
photsynthetic energy, is a far more formidable threat as it is dealt
with by modern society (based on northern models of waste disposal).
Because food waste is so energetic it attracts every member of the
biosphere that needs that energy. Where toilet wastes can hardly
support more than a handful of specialized detritivores like the
aforementioned dung beetles and fish and pigs, there are legions of
organisms, from bacteria to insects to higher birds and mammals that
literally jump at the chance to dine at the banquet of our high
calorie organic wastes.
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One could very convincingly argue that
the entire (and scandalous) loss of life from the “black death”
or “bubonic plague” owes its tragic dimensions to the improper
disposal of food wastes. Rats, originally forest rodents, invaded
European cities like Remy in Ratatouille, looking for food waste.
They carried with them the fleas that carried the microbe Yersinia
pestis that caused the horrible plague. Had northerners simply
composted the food waste, or used it in biodigesters (<a href="http://www.build-a-biogas-plant.com/PDF/BIOGAS_2.pdf">as myancestors, the Assyrians, did in the fertile crescent as long ago as1000 BC</a>), there would have been nothing for the rats to eat, hence no
urban rat population and hence no plague.</div>
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Similarly, all of the problems with
cockroaches (another forest species that has made its way into the
urban jungle to feast on our organic garbage) could be eliminated
when food wastes are transformed in controlled conditions (sealed
tanks or open compost facilities) into biogas and liquid or solid
fertilizer. Then we wouldn't keep poisoning ourselves with foul
smelling and toxic insecticides like the ones that were routinely
sprayed in my apartment building when I was a child in New York. The
same is true of flies. The same is true of ALL so called “vermin”.
Stray dogs and cats, possums, racoons, avian flu bearing pigeons and
other birds – none of them would last in the built environment long
if we didn't stupidly generate food waste and leave it in bags and
trash cans and dumpsters for “disposal” by the garbage industry.
Home and community scale biodigesters would completely eliminate the
threat they create – a threat much graver than toilet waste, which
is not only of much lesser volume (each of us generates much less
toilet waste on a per gram basis than food waste) but of little or no
interest to such a wide variety of potential pests.
</div>
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Another problem with food waste that we
don't have with toilet waste is that food waste is generally
transported to landfill or incineration (both significant causes of
greenhouse gases) in plastic bags. One could argue that the real
reason for the despoilation of our oceans and the mortality of marine
life by plastic bags (now accumulating in the plastic vortex in the
pacific ocean) and the real reason for the constant flooding of our
streets and back ups of our sewage systems such as I experienced in
Nigeria, spreading disease and carnage in cities around the world, is
the build up of plastic bags that were thrown into the streets
because they contained smelly food waste.
</div>
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When food waste is put through a food
waste grinder in the kitchen sink, or into compost bins or
biodigesters, the number of plastic bags thrown away drops so
dramatically that it no longer becomes a threat. Toilet wastes are
much easier to manage in this sense than food wastes. Only in the
slums of Nairobi has the author witnessed sh*t disposed of in plastic
bags (the famous “flying bag of sh*t” in Mukuru and Kibera are
the subject of much discussion because the city has provided no
adequate sewage solution. Biodigesters will eliminate that practice
if we move fast enough and get our priorities straight).
</div>
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So on the whole I maintain that
cleaning up food waste is a much higher priority than treating toilet
wastes as it generates many more problems. Nature has been
converting the predigested solids and liquids from animal asses back
into soil since time began. The real issue with sanitation is simply
keeping the sh*t out of the water supply, nothing more. And in
impoverished areas this can be most easily achieved, in my opinion,
using household and community scale digesters using the Rotoplas
model developed in the south for handling the problems facing the
south. When combined with food grinders, warm water feeding and gas
collection improvements, the Rotoplas Bano Digno program can also
tackle energy poverty and deforestation (along with the consequent
erosion and flooding it causes) and prevent deaths and illnesses due
to indoor air pollution. Further combined with vertical farming
techniques and aeroponics, hydroponics and aquaponics, the proper
home and community transformation of human and animal and food wastes
can also provide food security and enhance health and nutrition on
the input (feeding) side of the equation as well as the output
(toilet and trash can) side.</div>
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Once we have these systems in place, we
can move on to tackle the more intransigent grey water problem, which
requires more surface area, exploring the use of gardens filled with
plants and living machines to get rid of the smelly, toxic situation
created by our irresponsible use of sodium laureth sulphate,
phosphates, salts and other chemicals used in our synthetic soaps and
detergents. These are substances that inhibit biodiversity and
appropriate rapid recycling of resources, either by killing life
forms or by causing huge unbalanced population explosions of species
we consider pests. But that topic is for another day. For now let
us celebrate the simplicity with which biological processes in the
tropical and subtropical regions of the world can be harnessed
household by household to clean up all of our organic wastes and put
them back into service again. In the south, where small scale
systems can best make use of the existing ecology of transformation,
we can do this. But I wouldn't necessarily trust most northerners to
understand this. Most of us northerners, fecophobic, even biophobic,
and steeped in super-sized solutions and chemical warfare, simply
don't understand sh*t. And that may have been the problem all
along...<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Still, sh*t happens. And we can deal with it. </div>
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T.H. Culhanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02974539190597507374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1334849659163883527.post-26169440616332096322014-04-13T15:58:00.001-07:002014-04-15T16:05:41.818-07:00A toy story approach to making history... sustainable.<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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When I came to the attention of
National Geographic in 2008 I was living in the slums of Cairo Egypt,
working on my Ph.D. studying the micro-economics of hot water demand
among the crafstmen of old Islamic Cairo and the trash recycling
coptic Zabaleen community across the “city of the dead”. They
taught me a new way of seeing the world – a one in which there can
be zero waste because waste is a fiction that exists only in our
minds. </div>
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To quote my hero, Bucky Fuller<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;">,</span> “There is no energy crisis,
food crisis or environmental crisis. There is only a crisis of
ignorance.” </span>Many residents of old and informal Cairo, driven by necessity, seemed to be able to sidestep various crises through an optic that valued wasted outputs as useful inputs, the old "one man's trash is another's treasure philosophy". Living in these communities transformed my own Western wastefulness and egotistical ignorance into a deep appreciation for the possibilities inherent in trash recycling. </div>
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I wrote a song about what I learned
among the garbage pickers of the world called Talking Trash with the
refrain “Look beyond the garbage in the streets to see the garbage
in your mind...”. Let me take you into their world for a moment. </div>
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Working with the Zabaleen I discovered a world where domestic animals
live with people in the city in homes they built themselves. Microlivestock like ducks,
chickens, goats and rabbits hang out on the roof, sheep graze in the streets, even cows,
pigs and donkeys dwell on the first and second floors of my friends apartment buildings, transforming all
the wastes they can into valuable products and food. It may not look
pretty, but I have to say I never ate so well. We never had to worry about malnutrition or going hungry. With a bit of
investment these self created recycling urban ecologies could sustain
a lot of people. We just don't have a good model for it yet. Without best practice models we fall into low level equilibrium traps that kind of work at present but doom us when our pipes and pipelines and cables and wires and the centralized systems they connect us to fail and they become bridges to nowhere. We need resilient cities, cities that can sustain themselves and that grow stronger, not weaker, the more people and animals and plants that move into them.</div>
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The Pulitzer prize winning
microbiologist and environmentalist Rene Dubos famously said
<span style="font-size: large;">“creating a desirable future requires more than foresight – it
demands vision”</span>. The vision I offer you today is a vision of anti-fragility powered by the ability to see everything and everybody as beautiful and useful. A world that has no garbage.</div>
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I'd like to talk to you today about a
different way of looking at things, a new narrative, a toy story
alternative to our species' tortured his-story. It is a story of
previsualization, of thinking about something you desire, then
thinking out loud by talking about it, and then thinking out louder
by making it so others can see what you are thinking about, and then
thinking out loudest, by making it real, by making your dreams come
true. And dreams can come true for humanity, not just nightmares. But we have to be able to envisage where it is we want to go. But then, as Oscar Wilde said, "“A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even
glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is
always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing
a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.”
</div>
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We live in a world of uncertainties,
yes, but we have our imaginations and, for the first time in history,
the ability for any one of us to take our imaginations and make them
easy to communicate to others. We don't just have writing or paintins, as did Wilde and others who wrote or painted utopian themes, from Thomas More to Leonardo DaVinci to B.F. Skinner, have 3d modelling and animation and virtual world physics simulation software and laptop movie making software and 3d printing available to every man, woman and child. And speaking of children, we have lots of lots of toys. Toys that can be used to play eutopia!</div>
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(Picture of Globe).</div>
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As a National Geographic Explorer I get
to see a lot of the pieces of what I call “the sustainability
puzzle”. I have been to over 60 countries – this year alone I
travelled to 10 different lands, and many of them, like Turkey, I've
had the blessing to visit multiple times and make friends;</div>
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One thing I've learned through so much
travel is that we have all the technologies and ideas we need to
truly make the world a better place, we have all the pieces to the
puzzle – we just haven't put it all together yet. </div>
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In January of
2009 I joined <a href="http://www.solarpunch.org/page2/index.html">Solar Punch</a> and the India Youth Climate Network on a Sustainability
Solutions tour of the Indian subcontinent where we literally saw "here and now
solutions" to each and every problem humanity and wildlife are
facing.</div>
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As an Urban Planner that tour had a tremendous impact because I learned how all organic wastes in a congested city could be
transformed, through simple industrial ecology technologies available
everywhere, into life and industry sustaining raw materials. I
traveled the length of the country playing in a solar powered
musical group in solar assisted electric cars with a waste vegetable
oil powered truck carrying our amplifiers, saw concentrated solar
Scheffler Mirrors and photovoltaic lanterns made by illiterate women
at the barefoot college, gasifiers turning yard waste into clean
electricity, and learned about my favorite of all technologies –
the urban home-scale biogas digester that miraculously turns kitchen
garbage into clean fuel and fertilizer.<br />
<br />
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #2323dc;"><span style="color: black;">I had heard of
biogas technology before -- </span></span>I had
attended a
biogas conference in the Sinai at Bassasissa Solar Village in 2004
where Indian, Chinese and Egyptian experts explained different
systems and let us visit a typical fixed dome digestor. I had seen
large commercial digesters in Germany in the countryside--<span style="color: #2323dc;"><span style="color: black;"> but it had always been presented to me as a
rural solution, a way of dealing with the dung of domestic farm
animals by transforming it from a fly and odor creating problem into
a way of getting energy and maintaining soil fertility. I hadn't
thought of it as an urban solution so I had dismissed it. My focus
was on solar energy for the city. But when I realized that there
were animals in some cities I began to think we could apply the
technology to urban systems. But then I asked myself “what about
parts of cities unlike Cairo that don't have animals?”. And then
it occurred to me that there was no city anywhere on earth that
didn't have animals, because we humans are also animals, and our
wastes have the same microbes within them. Dr. Karve of the
Appropriate Rural Technology Institute said to me “<span style="font-size: large;">everybody has
been getting biogas wrong for hundreds of years. The bacteria that
make biogas don't want to eat dung, they make dung. They live in a
cow's stomach and intestines, not in his butt. They want to eat food.
But don't give them the food you eat, for God's sake, they are just
bacteria. Give them the food you can't eat. The food waste! That is
where the energy is</span>”.</span></span> The first time
I had a meal cooked on biogas in the slums of India, when the family
showed me the small home made system on their roof, made from a
couple of used plastic water tanks, and I learned that a family of 4
to 6 people produces enough organic waste to cook for nearly 2 hours
a day, I cried. In decades of studying sustainable development
nobody had told me about this simple and effective solution – about
how it can eliminate the need for firewood or charcoal and thus
thousands of deaths each year from smoke and indoor air pollution,
and the massive deforestation and flooding that wood based fuels
cause. About how it can help reduce diseases like cholera, reduce the
threat of energy poverty when oil and gas prices go up or supplies
are cut. About how the gas can be used for cooking, lighting,
heating, refrigeration and running emergency generators.</div>
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I came back from that tour and started
building the biodigesters in the slums of Cairo, and even wrote a
song about it, which I would like to play for you now. </div>
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All the pieces to the puzzle were somewhere to be found in India, in China, in Egypt, in Nepal, in Kenya.... the more I traveled the world the more optimistic I became. The problem was that nobody had put
the entire solution set together in one place. But there is no technical reason that can't be done. </div>
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The architect and inventor Buckminster
Fuller, creator of the Geodesic dome, declared after the first earth
day back in the early 1970s,
</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">“it is now physically and
metaphysically demonstrable that the chemical elements resources of
Earth already mined or in recirculation, plus the knowledge we now
have, are adequate to the support of all humanity and can be feasibly
redesign-employed [...] to support all humanity at a higher standard</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">of living than ever before enjoyed by
any human.”
</span></div>
</blockquote>
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He concluded that therefore war and
the politics surrounding it were obsolete.</div>
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It may be ironic that one of his
greatest inventions – a so-called geodesic dome designed to make
affordable earthquake proof housing available to everyone, is most
often employed by the military, and even makes its way into our war
toys, as you can see here in this play set from Call of Duty. </div>
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But it is also the iconic center of
Disney's EPCOT Center – the Experimental Prototype Community of
Tomorrow, a place where children come to play and get an idea of what
the future could be.
</div>
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And that brings me to the subject of
models. And... TOYS.
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Mammals play. Many birds do too. But
mammals – large brained warm blooded creatures who nurse our
young.... we are particularly good at play. That is how we learn
what we need to know to survive. Long before there was school there
was play. </div>
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Often, when I am playing with my 5 year
old son and my 18 month old daughter, watching them make the animal
toys talk (following perhaps in the footsteps of their granduncle Shamus Culhane?), I find myself reflecting on what a privilege it is to be
human. After all, there are at least 4 hominoid creatures on earth
right now besides us – the gibbon (Hylobates lar, for example), the
orangutan (Pongo pygmaeous) , the chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes and
Pan paniscus) and the gorilla (Gorilla gorilla). Any one of them
could have ended up in our shoes, standing upright, using their hands
and big brains to make tools, inheriting the earth. It's just that
we got there first. But in play my son will often substitute this
model of a gorilla with this one – and play “Planet of the Apes”
and ask me why they aren't the ones designing cities. In his mind a
world where gorillas were in charge would be a world of tree houses,
like the LEGO one he plays with here.</div>
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I can't answer him why gorillas weren't chosen
for the special gifts of reason our creator bestowed on us, but I can
show him the tree house village in Damanhur in northern Italy where
I did a renewable energy workshop last year, and where I will take
him to visit this summer, a tree house village built by a group of
artists and environmentalists who once had a gorilla living with
them.</div>
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He also knows his Daddy spent a year at a National Geographic
research site in Borneo studying orangutans and that they are very
easty to get along with if we chose to design our living spaces to
accommodate rather than hurt them. </div>
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I can't answer him why the other
“manimals” in his toy collection haven't come true – lion-men
evolving from lions, tiger-men from tigers. He knows that bears already spend
part of their lives bipedal, he knows that polar bears are in danger of
extinction and will have to adapt to human conditions or go extinct,
so when he sees them in a circus he figures that this might be the beginning of domestication and adjustment to co-existence in the anthropocene era. He accepts that crocodile men
probably wouldn't be feasible, despite the hundreds of millions of
years that reptilians ruled the earth before the dinosaurs went
extinct, because he gets that brain size relative to body size has
something, if not everything, to do with creating a civilization.
For the same reason, hermit crab pirates and octopus pirates don't
seem realistic to him, despite the complexity of the brains and eyes
of cephalopods. But cetaceans – dolphins, orcas and whales – both delight and
confuse him. He knows they have a sophisticated language and that even Humpback Whales are tool users, cooperatively constructing bubble nets to trap fish. He feels that they are only limited by their lack of
hands, and after playing “Ecco the Dolphin” on his playstation 2,
in which humans and dolphins cooperate to save the earth, and hearing
how his father once spoke sign language to the dolphin Akimake in a
laboratory in Hawaii when I graduated from Harvard, he is convinced
we CAN work together.
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But of course, it
is we humans who are the dominant species among the millions of life
forms on Earth, and as we know from Spiderman, another tale of
hybridity between non-humans and humans that is part of our popular
mythology “with great power comes great responsibility”. In an
age of genetic engineering we must think through our role as stewards
of the genetic heritage of our living planet. But we have to stop
blaming human beings and stop thinking of ourselves as the problem,
as though the world would be better off without us. Of all the
creatures with which we share this animal planet, only we have the
capacity to protect life and civilization from the inevitable
destruction that another meteor or the expansion of the sun will
cause. Only we have the capacity to bring macrocellular life out
beyond our solar system. So we do have a great responsibility. We
just have to think a little differently, and remember, as the Chinese
are fond of saying “every new child born on the planet comes not
only with a mouth to feed but with two hands to feed it... and to
help others”.<br />
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I keep these toy
animals around me so that I never forget that helping others includes
helping those without hands, helping those with paws and wings and
flippers and four, six or eight or more feet. If we don't include
all creatures, great and small, in our planning, we break the great
chain of being and tear asunder the web of life that subtends all we
do as human beings. And we must also plan for the invisible
creatures of this biosphere that actually make the world go round
with their constant processes of transduction through cycles of
decay. They alone can help us survive.</div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Kids get it. Even today they play with
toys that teach them about how fun it can be to work with garbage,
like these “Trash Pack” figures that I bought here in Istanbul,
which celebrate toilets and kitchen garbage as something fascinating
and alive and worth paying attention to... a definite pre-requisite
if we are going to teach our children that we can turn the trash that
our ever growing population in our burgeoning cities into assets
rather than liabilities. Toys like this are paving the way for a
brighter future, they just have to be properly contextualized by
parents and educators and policy makers. Then the leaders of
tomorrow will know, because of the narratives they played out as
kids, what to do with these incredible resources that today we
simply throw away.</div>
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Through play we model future realities
and through play we can try them out in safe environments in which,
as the economists put it, the “transaction costs are low”. That
just means that the consequences of any given failure aren't so bad.
</div>
<br />
<br />
A belief in cooperation between humans and non-humans, and betweeen civilization and nature can be fostered through the proper use of tools like toys and video games and cartoons. Through play and fantasy we model future
realities so that we can try them out in safe environments in which,
as the economists put it, the “transaction costs are low”. That
just means that the consequences of any given failure aren't so bad. And as Bucky said, "I only learn what to do when I have failures.. There is no such thing as a failed experiment, only experiments with unexpected outcomes."</div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
In toyland, children and child-like
adults (engineers,scientists, architects, urban planners like myself)
get to make models to play out given scenarios and test them against
others. We get to think out loud through models. We get to role play
and adopt different points of view.
</div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
If there are problems with current reality one
solution is to let as many people as possible in on the planning of a
desirable future by letting them play the alternatives so they can
choose what works best.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Again Fuller told us,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"> "</span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">We have reached the point where we are now possessed of sufficient
information for each individual human to dare to exercise the option
to ``make it'' rather than having to depend on the decisions of an
educated elite."
</span></div>
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</div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Most kids and lots of adults know this, and
it is no accident that so many of us spend countless hours playing
video games and playing with LEGO, and no mystery that the LEGO Movie
is one of the top grossing films of the year. The LEGO movie has a
message that is similar to Bucky Fuller's and to my own – everything CAN be awesome, the
world can be a super place, if we allow creativity to flourish and
stop looking at things in a rigid way. In the LEGO Movie, Emmet, a
“common builder”, and President Business both learn that we can
all be special and work together to make life better once we allow
ourselves to go sometimes go off plan and embrace the unanticipated
results of synergy and creativity. "It is not for me to change you. The question is, how can I be of service
to you without diminishing your degrees of freedom?" said Fuller, and whether we are talking about the LEGO Universe or the one we live in, we are each "local Universe
problem-solvers in support of the integrity of eternally regenerative
Universe."</div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
As in LEGO, our universe consists of
ever-changing interchangeable parts. All the bricks, all the parts
exist, and can be put together in myriad ways, sometimes creating
great functionality and beauty, sometimes according to predefined
directions that replicate what others discovered and liked, and
sometimes according to our own personal whims and explorations. When we take
what already exists and do a mash up with what we would like to
exist, we find new ways of looking at the world.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
This is what I have attempted to do
here, with this playful model, wherein I have taken some pieces from
LEGO, some from a dollhouse at FAO Schwartz, and some that I and
students from our Envisaj Mercy College Environmental Sustainability
and Justice Club created from art supplies and even 3D printing.
</div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Let's first take a look at some of the
toys available to kids today illustrating our dystopian nightmares.
The first, as I've mentioned, is a Call of Duty set with a geodesic
dome. What my students have done, however, is taken the geodesic
domes from the games and make them into classrooms and dorms, just
like we saw this January when I took them on a trip to the Green
Apprenticeship Program at Kibbutz Lotan in southern Israel. There
the students are trained to build low cost dome houses with metal
frames and straw bales that not only can withstand earthquakes and
storms, but have a high insulation value, making them require almost
no air conditioning in the summer and only solar heating in the
winter. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4yWgyMWuzO1tPQiWgICmdL4znJlaIgGsSh6pcjgRVmgslIkNXiZ3hXOi2aYBWNcDdifwv03Xp963eyqcWgM9IJM_Vmz2BczEheeHFxPT_d2NZq2xmVBKMIiOxEEyP9_6B8gPwYePvig/s1600/20140115_123702.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4yWgyMWuzO1tPQiWgICmdL4znJlaIgGsSh6pcjgRVmgslIkNXiZ3hXOi2aYBWNcDdifwv03Xp963eyqcWgM9IJM_Vmz2BczEheeHFxPT_d2NZq2xmVBKMIiOxEEyP9_6B8gPwYePvig/s1600/20140115_123702.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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Kids around the world are actually familiar with earth
dwellings and other well insulated structures that integrate into the
landscape and provide shelter and food – they are found in movies
like Star Wars, which was filmed in real earth dwellings that I
stayed in in Tunisia, and in fantasies like the Hobbit. What most
kids don't know is that these types of structures are real, are
comfortable and are practical.</div>
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Fantasy is built from bits of reality and the two turn around each other like a Mobius strip. Artists try out scenarios in fantasy that can act as reservoirs of ideas for times when we face crises or changing environmental needs in reality. In another popular set from the Call of Duty game, for example, players learn that they can better survive a zombie apocalypse
with the use of a wind generator. Of course this model wind
generator is a mere prop, but it gets the idea across. And we don't
have to wait for the dead to rise and take over the earth in order to
implement renewable energy.</div>
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<a href="http://www.zombiegift.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/call-of-duty-black-ops-zombie-tranzit-farm-megablocks-zombies.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.zombiegift.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/call-of-duty-black-ops-zombie-tranzit-farm-megablocks-zombies.jpg" height="320" width="320" /></a></div>
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As it turns out there are lots of toys
on the market that enable young people to build their own functioning
wind generators, and this illustrates a key concept here –
SCALABILITY! Once you have built something in miniature it is fairly
easy to bring it up to scale until you can take care of your own
needs or even those of a community or a city. As I like to say,
start small, then grow bigger. The principles can be almost the same.</div>
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<a href="http://www.wissenschaft-shop.de/out/pictures/wysiwigpro/802261_Wind-Energie-590-HB.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.wissenschaft-shop.de/out/pictures/wysiwigpro/802261_Wind-Energie-590-HB.jpg" height="320" width="278" /></a></div>
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And why stop there? Once you understand
the principles of the dynamo through a toy wind generator, it becomes
obvious that you can use a lot of other things to turn the dynamo.
This toy kit shows the “hydroelectric” solution – it is
essentially the same as the wind generator except that it uses water
pressure to turn the dynamo. Kids playing with these toys quickly
realize that they could use bicycles or their hands, and that steam
engines, coal burning and oil burning and nuclear power plants are
all variants on the same theme – simply ways of getting turbines to
spin in order to spin a magnet around a copper coil. In fact many
toys incorporate the magnet and the copper coil as part of the
lesson. </div>
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<a href="http://www.thamesandkosmos.com/products/images/new/2013fullsize/624811_hydropower_pp_full.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.thamesandkosmos.com/products/images/new/2013fullsize/624811_hydropower_pp_full.jpg" height="222" width="320" /></a></div>
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The problem, once again, is a lack of
integration.</div>
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In the LEGO Architecture series, for
example, we have the famous Frank Lloyd Wright ecological house
“Falling Water”. But whereas the idea of the real house was to
simply make a house that fit aesthetically into the wilderness
landscape, Wright himself seems to have had no idea that he could
have powered the entire house with the water that he built into the
design. But a kid with these two toys can put them together and,
voila, we have a beautiful and sustainable house!</div>
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<a href="http://www.urbanbydesignonline.com/storage/Falling_Water_01.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1260209011787" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.urbanbydesignonline.com/storage/Falling_Water_01.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1260209011787" height="250" width="320" /></a></div>
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Similarly, in the same architecture
series, we see the Farnsworth House, also a classic of environmental
architecture. What we don't learn from the traditional narrative, is
the importance of building houses on elevated platforms. When I was
building a research lodge in Guatemala in the rain forest, and when I
was living in Borneo, we took our cues from the Belizeans who
traditionally built their houses on stilts on in the trees.</div>
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<a href="http://www.traveladventures.org/countries/myanmar/images/inle-lake14.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.traveladventures.org/countries/myanmar/images/inle-lake14.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
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The idea
was simple – a house on stilts is safe in a flood and also permits
greater biodiversity and soil fertility. Where most human habitations
are seen as barriers to the non-human world, elevated houses permit
not only water but other animals to pass underneath. Root systems are
not damaged and ecological cycles of decay and regeneration are
maintained. In Borneo we didn't have to worry about snakes or
scorpions in the house, and we frequently had giant monitor lizards
and tortoises hanging out under the house. In a Dyak village I
stayed in, the people lived above the forest floor and their Babi
Hutan, or forest pigs, lived beneath the house, transforming toilet
wastes into food. This kind of integrated ecology can only be
achieved by using vertical space. </div>
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<a href="http://www.brennanletkeman.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Farnsworth2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.brennanletkeman.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Farnsworth2.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://www.toysrus.com.au/www/732/files/416908-lego-creator-family-house.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.toysrus.com.au/www/732/files/416908-lego-creator-family-house.jpg" height="320" width="320" /></a></div>
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The traditional house, shown here, has
all sorts of improvements that need to be made if it is to be
sustainable, many of which are shown in this diagram from the
textbook we use in my class. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6uTmeRAmePPcgkw4FthpQzHLfqyjGp49nZx-vdU774NXtBNhyphenhyphenDrFLKmE3LdBGJu6SklZu2OMDPG8yNqr9LubCN0VP-TegXEJOJddKo4SVdPgMFoc98KO0OVhopYbIQ3JwWE_6aHTpLQ/s1600/withgotsustainablehouse.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6uTmeRAmePPcgkw4FthpQzHLfqyjGp49nZx-vdU774NXtBNhyphenhyphenDrFLKmE3LdBGJu6SklZu2OMDPG8yNqr9LubCN0VP-TegXEJOJddKo4SVdPgMFoc98KO0OVhopYbIQ3JwWE_6aHTpLQ/s1600/withgotsustainablehouse.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
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Lego has a new Creator House with Solar Panels, so that part is becoming mainstream. </div>
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But there are many other ways to play our way to sustainability!</div>
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Because sustainability is part of the
curriculum in my class, we can take a LEGO house like this and make little movie
scripts where we say, “hey, did you know you can take a so-called
“normal” house like this and retro-fit it to make it more
efficient. For example, just by adding overhangs on south facing
windows, considerable energy savings can be achieved – in the
summer when the sun is high, the windows are shaded, while in the
winter when the sun is low the house gets heat and light from the
sunshine. The addition of decidious trees on the south side also
helps with this – the leaves of the trees in the summer block the
suns rays when they aren't needed, but they fall in the fall and so
by the winter the sun reaches the house, heating it up. This kind of
up-front planning and design is the essence of the “Permaculture”
or permanent culture design philosophy. </div>
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Retrofitting existing houses is also
the philosophy of Bosch. With ever more efficient appliances that
save energy and water, almost any house can be made more
eco-friendly. </div>
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Besides producing solar panels and
energy efficient water heaters and refrigerators and washing
machines, <a href="http://www.bosch-climate.us/products-bosch-thermotechnology/geothermal-heat-pumps/why-geothermal.html">Bosch also makes “ground-source heat pumps</a>”, a type of
geothermal energy you can install at home that enables you to both
heat and cool your house with a fraction of the energy a typical
house uses. We have a friend in Germany who put a vertical loop heat
pump in his house with radiant floor heating and now the entire house
can meet its needs with rooftop solar panels that even power the
robotic electric lawn mower. And we ourselves have a highly
efficient inverted gas powered tankless water heater that works perfectly with our vacuum
tube solar hot water system – a system that can even boil water in
winter on a sunny day.<br />
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In my house, of course, we focus on the
two rooms of the house that, in my opinion, hold the key to
sustainability. They are the places in our civilization that consume
the most energy and the most water and create the most waste. They
are where the battle for survival of life as we know it can be won –
and they are places within our control, places where everybody can
pitch in and make a difference, because they are sometime we all
have: kitchens and bathrooms.</div>
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In our bathrooms and kitchens we use
up electricity, gas and water and produce contaminated water and
garbage bins filled with organic materials that don't just create bad
smells, but attract vermin and can create disease. But as we learned
in India, those wastes, the grey and black water, and the piles of
smelly organic trash are really sources of nutrients and embedded
solar energy and useful microbes and can be harnessed to make
fertile soil and clean fuel.
</div>
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<br /></div>
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All one has to do is look beyond the
garbage in the kitchen and bathroom to see the garbage in our minds.
In my house the shower and bathtub and washing machine are sources of
warm, saponified fatty acid and glycerol rich grey water to keep my
biodigester at a happy temperature throughout the winter. And my
kitchen sink is the key to my success in making biogas – under the
sink is the humble “garbage disposal” or “food grinder”. This
is a piece of technology that I describe as being, in my opinion, the
“most important environmental technology of the 21st century”.
By the simple act of grinding up our food wastes at their source, we
keep tons of garbage out of landfills, dramatically reduce the need
for garbage trucks, with all the noise and pollution and street wear
and tear they make, and eliminate pests. The food wastes can go down
the drain and be carried by gravity and regular water pumping to the
waste water treatment plant where they can be turned directly into
biogas, as we do in parts of the US, or they can be ground and put
directly into the compost, as my parents in law in Germany do, in
which case you get perfect compost soil not in 3 to 6 months but in 3
to 6 days. This makes devices like the Insinkerator brand food
grinder my family uses the perfect 'compost companion'. Or you can
take it a step further, as my wife and I do, and grind into your own
home biogas system. In this case you get a liquid compost tea that
permits great aquaponics, hydroponics and aeroponics, and you get
between a half an hour to two hours of cooking gas every day, for as
long as you live.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Ultimately, and finally our goal is to
create Centers for Sustainable Practice at our college and at other
institutions around the world, places where best practices can be
tried out and demonstrated and the entire puzzle can be put together.
We have envisioned such a place for Mercy college, shown in this
model here.
</div>
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In our model, everything starts with
kitchen wastes as the first line of defense because they are so easy
to come by and treat. We've already used these small 1 cubic meter
international bulk containers around the world, with Indian floating
drum digesters, and linked them to these vertical aeroponic tower
gardens in this greenhouse. This is the low hanging fruit. The next
piece of the puzzle, which we have already built in an elementary
school in Brazil and are now building for a restaurant in the
favelas, is the ten cubic meter Chinese Puxin biodigester system, a
simple system made from cement poured over reusable steel molds. We
use one for the cafeteria waste and two for the toilet wastes. The
liquid fertilizer from the food waste digester is used for gardening,
while that from the toilets goes into a constructed wetland with
banana trees and natural vegetation to clean it up and create beauty
for the landscape. To keep the systems warm we use two types of
solar hot water panels – flat plate and vacuum tube, the former
self built and the later purchased. We have solar electric panels
that have charged my electric bikes and we've experimented with
building our own electric cars which turns out to be quite easy –
the principles can all be learned building and playing with toys like
this supercapacitor car. We have a real GEK Gasifier at Mercy College
that transforms our yard wastes, pine cones, acorns, wood chips etc.
into synthetic gas for running a generator, and finally we have a
real Blest Plastic to Oil machine that transforms plastic bags and
cups and bottle caps and wrappers and packaging back into oil that
can be used in a generator. With these and other technologies we are
demonstrating that there need be no waste at all.
</div>
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<br /></div>
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We are demonstrating many of these
options already in real life, step by step, as locations and funding
become available. In our fantasy world however, in the world of toys
and imagination, we can put it all together in endless combinations
and figure out the best placements and scenarios. The marvelous
thing is that as my students and I create our “sustainability
miniatures” and get ready for the “Green Dollhouse”
competitions, we are actually learning the real science and
engineering behind the eutopian dream.
</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I'll close with a final quote from
Buckminster Fuller and then a song I wrote about the optimism I share
with him,
</div>
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The quote is <span style="font-size: large;"> </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">“We humans are
manifestly here for problem-solving and, if we are any good at
problem-solving, we don't come to utopia, we come to more difficult
problems to solve.You can't better the world by simply talking to it.
Philosophy to be effective must be mechanically applied.You never
change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something,
build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete".
</span></blockquote>
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And here is my final song. Consider it
done.</div>
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T.H. Culhanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02974539190597507374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1334849659163883527.post-16111432014218108222013-11-19T21:25:00.001-08:002013-11-19T21:25:14.837-08:00Do you Speak 3D?<br />
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<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">(from the archives of T.H. Culhane, Ph.D.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">January 8 2011</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">reprinted after working with WMST Public Charter School
9th grader and Porpoise Robotics Blender Protege Benjamin Standfield to
create the Sea Perch and Sea Sparrow/MantaRay Robosub and Roboboats in a
3D gaming environment. This kid really knows
how to "speak 3D!")</span><br />
<br />
Do you speak 3D?<br />
<br />
Can you talk in "animated object"? Can you communicate in "graphic novel"? Do you speak in pictures?<br />
<br />
Moving pictuers?<br />
<br />
Pictures that move people?<br />
<br />
Today's children are growing up in a world where those may soon be legitimate questions.<br />
<br />
We often say that "a picture is worth a thousand words" but we still
assume that only a small percentage of humanity will ever really develop
the skills to be considered a true "artist". Speaking in pictures,
moving or static, 2d or 3d, is still considered
the domain of "experts".<br />
But it needn't always be.<br />
<br />
On January 8, 2011 in the German newspaper, "Stellen" (nrw.stellenanzeigen.de) the front page article was<br />
"Experten fur 3D-Welten: Qualifikation -- Neue Technologie wird in vielen Branchen gebraucht."<br />
The English translation: "Experts for 3D Worlds: (Get) qualified -- these new technologies will be needed in many fields".<br />
<br />
The accompanying picture shows a worker wearing a special three
dimensional visualization technology that allows him to manipulate
virtual objects in thin air. The caption reads, "Das Arbeiten mit
virtuellen und 3D Welten ist gefragt -- mit Qualifikationen
kann man sich fit dafur machen." (My loose translation: "Working with
virtual and 3D worlds is in demand -- with the right qualifications one
can make oneself fit for the new jobs").<br />
<br />
The article goes on to inform the readers in this historical working
class area of Germany that many of the new jobs -- in the auto industry,
in medicine, in architecture and planning, to say nothing of film and
games -- demand facility with 3D visualization.
But they point out that getting qualified can take more than 6 months of
intense study, and that the education system is not yet equipped to
equip students (much less retrain the rest of us) for this sudden
demand. In addition, training courses can cost as
much as 400 Euros a day and the software is very expensive. However,
they conclude, for those who are truly motivated, there are tutorials
on-line and there is open source software available.<br />
<br />
An interesting state of affairs. There is a tacit assumption that the
ability to translate an idea into three dimensions requires special
training and that certain barriers to entry for this heretefore domain
of experts will (should?) always exist. But is
this so?<br />
<br />
Whenever I think of 3D worlds my imagination takes me to a place I've
only ever seen in a two dimensional landscape -- the Sea of Monsters in
the Peter Max designed Beatles cartoon "Yellow Submarine". There,
amidst a host of marvelous beings, a quadrupedal
winged clown walks around "speaking" three dimensional objects into
existence. When we first see him he opens his mouth and we see him
produce an ice cream cone. The vacuum monster ambles over and sucks it
up. With consternation he then speaks a gas station,
an Egyptian pyramid and a colorful tie into existence. Then the
marvelous 3D talking clown gets sucked into oblivion ("or even further"
as John Lennon quips...).<br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avq-PWG9IJ8&feature=youtu.be">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avq-PWG9IJ8&feature=youtu.be</a><br />
<br />
But while this incredible talent for reifying thought gets annihilated
and lost to the sea monster gene pool in Yellow Submarine, that great
two dimensional representation of the way the Beatles made people feel
in the late 1960s , it may in fact be evolving
right here in our own three dimensional world here on Earth in the early
two-thousand-teens.<br />
<br />
I envision a day not long from now when technology and our facility with
it allows us to answer questions by conjuring objects and animated
processes into audio-visual existence in real time. We would describe a
building or a motor or even an emotion by instantly
placing the object or representational graphic in front of the people
with whom we are conversing. <br />
<br />
On the road to that version of reality we still have a lot of work to
do, but in my mind it starts with teaching our children (and ourselves)
that it is normal to "speak 3D". Rather than continuing to operate in
linear 2d spaces, painstakingly training ourselves
and our youth to put letters together into words and words into
sentences and then paragraphs and then pages, all from left-to-right (if
you are in the Western tradition) with the proper punctuation and all
just for the purpose of describing a room, setting
up a scene or describing a vector of motion and emotion, we can start
now training them to operate in what my post-modern urban planning
professor Ed Soja calls "third-space" -- a non linear environment where
the medium truly is McCluhan's massage and our message.<br />
<br />
The problem with descriptions of third space (also the title of one of
Ed's highly stimulating books) is that they normally are only ever done
in second space. Ed writes about this brave new world using normal
textual conventions. In lectures he speaks about
it from "left to right", from "beginning to end", following the normal
prepared-speech-for-the-lecture-hall format. "Speech" is still two
dimensional. And we need people who can think, and act, in 3D.<br />
<br />
So what do we do?<br />
<br />
One of my first stabs at training myself to think and speak 3D was to
read and study Scott McCloud's mind-opening "Understanding Comics -- The
Invisible Art" (and moving on to his equally riveting sequels<br />
<br />
"Reinventing Comics: How Imagination and Technology Are Revolutionizing an Art Form" and "Making Comics").<br />
<br />
Now I am toying with writing reports using the software program "Comic
Life" rather than Microsoft Word, and trying to think not only about how
to use pictures and graphs to illustrate points better, but how to use
layout and space, size and color, and other
design principles like gradation, repitition, unity, contrast, and
harmony (what my father, animation historian John Culhane, used to call
"GRUCH" so I would remember them!).<br />
<br />
My next steps are doing all the tutorials I can find and find time for
to better my skills in the Gimp, Sketchup, Blender, Unity 3D, Celtx,
CamStudio, Suicidator City Generator, MakeHuman, Scribus, Elder Scrolls
Construction Set, Sims3 and other animation,
game engine, 3d visualization audio and video production software (like
many in the NGO/Philanthropy world I can't afford Maya, 3D Studio Max or
Cinema 4D so I use what I can find).<br />
<br />
When I answer questions about our work on solar hot water systems and
biogas systems in the real world, I try more and more to answer them
using these software resources and the techniques of audio-visual
production and graphic representation I'm learning
from book's like McClouds.<br />
<br />
In effect I am trying to learn to speak 3D. And to carry on a
conversation or give an explanation using hypertext, illustrative
hyperlinks and some good 2D and moving representations of the three
dimensional (really n-dimensional) reality we inhabit.<br />
<br />
In my line of work it is actually very important to develop these skills
now, not in the future, because so many of the people we are trying to
reach (in our sustainable development efforts) are separated from us by
language barriers and cultural barriers and
class barriers and lots and lots of real three dimensional space.<br />
<br />
The use of multi-media, of music and video and gaming and -- let's face
it -- FUN -- are paramount in importance if we want to share real
solutions for empowering people and preserving or creating healthy
environments. This is a point His Excellency former
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo made both publically, when we
presented together at the melody-dialouge for civilization conference in
Geneva, and privately when I stayed at his home last summer building
biogas digestors with his family and community.
We are both on the board of the UNESCO sponsored Melody Dialouge
organization because we and many others (like Melody Dialouge founder
Mehri Madarshahi and 5D founder Tali Krakowsky and I think all of us who
participated in the FMX conference) believe that
we must act now to use all available channels of communication for the
necessary dialogue about real things that humanity must come together on
to preserve (and better) civilization.<br />
<br />
And so this was the intent of creating this forum on Blending Realities
here on facebook -- to create multiplier effects and accelerators, share
insights and skills so that we can be part of that evolving generation
of human beings who not only thinks, but
who eventually, inevitably will speak, in surround sound, melodic and
musically intoned, audio-visually enhanced, animated 3D. <br />
<br />
Or should we say 5D?<br />
<br />
Can you speak 5D?<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div>
<br />
<div>
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: 13px;">Dr. Thomas H. Culhane<br />
Visiting Facuty Researcher<br />
School of Health and Natural Sciences and Social and Behavioral Sciences</span></span></div>
</div>
T.H. Culhanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02974539190597507374noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1334849659163883527.post-25707739889943387272013-10-27T14:34:00.000-07:002013-10-28T11:25:48.627-07:00Why Food Waste Grinders are a key to Sustainable Development<span style="font-size: x-small;">The following is the presentation T.H. Culhane of Solar CITIES Solutions gave at the Insinkerator International Marketing Strategy Meeting in London. England, Monday October 21st, 2013.</span><br />
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Hi, I’m T.H. Culhane, and behind me in the picture on the left are live hippos in the Okavanga Delta in Botswana, while behind my wife and son in the picture on the right is an elephant. The reason we both have food waste grinders in our arms is because we humans don’t have the mighty teeth and jaws that these behemoths have, and without such teeth and jaws it is very difficult to chew up organic matter to the point where bacteria can quickly and efficiently turn it into energy and fertilizer. Because of this, organic garbage tends to build up faster than nature can properly recycle it, and this creates environmental and social problems that need to be solved.<br />
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But once equipped with machines that act as the same powerful teeth and jaws, we human beings, like the giant herbivores of the African savannah from which we all developed, can become powerful transformers of the abundant solar energy that plants absorb each day, making it readily available as fuel and fertilizer to make our lives better. And that’s why we and our friends take food waste grinders with us wherever we go.<br />
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From the the urban shantytowns, jungles and savannahs of the Middle East and Africa to the last villages at the base of Mt. Everest in Nepal, I have been using food waste grinders as the essential tool in my arsenal to fight poverty, disease, deforestation, malnutrition, and pollution while guaranteeing energy security. Because of the importance of this technology I treat food grinders in a “don’t leave home without ‘em” way. This is no exaggeration. -- <br />
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Because food grinders are not available in many countries, because they are usually unknown as part of an environmental solution set, and are since they are often prohibitively expensive in developing countries because of high poverty levels, constrained markets and extraordinarily high import duties and other trade restrictions -- factors that sometimes make an equivalent unit cost up to 5 times the cost we can buy it for in the US - I am frequently seen on airplanes and buses carrying a food waste grinder like these Insinkerators with me wherever I go. <br />
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Even my wife, when she brought our baby to visit me in the slums of Cairo where I was working on solving food waste issues, brought a food waste grinder in her backpack. She carried from the US to Germany and on to Egypt so that our Solar CITIES colleagues Mostafa Hussein, a young carpenter and Hussein Farag a retired metal worker and accountant whom we trained as renewable energy experts, could install the first food grinder in the thousand year old Islamic city to serve the solar heated rooftop biogas system we had built on Hussein’s roof. While doing my Ph.D. studies on hot water and cooking fuel, when my wife and I were living in this vermin and fly infested slum a place where our friend’s baby was actually bitten and killed in her crib by rats that couldn’t get into the sealed garbage can, we learned that the best way to deal with such plagues was to grind organic wastes and put them in a tank on the roof to be transformed into safe clean fuel and fertilizer.<br />
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In fact for the past 4 years I’ve presented the importance of food grinding on stages around the world, like the stages in these pictures from National Geographic in Washington DC, in Spain, in Egypt and at environmental conferences from Aspen to Istanbul, declaring that the most important environmental technology for solving our environmental challenges in the 21st century is actually the humble “garbage disposal”, which I have been calling “compost companion and biogas feedstock preparation device”.<br />
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At home in Germany, at a National park in Botswana, at a healing center in the Swiss Alps and aSolar Village in Portugal, and in Brazil we showed people that after grinding food it no longer takes 3 to 6 months to create a humus rich compost, but merely 3 to 6 days. We also demonstrate that the usual prohibitions against using meat and bones in urban composters or citrus and acidic fruit for vermiculture worm composting no longer apply. All organic wastes, once ground up, can rapidly be turned into value added products for the garden or landscaping. Our first line of defense therefore is to teach people that the so-called "garbage disposal" really is the best compost companion and that they can immediately start grinding and putting all food wastes into the compost bin or, if they don’t have one, they can even pour the ground up scraps directly into the garden and simply cover with mulch. But once this local use of ground up food wastes has been established it becomes a simple matter to show people that much more can be done with the high value of the ground up food scraps. We teach people how to construct an anaerobic digester so that from that same food waste one can win not just fertilizer but clean, safe and effective renewable energy through biogas.<br />
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I have long believed that biogas digesters were the "elephant in the room" that few people seem to see; an ancient, natural simple solution to literally all of our organic waste problems, from toilet wastes to food wastes, available instantly everywhere, turning liabilities into assets, eliminating deadly diseases and deforestation and plagues of rats and flies and other vermin, and indoor air pollution and environmental pollution and providing inexhaustable clean renewable energy and returning vital nutrients to the soil, actually creating soil and making deserts bloom and feeding humanity. Yet despite these tremendous low cost high impact advantages, this solution has been “hidden in plain sight” for literally thousands of years? What is it, I asked myself, that makes this elephant invisible...? <br />
A biodigester, like the Puxin family sized digester shown here at the Ministry of Science and Technology in Baghdad, Iraq, that I've altered for illustration, is simply an artificial stomach -- a chamber into which put ground up food and a starter culture of the archaea and bacteria that are found in all animal manures and even lake mud. You use an insinkerator as the sacred elephant or sacred plastic cow’s mouth, put a pipe at the back for the fertilizer to come out, and another out the top to let out the gases that naturally occur as food is fermented -- just like what happens in you when you eat too many beans, and shazam, you have a biogas system.<br />
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When I visited an urban slum in Pune India in 2009 and learned how easy it was to build a home-scale biodigester that could turn food wastes into methane and liquid compost it was a revelation to me. I had visited large scale biodigesters in the early 2000s but had never really understood the sheer simplicity of the design. One needs a stomach with a mouth, a fertilizer outlet and a gas outlet, I realized that, but in India in 2009 they showed that a small family could make their own from two simple water tanks, one upside down inside the other. A feeding pipe served as the throat and an overflow pipe for the fertilizer. The gas collected in the upside down tank floating on the water that filled the tank, and this rose as the gas was produced, taken out of the top, and sank as the gas was used. It turned out to be something anybody could do at any scale and even the little one my wife and I made here produced about two hours of cooking gas every day from the previous day’s leftovers and scraps. That same amount of gas could also be used to run a 2 kW electric generator for about 45 minutes, enough to charge batteries to run the lights all evening.<br />
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This was a revelation to me because while studying for my UCLA Ph.D. in Urban Planning and international development I had spent years living and working in the slums of Cairo teaching people how to build their own solar hot water systems from local materials thinking that this was the most efficient way to use Egypt’s abundant sunshine. What I didn’t know until my trip to India was that fermenting food wastes is really the easiest and most efficient way to obtain and use solar energy. Worldwide we waste between 40 and 60% of the stored sunshine that photosynthesis puts into our food . Capturing that energy for use as heat or electricity is not only easier and less expensive to do than building solar thermal or photovoltaic panels, but takes care of solid waste and health problems at the same time. So it is a clear win win. <br />
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Once I learned this and began to apply my energies to teaching others how to build small scale biodigesters in urban as well as rural areas an incredible world of possibilities began to open up. In India we had seen how the people would soften their food waste in buckets in the sun and then mash it up by hand but we realized that the labor involved and the need for larger more expensive tubes to keep the system from clogging would deter most people from adopting home scale food waste digesters en masse. When we burned up several blender’s in Egypt just as the systems were getting popular, I started making trips to the US and bringing Insinkerators in my luggage. Ultimately, through the vision of US Embassy Director of Public Affairs Frank Finver, we began working with Al Najah University and the Palestinian Wildlife Society in Palestine and Eco-Gas in Israel and started promoting the idea of integrating food waste grinders into the digester design.<br />
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There are now many small scale biogas business starting up around the world. Our friends at Eco-gas in Israel, who are now working in partnership with the Palestinian Wildlife Society, have patented a “kitchen island biodigester” for indoor or outdoor use that has a built in food grinder, faucet, cutting board, stove and even an hydroponic garden that turns the fertilizer into food for the kitchen, making a complete cycle. While there they let me take biogas heated showers; the energy came from the previous day’s ground up food scraps. The secret really is getting the surface area to volume ratio between microbes and food particles maximized and we predict that someday soon biodigesters will become common home appliances, winning useful quantities of supplemental energy and nutritious food at the head of the waste stream before sending any surplus to the waste treatment plant. <br />
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In the meantime Solar CITIES Solutions continues our work training people around the world in the creation of food-waste-based biodigesters at the home and community scales. Through Insinkerator’s generosity we have been able to introduce food waste grinders to policy makers as well as local families and NGOs all over the planet, from village chiefs from the Maasai tribe shown above to the former president of Nigeria, Oluwasegun Obasanjo shown below. Working with Ohio State University/Berkley Urban Planning professor Charisma Acey (photo right) and her students the work has expanded to Ghana. In places, such as the Great Plains Conservation field camp in Africa shown above, we installed food grinders along with macerating toilet pumps to carry all organic wastes, including fecal material, into local community built biodigesters that turn all of the wastes into clean burning methane gas and nutrient rich liquid fertilizer, dramatically reducing the potential for water borne diseases like cholera, typhoid and dysentery.<br />
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Because of the dramatic potential for small scale biogas to immediately address life threatening challenges in waste management, sanitation and energy security, the US Embassy and the Iraqi Ministry of Science and Technology brought us to Baghdad and Erbil in Iraq last spring to work with engineers like Dhia Baiee and Taha Majeed from MOST, shown here, and engineers and humanitarian officers like Karin Mayer and <span class="normal Article_Content langleft" id="dnn_ctr5079_ArticleDetails_lblArticle">Deputy Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Iraq, Ms. Jacqueline Badcock</span> from UNAMI, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq, to introduce rapid deployment food-waste fed biogas systems throughout the country based on the ARTI India and Puxin China models. With the expertise of our Iraqi colleagues, who had already been working with and proving the value of both wet-waste biogas and dry biomass gasification, confidence in the potential of the systems led to the insertion of this highly effective "low hanging fruit" solution into the worldwide "Greening the Blue" campaign of the United Nations, starting with builds we did at the UN compound in Baghdad.<br />
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This summer Insinkerator corporation sponsored my trip to
the Puxin biogas company in Shenzhen China, whose products we had introduced to the Philippines and Iraq, and based on our experiences and needs in the field the inventor and
engineers developed a new improved turnkey mold based biogas system for us to use
in our Brazil favela sanitation improvement initiative and elsewhere. This system
enables us to build 4, 6 or 10 cubic meter digester tanks with the same
metal plates, used over and over again, for just the cost of cement and
pipes. With this system we can rapidly replicate effective digesters
throughout the poorest sections of Rio in time for the World Cup and
Olympics.<br />
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In Rio, sponsored by Insinkerator, we are working with Architecture for
Humanity, Catalytic Communities, Viva Rio and 4 favela communities to
build and train others to build food and toilet waste Puxin systems that
will turn the nightmare of garbage and raw sewage from a problem into a
solution. We start this fall with an elementary school in Niteroi
which will receive all the cooking fuel and some electricity for its 80
students from the cafeteria and bathrooms. Then we move on in our
trainers of trainers model to a montane forest community like the one
seen in the movie “Rio” , a coastal shantytown, and a congested urban
slum that was once the site of drugs and crime, like the one featured
in the movie “The Hulk”. Here we will prove the model of small scale
urban biogas for the world, just in time for the world cup where the
world will be watching. On Twitter we tweeted, "Something big and green
is coming to the favelas of Rio to help everybody win as we prepare for
the Olympics... and no, it is not the Hulk!"<br />
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To make this a reality of course, we need food waste grinders to be
the teeth and jaws of our new Elephant-sized biodigesters. And in true
Emerson solutions fashion, we were blessed to have Julio Porta (<span class="st">gerente de desenvolvimento de negócios da <i>InSinkErator</i> no Brasil)</span>
volunteer his time and fly all the way down from Emerson in Sao Paulo
to Rio and spend all day with us, not just hand delivering Brazilian
Insinkerators as gifts for our partners, which would have been gift
enough, but engaging in a thorough training presentation in Portuguese
for all stakeholders AND actually working with us through the night to
build a functioning mini-biodigester for the day-care center whose
owners donated the land for the elementary school where we will build
the big biogas tanks. This is the kind of commitment to excellence,
quality and social welfare that makes the Emerson/Insinkerator team
stand out in the world. <br />
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Finally, in that same spirit, Insinkerator engineers led by Dane
Hofmeister and Don Gapko worked over time for our relief effort and
invented this extraordinary bicycle powered insinkerator for our work in
parts of Brazil and Africa and the Middle East and other regions where
electric power is in short supply. This is the most ecologically
sustainable, green food grinding technology in the world. We are now
experimenting with this great new appropriate technology -- a true case
of “Design for the Other 90%” -- trying out the prototypes with our
digesters at Mercy College in New York. We will be field testing them
in Brazil this spring.<br />
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So when I go around the world telling people that we really can “grind virtually any kind of food waste into an unending supply of electrical power for a city, or cooking fuel for a village” and they say “but it’s never been done before” I can say with complete confidence that, thanks to this wonderful partnership with Emerson/Insinkerator, “Consider it Solved!”T.H. Culhanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02974539190597507374noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1334849659163883527.post-14103990530710186102013-09-28T18:07:00.003-07:002013-09-28T18:07:53.023-07:00What Judging the Google Science Fair Means to Me<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Of all the science conferences and think tanks I've attended or presented in around the world, the one I've enjoyed and look forward to most each year is the Google Science Fair. Only here do I really truly get the sense that global scientific cooperation and "moonshot thinking" is not only alive and well -- that human beings really are capable of solving and are willing to cooperatively solve the immense challenges of our century -- but imminently and permanently possible, because only here do we find capacious, dedicated minds convening not just from almost every culture and nation but from almost every AGE GROUP.
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At Google Science Fair youth and adults come together to share and celebrate and further solutions of by and for the people.
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Only at Google Science Fair, which I have had the honor to judge and attend since its beginning three years ago, do we find this coming together -- a gathering in the service of all humanity and with a focus on the big ideas -- that is without the age bias exclusions that hollow the usual claims we adults make that we are helping to "create a desirable for our children".
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At the Google Science Fair we have the privilege to work on creating that future WITH rather than FOR the children who are inheriting our planet. Throughout the weekend we judges find ourselves marveling at the caliber of these teenaged contestants and you hear comments like 'these kids are doing work on a par with Ph.D. students!'. We experience the elation of getting behind really powerful and unobvious solutions that can often only come from those whose youthful naivete about historical failures and disappointments makes them immune to the words "can't be done". For perhaps the first time in history, young boys and girls of a rainbow of hues and backgrounds become our peers each year, joining Nobel Prize winners, astronauts, inventors and leading professionals across disciplines in deep discussions about how we can harness the collective intelligence this creates to truly make a difference. This is light years away from the days of "children should be seen and not heard"!
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The Google Science Fair is not a competition in the normal way of high school science fairs, and for that, as a National Geographic Explorer whose greatest joy is working collaboratively with others in our "Nat Geo E-team" to try and make the world better, I am grateful. I have come each year not to pass judgement and pick winners but to celebrate achievements and help young minds hone their skills and take on the Nat Geo challenge of finding common ground and synergies in service to highest principles. The greatest joy I've had is that invariably the youth who come to Google as finalists are already operating on this wavelength, devouring their encounters with one another and the judges and Google team and building life long friendships without jealousy, cheering those to whom we award further prizes with heartfelt joy and promising to stay connected through the social networking that has emerged in their lifetime to change the way we do business.
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Google Science Fair is an incredible think tank that recruits dedicated young minds to join our international family of game changers. Through its emphasis on excellence and commitment to seeing 'Science in Action' (which is also another of our award categories), it sharpens the ideas and commitment of the youth who are the heirs and co-creators of our brave new world. As fellow judge and Google X Team Leader Richard DeVaul said to the kids at the awards gala (and to all who were watching around the world, young and old alike) "you are now officially moonshot makers. We need your help... to invent and launch moonshot technologies that will make the world a radically better place".
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Google Science Fair has become a ripple generating pond where we get to bring these young innovators and explorers into the family and into humanity's "great conversation" to cast their stones and make waves for the future, and the brilliance, compassion, breathless curiosity, energy, commitment and sincerity they brought this year inspires in me a wave of hope that I ride with excitement back into my own work as a university professor and explorer, knowing that with these kids on our team we really will change the world for the better. <br />
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<br />T.H. Culhanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02974539190597507374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1334849659163883527.post-2678532121082132122013-08-01T11:13:00.000-07:002013-08-01T13:04:56.617-07:00Sights to see and sites to visit when you are visitng Puxin biogas systems in China<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />T.H. Culhanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02974539190597507374noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1334849659163883527.post-3887509222064275802013-08-01T08:13:00.001-07:002013-08-01T08:17:56.689-07:00Designing with the other 90%: New tools for meeting our millenium goals through biogas!<br />
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I have just returned from a
very productive and enjoyable time in Shenzhen China (about an hour inland from Hong Kong) with the Puxin Technology company. The most wonderful result for our Solar CITIES Solutions biogas initiative is that they actually
designed a new biogas system specifically to help us meet our needs in
Rio de Janeiro and other locations around the world where we face uncertain terrain conditions and have to dig and prepare with shovels and hand tools. Talk about <a href="http://www.designother90.org/solutions/">"Design with and for the other 90%"!</a><br />
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This felicitous offer on the part of Puxin inventor and CEO Dr. Jianan Wang, lead engineer Mr. Jong and CAD designer Jeremy Wong came when we found that the standard 10m3 system molds we ordered and were about to ship for our builds this year with Architecture for Humanity at the school in Niteroi and with Catalytic Communities in the favelas of Rio would
be very very difficult to use if we wanted to create smaller (shorter stature)
systems (6 and 4 cubic meters) in the field where ground conditions don't permit installation of a full size 10m3 digester. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Culhane simulates building conditions in Rio and discusses possible difficulties with Puxin founder and inventor Dr. Jianan Wang</td></tr>
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<br />It is recognized that in some situations one set of 10m3 molds can also be used to build a 6 cubic meter system
if you simply don't use the bottom ring of plates. But when I was
doing the training I discovered that what is true on paper and a few field trials is not
always what you get when you are in the real world and out of the lab or
factory or idealized setting, and I wanted to be sure I wouldn't arrive in Rio only to find
that "for want of a nail the shoe was lost". It turned out that getting
a single ring of plates to
form the perfect circle necessary to complete the dome for a 6 cubic meter system is almost
impossible if you don't have a way to draw a perfect circle on level
ground and don't have a team of people surrounding the molds able
to kick them into shape from outside to form the circle with proper
tolerances. <br />
<br />I had been assured that making a 6 cubic meter
digester with the top half of the 10m3 system was
possible but I said, "I trust you on that, but I'm the guy who has to
make all this work in locations where the proper tools and support are
lacking, and we learned a lot from our experiences in the Phillipines
and Israel about what can go wrong. So if you don't mind, let me pretend this week here in China that I
am actually in Rio
at the school site, in a 1.5 meter deep mud pit on uneven ground where it is impossible to draw a good circle, with a
tiny team of workers and no ability to intervene from the outside". I had learned in graduate school in Urban Planning the famous adage "The map is not the territory" and that ground truth varies wildly from even the most tolerant schematics and the best laid plans of mice and men.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRR0GzCwrD2N8ztaU-xLygv4VE5Rkw6OOsiPQLXxNjAh31K7ctX0N1zPb8oRoiiK5bY0AuxChm_JtXM_roysW3zlftqk_965ev0ZKiFwRQzVQHXdD7uhQAvydM16T4sRneP0KEbw_w3w/s1600/20130724_111344.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRR0GzCwrD2N8ztaU-xLygv4VE5Rkw6OOsiPQLXxNjAh31K7ctX0N1zPb8oRoiiK5bY0AuxChm_JtXM_roysW3zlftqk_965ev0ZKiFwRQzVQHXdD7uhQAvydM16T4sRneP0KEbw_w3w/s320/20130724_111344.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Solar CITIES' Culhane explains the problems they will have with the current system in Rio if they try to use the existing plates to make a shorter 6m3 system.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /><br /> When
we ran this kind of a training simulation on the warehouse floor without using the perfect circle they had inscribed there, and disallowing anybody to help from outside the mold assembly, we found it absolutely impossible to
get the
molds together in the end. We would pull and shove and bang and twist and lift and wiggle, but tiny
differences in curvature without the reinforcement of a bottom ring of molds, overlapping so the curvature of one ring reinforced the gap of the other ring, added up to a situation where the last of the mold plates
simply would not fit. Where the dome plates connected to the top ring we had a gap of almost 8 cm.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ5VSiCXYD0FYze34LOisG_UAOBOxVacphi-aurHDshPJMrD-8B6Gu8l03TLKcnoj0GMtIcjmf20pPhhSe9NVau4LFiBWL7-muyUiJ4Xgb9Js_jO1ZK_JbPWz3F7QQl5p2pd6NYRNaZQ/s1600/20130725_132452.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ5VSiCXYD0FYze34LOisG_UAOBOxVacphi-aurHDshPJMrD-8B6Gu8l03TLKcnoj0GMtIcjmf20pPhhSe9NVau4LFiBWL7-muyUiJ4Xgb9Js_jO1ZK_JbPWz3F7QQl5p2pd6NYRNaZQ/s320/20130725_132452.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chief Puxin Engineer Mr. Jong calculates what will be needed to redesign the system so the same molds can be used for three different sized biodigesters.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgIizldx1repGoVYvArILIqO4DFUosX6i8ZrovScyejnWA0_0sn0Hzt1cEY7Tik21wwDy3WNWkMH_Qb_De6iRKQksIrF9mElwC8uf-FdaUUiHy58bFIkoPsRoS3ayUJPjp5uy2ZTLeFQ/s1600/20130725_144533.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgIizldx1repGoVYvArILIqO4DFUosX6i8ZrovScyejnWA0_0sn0Hzt1cEY7Tik21wwDy3WNWkMH_Qb_De6iRKQksIrF9mElwC8uf-FdaUUiHy58bFIkoPsRoS3ayUJPjp5uy2ZTLeFQ/s320/20130725_144533.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5-8Aw9szvXRLGv3qxxF2QnniaXilaMtbQaXB5QXtMdbkq7fB-s6UAYqbtkjxqSVkyVAu8JZCfG_Oca6yWVVvNuSDPufsB1cG2TSYVZZ2L3-WwRJVzy7SoAZ5b039sH3AAVCB9zTvN_Q/s1600/20130725_150541.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5-8Aw9szvXRLGv3qxxF2QnniaXilaMtbQaXB5QXtMdbkq7fB-s6UAYqbtkjxqSVkyVAu8JZCfG_Oca6yWVVvNuSDPufsB1cG2TSYVZZ2L3-WwRJVzy7SoAZ5b039sH3AAVCB9zTvN_Q/s320/20130725_150541.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The gap that results when a single ring is used with no way to enforce good curvature.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3Zjy_16ofGSV0l6NI0yWTY0HC1CoLpsZzsGxQVXH5dbgvhzUjhGEuBxUY8MZFpCwSZGRpzIR_Jbl9wbu1njty9FxB3aeea3FJqDe4Usz-s7MO5iKK4Qk2ssfxOH_-hhCo4EW0AGFoBg/s1600/20130725_114620.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhny7IbWEcxHdhIJTSR1srbzwB7mGb-GCz1S-FXVAiamsLdd1l-sZyEJe_yDDmHMjNd8igfonh4KSx4c1cZa5051E6d3K_CQHDaDVYGH2L9wu4uBEwbLk4dats4wP158BwoHhrKoGW7zQ/s1600/20130725_150830.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg5bdCEh-UtKBzDfc36ZlP1Kz7XBWvSEIYl1h4bgi8_nQeehD7q_D00jRw6T0vAXaHe7mgJ7mOMw1zZ6p-XLJlAt048AJwS-rPVf8XoSA3DSpYtWcygYEwMPu3oTgbX-CJNvPSWuevbA/s1600/20130725_152032.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg5bdCEh-UtKBzDfc36ZlP1Kz7XBWvSEIYl1h4bgi8_nQeehD7q_D00jRw6T0vAXaHe7mgJ7mOMw1zZ6p-XLJlAt048AJwS-rPVf8XoSA3DSpYtWcygYEwMPu3oTgbX-CJNvPSWuevbA/s320/20130725_152032.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">For the six cubic meter system, if an outer mold is used, one needs both outer molds as the lower one alone is too short. </td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfNksk57plBZjd1MRlmhsJvl74JO6h4JpNLVDmGAQ37zKMxAF3Fvl9jAO6PFEVPtSzTM3WW28WSptkAMd0YDewsaWUcWDqgjP1DQNdcwj7jboF-qpE5U1TIM789BnU78rUzl2UTW8lHg/s1600/20130725_152428.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfNksk57plBZjd1MRlmhsJvl74JO6h4JpNLVDmGAQ37zKMxAF3Fvl9jAO6PFEVPtSzTM3WW28WSptkAMd0YDewsaWUcWDqgjP1DQNdcwj7jboF-qpE5U1TIM789BnU78rUzl2UTW8lHg/s1600/20130725_152428.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfNksk57plBZjd1MRlmhsJvl74JO6h4JpNLVDmGAQ37zKMxAF3Fvl9jAO6PFEVPtSzTM3WW28WSptkAMd0YDewsaWUcWDqgjP1DQNdcwj7jboF-qpE5U1TIM789BnU78rUzl2UTW8lHg/s320/20130725_152428.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
The inventor and his chief engineer came over to
discuss this with me and we determined that in fact nobody had ever
built the
6 cubic meter system under the difficult conditions I would be facing
in Brazil. Normally a site
will be prepared with a tractor and backloader and leveled and one can inscribe the circle on the floor and there is plenty of room for builders to surround the molds from the outside and kick it into form. But in our
case in Brazil we have very little space to work in, can't use the outer molds at all and there is certainly no room for people to stand outside the diameter of the tank molds. Also we have
to dig by hand with shovels in rocky terrain where we can only go down
at most 1.5
meters and since the digesters need to be completely buried so that a small playground can be built above the digesters we need the flexibility of deciding in the field, once we have dug as deep as we can, whether we can build a 6m3 system or need to go even smaller to 4 cubic meters. And that option isn't available from the standard Puxin family molds to begin with.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtMswMakEQXT4F3XYaW2VI-UnbrccSALh95jtbnlxR2UEXm3zSvIurJtR-0xDrJDodpA2zVrK53-rb0jy_sYjDu-E-zEJSUmHFj8H73wYZEuYx4plF17JRG6-71AoknuENgKV4kQqL6Q/s1600/niteroirender.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtMswMakEQXT4F3XYaW2VI-UnbrccSALh95jtbnlxR2UEXm3zSvIurJtR-0xDrJDodpA2zVrK53-rb0jy_sYjDu-E-zEJSUmHFj8H73wYZEuYx4plF17JRG6-71AoknuENgKV4kQqL6Q/s320/niteroirender.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The site we are building on in Niteroi, Brazil: The green area to the left is the only space we have to build three digesters, one to treat the kitchen wastes from the building on the far left top and two to treat the sewage from the bathrooms in the building on the bottom right. Since we can only dig down at most 1.5 meters and must cover the digesters with dirt and grass to create a playground area, being able to have flexible height possibilities is critical.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTSzCG-l2_DB3vO3S452iKe1LXfBh7SZJulKH7tdtwPxMfZ-wHuaN89FSi3unReui9wzR8_vjaBsS66fVYV56v89k-ZkyIkQrIgVLccB-IVRuYQ7CiHDeHhWXnSr0nrV_8fe3hqCS7Rw/s1600/niteroi2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTSzCG-l2_DB3vO3S452iKe1LXfBh7SZJulKH7tdtwPxMfZ-wHuaN89FSi3unReui9wzR8_vjaBsS66fVYV56v89k-ZkyIkQrIgVLccB-IVRuYQ7CiHDeHhWXnSr0nrV_8fe3hqCS7Rw/s320/niteroi2.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A top view schematic of the site in Niteroi Brazil gives a good idea of the contraints.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLn0KZcEIZbytGEffMZn6Gneeq-1G8RlGFFx67c3N98WITMzkw5eAYX7N2rUdDk1L1YCw8xzVenFb-q5HSpz15JHlHUR3wwUweuyTb5JpQLKtxJOzUyXEBp4PKOcG2ShyphenhyphenQ1lVhjVh07g/s1600/niteroi3.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLn0KZcEIZbytGEffMZn6Gneeq-1G8RlGFFx67c3N98WITMzkw5eAYX7N2rUdDk1L1YCw8xzVenFb-q5HSpz15JHlHUR3wwUweuyTb5JpQLKtxJOzUyXEBp4PKOcG2ShyphenhyphenQ1lVhjVh07g/s320/niteroi3.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photograph of the Architecture for Humanity site in Niteroi where we will build the 4 or 6 cubic meter Puxins. The exact location is shown in the picture on the right, to the left of the existing building which is where the molds will be stored until the systems are built. Subsequently that building will be taken down and the school building constructed in its place. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg47SLs5AD2PUrHDxAwoscuBYDTKy2PBf_5aUM9TPS8oDSacDnOwl5RSzWKvJJMfbBloAY2zjWHE1wY8ETGo4iVh4-q5AUYPXnnB2-ZpedniyLZ2N3jof_xWY2Okz2w1FRADMke5Vrs-Q/s1600/20130725_114254.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
<br />
I explained that the costs and difficulties of importing molds (especially with exorbitant shipping fees and import fees and possible demurrage) meant we could only make one order, and that most non-profit organizations would be in our situation and could not order more than one set of molds. The
fact that we never know how deep we can dig in so many locations meant we would have to
determine at each site if we had the space for a 4, 6 or 10 cubic meter
digester. Puxin does sell a dedicated 4 cubic meter mold set but it is too
small for most of our builds so even though we might need it for one of the locations in which we are working for our Brazil project, it wouldn't be the right allocation of our limited funds. Puxin advertises
that the 10 can be reconfigured to make a 6 but they said, "we caution against it in your situation because we
haven't had the experiences you are describing up until now as we've only had a
couple of clients who decided to build the 6 cubic meter variant. We
wouldn't
recommend deviating from the normal 10m3 configuration under the kinds
of circumstances you will encounter in the field , for the reasons you discovered in your simulation
training... without a conforming ring made of two opposing mold plates,
it is very difficult to get the tolerances right " <br /><br />In light of this we sat down and discussed all the environments
Solar CITIES Solutions works in, the difficulties we encounter in the
field; the lack of machinery or electricity in many of our project areas and how we most often
have to improvise and do things with hand tools. <br /><br /> I mentioned that Insinkerator
engineers had helped us respond to these challenges by creating a
bicycle powered food grinder for the places without electricity and then asked, "what
could we come up with so that we could order a single set of molds to be
shipped to a remote location that could be used to accommodate any kind
of terrain and size constraints."<br />
<br />
<br />
Puxin's visionary inventor, Dr. Jianan
Wang, said, "we are happy to redesign our system so it can be used by
people like you. We want to make our systems the best in the world for
developing countries and for helping the poor. Most of our business is
actually the 100, 200 and 300 cubic meter industrial or institutional
systems while the 10 m3 and smaller are something I invented to help the
world, not for business. Anyway, my philosophy for inventing the Puxin system was that we make biogas as inexpensive and easy as possible, something everybody can do. We want to stop the problems associated with wastes and pollution. I've always felt that if we can get to a time when everybody is turning wastes into biogas and fertilizer because it is so easy and the market becomes saturated and there is no more business for companies like ours, then we would consider that a success. We would simply go into another business. This is not about the money, this is a social good, something we are obliged to do to make people's lives better, like the invention of penicillin. So I want to learn from the experiences of non-governmental
organizations like yours and figure out what the field challenges are so we can make it as easy as possible for the
poor to get biogas" <br />
<br />
With that said Dr. Wang set to work with his designers and
engineers as we walked around the 6m3 mold we were having trouble assembling, discussing the pros and cons of different solutions. I lay on my back with a hammer simulating what it would be like to be inside the digester at 4m3 and 6m3 as it was being built underground in Brazil and based on the length of my arms and how easy it or hard it would be to get the screws and bolts and hooks and plates in place, they took measurements. The most important thing was to have a conforming ring to force the circle into shape. I suggested that that ring be made of a section of the top portion that already had the angle for afixing the existing top dome plates and they liked that.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJNVaBCtzrr8_IUgEK3SdwbepnpbeV2Fl-yAWMhEpeKS3dqKrUwZndJitMewzxJJVbzXDSzwsanpqjVjNEkZ9ZlfBsaMRywTDHRpvqfQ7MxqezwGr9zww13yUuTSdEGbs7T2ooWVT7oQ/s1600/20130725_115243.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJNVaBCtzrr8_IUgEK3SdwbepnpbeV2Fl-yAWMhEpeKS3dqKrUwZndJitMewzxJJVbzXDSzwsanpqjVjNEkZ9ZlfBsaMRywTDHRpvqfQ7MxqezwGr9zww13yUuTSdEGbs7T2ooWVT7oQ/s320/20130725_115243.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
<br />
We finally hit upon a solution where a single shallow ring at the
top of about 10 cm height keeps the circular form and allows the bottom rings to be used
individually or stacked, giving us the possibility to reliably build
three different sized systems out of one set of molds in the toughest field conditions!<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3Zjy_16ofGSV0l6NI0yWTY0HC1CoLpsZzsGxQVXH5dbgvhzUjhGEuBxUY8MZFpCwSZGRpzIR_Jbl9wbu1njty9FxB3aeea3FJqDe4Usz-s7MO5iKK4Qk2ssfxOH_-hhCo4EW0AGFoBg/s1600/20130725_114620.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3Zjy_16ofGSV0l6NI0yWTY0HC1CoLpsZzsGxQVXH5dbgvhzUjhGEuBxUY8MZFpCwSZGRpzIR_Jbl9wbu1njty9FxB3aeea3FJqDe4Usz-s7MO5iKK4Qk2ssfxOH_-hhCo4EW0AGFoBg/s320/20130725_114620.jpg" width="320" /></a> <br />
<br />
This was one of the great things about being in China, a country where rapid retooling and creative manufacturing are part of everyday life. They said that
getting the factory to retool to produce this special Solar CITIES
Solutions ready system would only add another week or two to the order, but
since we were looking at an early to mid September delivery anyway
because of shipping logistics (ships leave Shenzhen for Brazil only once a week, on Tuesdays, and we'd missed one of those boats already; it takes 25 days from China to the port of Santos, and there all 20 foot containers like those the Puxin comes in must await consolidation into 40 foot containers before making the additional 5 day journey into Rio) and we don't want anything to go wrong
since we have one shot at this, the President of Puxin thus determined that reinventing his product for the type of application environment we are facing was the only to way to go. He said he wants to make sure that
Puxin's reputation as provider of the best, easiest to use and least expensive biogas systems in the world benefits from the focus we and other non profit
organizations are making toward helping communities in extreme situations and in turn benefits the world.<br />
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg47SLs5AD2PUrHDxAwoscuBYDTKy2PBf_5aUM9TPS8oDSacDnOwl5RSzWKvJJMfbBloAY2zjWHE1wY8ETGo4iVh4-q5AUYPXnnB2-ZpedniyLZ2N3jof_xWY2Okz2w1FRADMke5Vrs-Q/s1600/20130725_114254.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg47SLs5AD2PUrHDxAwoscuBYDTKy2PBf_5aUM9TPS8oDSacDnOwl5RSzWKvJJMfbBloAY2zjWHE1wY8ETGo4iVh4-q5AUYPXnnB2-ZpedniyLZ2N3jof_xWY2Okz2w1FRADMke5Vrs-Q/s320/20130725_114254.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">CAD Designer Jeremy Wong and Chief Engineer Mr. Jong model the new Puxin design for Solar CITIES.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /><br />A very
satisfactory result indeed! I've attached the CAD 3D drawings they just
sent. This, in combination with the bicycle powered food grinder Insinkerator corporation created for our mission , will
make for a very nice story of companies supporting our millennium goals with targeted
innovation -- a true design for and with the "other 90%"!<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmBEtbbmJbdmQmlK2yPaDJlsK154ERTSSzSwm-A36Tco35mW7-umS4TkP7IUD7ZLus-0U7JBz2JhjKGcysV_BEhnhbT7UQ0Qrv8HpdS54C-0HryHXS1uoxUaBMaCX0RnCHt_CwRq515g/s1600/01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmBEtbbmJbdmQmlK2yPaDJlsK154ERTSSzSwm-A36Tco35mW7-umS4TkP7IUD7ZLus-0U7JBz2JhjKGcysV_BEhnhbT7UQ0Qrv8HpdS54C-0HryHXS1uoxUaBMaCX0RnCHt_CwRq515g/s320/01.jpg" width="320" /></a> In the new Puxin design, instead of having two vertical plates to work with, we now have three. Whereas in the old design the bottom of the two plates was 50 cm tall with a flat top to allow the 77 cm tall top plate to stand on top of it, with the top plate having an angled surface for adhering the 80 cm long, 29 cm high dome plates, now both the bottom plate, which is slightly smaller than 50 cm, and the top plate, which is smaller than 77 cm, now have flat surfaces on top. The bottom and top plates have the flat top surface so that a new ring of approximately 10 cm can be adhered to either the bottom or top plates. This new ring has the angled surface for attaching to the usual 80 cm long, 29 cm high dome plates.<br />
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Now, thanks to the Puxin inventor and engineers truly designing with and for us, the other 90%, Puxin users can now use the same set of molds to create 4 cubic meter, 6 cubic meter and 10 cubic meter systems! <br />
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Above we see two of the 16 triangle pieces that form the top dome. 15 of them are 80 cm long with apex of the triangle being 25 cm and the wide base part 53 cm. The 16th is cut into two pieces (shown on left) with a section about 10 cm being the last section to go in. Unless the molds underneath are almost perfectly circular this thin final piece simply won't go in. This is why one needs two sets of plates, stacked like bricks overlapping, to hold the curvature.<br />
Above the triangular pieces we see the 4 neck rings -- the bottom neck ring which binds the triangular pieces on the left and the 4 wider neck rings for the top of the neck. These, and the neck pieces are identical to what we had in the previous design.<br />
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Above we see the new bottom plates for constructing the 4m3 digester. The top conforming ring has ot yet been put on.<br />
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Here above we see the new "middle plates" used for constructing the 6m3 digester. Again, the top conforming ring has not been put on.<br />
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Here we see all the plates assembled to make the normal 10m3 digester. You can see the bottom plates used for the 4m3 on the bottom and the middle plates, used for the 6m3 digester placed on top but rotated so that the gaps of one ring are covered by the curvature of the other, similar to the way bricks are laid. On top we see the new top ring with its angle lip. It is also placed so that its gaps cover non gap surfaces, imbricating for curvature reinforcement.<br />
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The above picture shows the new 4m3 digester possibility, witht he bottom plates covered by the top conforming ring, the dome plates attached and the neck ring assembled.<br />
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The above picture is a partial assembly of the 6m3 configuration. Without the new top ring one gets to a point where the very last dome piece simply won't fit because of losses in curvature.<br />
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Above we see the 6m3 system with neck ring ready for the neck to be placed upon it. Note the "gap plates" and how they are in different locations. The major difference between the new design build and the old design build is that we no longer imbricate the dome plates with the top ring -- in this case, because the curvature is held by the two rings of the vertical plates, we can assemble each dome plate with its associated top ring plate. This, Dr. Wang explained, makes it easier to preassemble sections of the top dome outside of the working pit and should simplify a build when it is hard to get inside the tank comfortably, as with the very shallow 4m3 builds.<br />
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The above picture shows the 6m3 mold with neck rings.<br />
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The above picture shows the full 10m3 molds assembled. with bottom neck ring.<br />
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The above model shows the full 10 cubic meter mold assembled with both neck rings (but without the neck which is not shown but which is the same as the original Puxin model. Note that the original neck molds, which are used to make the hydraulic pressure gas holder system, can be used with almost any sized Puxin -- not just 4, 6 or 10 m3 but even 100, 200 or 300 m3 systems. This unique design allows one cubic meter of gas to accumulate and pressurizes it under 1 ton of water pressure (the weight of the 1000 liters of water displaced when the fiberglass gas holder is full of biogas) which then can send it to the storage balloon or other gas holders. An elegant and simple design indeed!<br />
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We at Solar CITIES Solutions are excited to be the first to field test this new improved Puxin system that was created specifically for organizations like ours, and look forward to sharing the results with the world community.<br />
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If you want to be part of that community, come and join us in our facebook group: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/methanogens/"><span class="entity _586o" data-fulltext="Solar CITIES Biogas Innoventors and Practitioners" data-group="all" data-icon="null" data-select="group" data-si="true" data-text="Solar CITIES Biogas Innoventors and Practitioners" data-type="ent:group" data-uid="123817927676842">Solar CITIES Biogas Innoventors and Practitioners</span></a><span data-si="true"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/methanogens/"> </a></span><br />
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/methanogens">https://www.facebook.com/groups/methanogens</a>/<br />
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We look forward to continuing the journey and are deeply grateful to Puxin for designing for and with the other 90% and to Insinkerator for sponsoring the training trip to China and the builds we are doing in Brazil. Xie Xie, Muito Obrigado!T.H. Culhanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02974539190597507374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1334849659163883527.post-81127325692226416352013-03-17T22:23:00.000-07:002014-04-10T12:55:54.437-07:00Solar CITIES e.V. Report: Where we've been and whither we are tending...<b>"If we could first know <i>where</i> we are, and <i>whither</i> we are tending, we could better judge <i>what</i> to do, and <i>how</i> to do it."</b> <b>--</b> President Abraham Lincoln, Illinois Republican State Convention, Springfield, Illinois June 16, 1858<br />
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Solar CITIES Solutions e.V. is a German based "Verein" or association, a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing the promise of home and community scale biogas and associated solar energy based 'independence tech' solutions around the world that received funding from the Blackstone Ranch Foundation and National Geographic, among others, to pursue a vision of collaboration across disciplines to meet the innovation challenges of the 21st century.<br />
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Biogas was placed front and center of our efforts in Solar CITIES because we had discovered that it is the simplest and most effective form of solar energy capture, storage and use available to humanity, given that it's clean fuel and nutrient rich fertilizer outputs can be produced from kitchen and toilet wastes. These normally troublesome and often disease causing outputs of society are two things that every human being and community has in abundance, and in the process of their transformation through harnessed anaerobic digestion we found that they are ironically the best bet for our species in our efforts to meet our UN Millennium Goals. We found that small scale biogas and fertilizer created from food and toilet wastes in our burgeoning urban areas can help eliminate indoor air pollution, deforestation, soil erosion, malnutrition, and conflict over scarce resources.<br />
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Formalizing our non-profit into other entities around the world that can pursue similar goals multi-laterally, in a rhizomal rashion, represents a "levelling up" of our vision (to use gamer lingo), a culmination of work I had done since 2006 when I and my wife and colleagues living in the slums and informal areas of Cairo started a German/Egyptian/American partnership that would operate as an open-source green-collar technology training hacker space initiative dedicated to "Connecting Community Catalysts Integrating Technologies for Industrial Ecology Solutions"<br />
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Maintaining that vision, I am now assisting Catalytic Communities, an NGO created by my friend and fellow biological anthropologist trained urban planner Theresa Williamson, who was an inspiration for Solar CITIES' approach, working in the favelas of Rio De Janeiro to continue work we started together there this summer to help solve urban waste problems in preparation for the World Cup and Olympics, hoping to move awareness of the small scale biogas solution to the world stage. When we prove the value of easy to build community and home scale biogas systems in Brazil, we hope to set the stage for a rapid multiplier effect to take place.<br />
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As we grow, now working in turn with a partner organization, New York based Solar CITIES Solutions, Solar CITIS e.V., looks back over the past three years of activities and progress achieved since completing our first biogas education training tours of the Middle East and Africa and Nepal on our first Blackstone Ranch Foundation/National Geographic Innovation Challenge Grants that got us started (those achievements are covered elsewhere).<br />
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This report has been prepared primarily for Dr. Katey Walter Anthony as a summary for our funders and friends at National Geographic.<br />
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<b>Background:</b><br />
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In 2010, in preparation for synergistic work with Dr. Katey Walter Anthony on small biodigesters and the potential to extend their range using psychrophilic anaerobic microbes in Alaska, I returned to our Solar CITIES NGO site team in Egypt to develop inexpensive biogas systems out of ubiquitous local materials that could be found in every country in the world. The work was funded by the Blackstone Ranch Foundation through National Geographic working with the University of Fairbanks and the Denali Commission.<br />
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There are two basic kinds of biodigesters in the world – the Chinese fixed dome system and the Indian Floating Drum digester. Neither seemed suited for temperate zone climatic zones or for small scale builders with limited resources.<br />
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What emerged from the trip to Egypt was our development of a low cost DIY biogas system based on the use of pallette based 1 cubic meter International Bulk Containers (IBC Tanks) that are relatively easy to find on the after market (normally they are used for shipping liquids and other amorphous materials around the world) and can be sealed and insulated for use in cold climates. We knew that the traditional Indian Floating Drum digestor, even when built from local plastic water tanks, and the Chinese fixed dome digestor, built using local bricklayers, both of which we were experimenting with in Egypt, would not be appropriate for colder climates or situations where budgets, space and land use permissions were limited (Figure 1).<br />
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In Alaska Katey and I, along with our teams and with Adam Lowe and his students from Cordova High School, developed a laboratory based on deployment of these tanks and began experimenting with mixed tanks containing both cold tolerant microbes (psychrophiles) and warm loving microbes (thermophiles), finding that they do well together and increase gas production when used together as opposed to used alone, possibly because they inhabit different niches in the tanks. (Figure 2).<br />
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From these experiments I began tinkering with small scale biogas on my own home porch in Germany, and was able to create a reliable system that provided about ½ hour of cooking (and occasional gas lamp lighting and electricity generation) most days of the year. Innovations such as using solar heated shower and bath and grey water to keep the tank temperatures above 20 C helped. (Figure 3,4)<br />
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I experimented with using psychrophiles gathered in the winter from local duck ponds and started mini-digesters in my bathroom using my baby's diaper wastes (Figure 5) I also demonstrated to my satisfaction that in cold climates we could use PVC bags for reliable gas storage rather than a water based system, eliminating the need for anti-freeze or heating as long as the digester itself were kept at 20 C or higher.(Figure 6)<br />
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New York<br />
When I took a post as a visiting faculty researcher at Mercy College, New York in January of 2013, I created an indoor lab based on our work with Katey in Alaska, to test various scenarios for food and toilet waste based biogas. In this relatively unventilated and confined space we captured the gas in truck inner tubes and demonstrated the safety of closed tank biogas system for indoor use. We kept methane alarm sensors on hand and demonstrated that we could get useful yields throughout the winter without extra heating using food scraps from the cafeteria. We also demonstrated that we could grind the cafeteria waste using a bicycle powered food grinder (Figures 7 through 10). Unfortunately Mercy College later decided they needed that indoor space for other purposes.<br />
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Using Mercy college as my academic home base I started experiments outside on campus with Envisaj Mercy, the Environmental Sustainability and Justice Club and began working with the Greenburgh Nature Center and Hartsbrook Nature Preserve. We designed a new way of using the IBC tank so that it more nearly approximated the engineering of the Chinese Fixed Dome digester design, and hybridized it with the ARTI type Indian floating digester design for gas collection, creating the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4muHwRtdTE">“Solar CITIES IBC/ARTI Hybrid'</a>. This system enables both tanks to be used in the warmer months but permits the gas collector to be located outdoors and the main digester indoors so that one of them can work all year round in a heated indoor environment. Discharge of warm water in the overflow to the gas holder helps keep it unfrozen in winter in most situations. The tanks can be heated by waste shower and bath and dishwasher water.<br />
With the students in our Envisaj Mercy club we also developed <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WySy6Ykz3sI">a classroom based mini-digestor demonstration system</a> and made public appearances and did workshops that lead to collaborations and fund raising opportunities (Figure 11 and 12). <br />
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We were able to leverage these experiences into a new grant from the
Blackstone Ranch foundation that enabled us to purchase a new design of
Puxin Chinese biogas molds that were created for the Solar CITIES Solutions effort by the Puxin company when I
was in Shenzen China last summer (Figure 13, 14)<br />
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The grant also enabled Solar CITIES Solutions to bring 10 of the world's small scale biogas experts to New York to gain experience in building the Chinese Puxin mold system (ultimately only 7 could make it, from Israel, Babylon, Egypt, Italy, Oregon, Washington and New York; our colleagues from India and Kenya and Palestine had travel problems but will come to our training meeting next year) (Figure 15 and 16). Through this Blackstone Grant we were able to create what we call the “Best BET” – an international Biogas Education Team – that can improve systems and do trainings all over the globe. This event was covered in local newspapers like the <a href="http://www.rivertownsenterprise.net/Rivertowns_Enterprise/ENTERPRISE_NEWS_122713.html">Rivertown Enterprise</a> and the<a href="http://www.indystar.com/story/news/2013/12/17/hartsdale-barn-to-house-missing-piece-of-the-sustainability-puzzle/4070905/"> Indy Star.</a> <br />
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Philippines<br />
We chose to use the Puxin molds because I had tried them out in the Phillipines in 2011 with a group of German doctors (<a href="http://www.chanceforgrowth.org/philippinen/?lang=en">Chance for Growth e.V</a>.) doing preventative medicine at a retreat school on the island of Palawan for abused girls from the slums of Manila.(Figures 17, 18)<br />
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(One thing we learned from this experience was that when people build they need to understand the hydraulic pressure function of water level in pushing gas out of a digester -- the feed inlet and fertilizer outlets need to be taller than the top of the gas holder and as tall as the maximum height that the water will reach above the holder and filled so that when the gas holder is filled with gas the water reaches the top of the basins and when it is empty the water still covers the gas holder. In the Phillipines these basins were built too low and had to be made higher for proper functioning).<br />
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Brazil<br />
From what we learned in these preliminary experiments and conversations, we went on to the favelas of Brazil and started teaching small scale biogas construction with colleagues from Architecture for Humanity and Catalytic Communities, an NGO dedicated to empowering local groups in poor areas. (Figure 19,20).<br />
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The effort led to funding from Insinkerator corporation (manufacturer of food waste grinders) to build larger scale Chinese Puxin biodigesters sized for entire communities. <br />
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We now have three digesters at a new elementary school in the impoverished section of Niteroi that is near the site of a landfill collapse that claimed many lives, and one under construction in a favela in the rain forest favela "Vale Encantado" (Enchanted Valley) overlooking Rio. We use <a href="http://blender.org/">Blender 3D</a> to create models and animations and renderings as part of our previsualization and education campaign across cultures (Figure 21, 22, 23, 24)<br />
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Israel and Palestine<br />
In the meantime, projects I had started in Israel and Palestine on the original grant that Katey and I got from the Blackstone Ranch foundation needed tending, so I followed up by introducing my new Solar CITIES Hybrid IBC solution there. I took my Envisaj Mercy students and a young biogas engineer working on our project in Brazil on a two week “Biogas research and construction tour” from the West Bank with Engineers without Borders, the Palestinian Wildlife Society and Brother's Engineering Group to Eco-Gas Israel, the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies and Kibbutz Lotan Eco-Village "<a href="http://kibbutzlotan.com/blog/2014/01/17/we-built-a-biogas-digester/">Green Apprenticeship Program</a>." It culminated in a workshop build of the new improved biogas system we had tried out at Mercy college based on our initial work in Alaska (Figure 25, 26). One important finding we are investigating is that it appears that manure from cows fed on grain seem to lack active methanogens as we haven't produced gas in the 8 weeks since the system was loaded. <a href="http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/livestk/01614.html">One study suggests that grain fed cows produce too much acidity for a good balance of microbes.</a> These experiences -- especially the "failures" -- are very important to our efforts. Without a dedicated laboratory able to run large numbers of real world trials, these kind of experiments can only be effectively done if we have enough builds around the world in different.countries and if we can cross compare data from dedicated citizen scientists. That open source collaborative engagement is what our facebook group <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/methanogens/">"Solar CITIES Biogas Innoventors and Practitioners"</a> helps us to achieve.<br />
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Bicoastal US:<br />
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There was also interest in the US as several community leaders in impoverished areas of California and Washington DC asked if I could help them get started in home scale biogas. Most found us through the wonderful promotion we've received since I was awarded as a National Geographic Emerging Explorer in 2009. Schools and individuals find out about Solar CITIES through National Geographic Learning and we are asked to do talks and workshops around the country and the world. We did a training workshop and build in “the 'hood” in South L.A. with a former student of mind in an area once famous for drug deals and gangs where he is leading "green collar job training" to revitalize the community, and we built with friends trying to go "off the grid" in the San Pedro National forest area (Figures 27) .<br />
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I was also able to build at a foreclosure house in Northern California and then to bring one of our original Solar CITIES Egyptian colleagues, former carpenter and Solar CITIES founder Mostafa Hussein, from the slums of Cairo, to Washington DC and New York to assist in the effort of building in inner city schools, continuing a practice of East/East, South/South, Community/Community technology and knowledge transfer that Katey and I had started when we brought another Egyptian Solar CITIES founding leader, Hanna Fathy, from the trash recycling community (Zabaleen) to four countries in Africa to share knowledge (Figure 28).<br />
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Iraq and Turkey: <br />
News of these successes spread through the networks of development specialists we had worked with in the US Embassy in Jerusalem and contacts we had made through National Geographic, and in the spring of 2013 I found myself called to my mother's native Baghdad Iraq and Kurdistan and then on to Turkey to continue the trainings and builds.<br />
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From the US Embassy in Baghdad with Public Affairs chief Frank Finver to the “Greening of the Blue” at the United Nations (working with Humanitarian officer Karin Mayer) to the Ministry of Science and Technology to Kurdistan and on to the streets of Istanbul, we did builds and hands-on trainings and lectures that showed how small scale biogas systems turning kitchen and toilet wastes into clean fuel and rich fertilizer were the “missing piece of the sustainability puzzle.” (Figure30 through 33).<br />
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I even put my Iraqi grandfather's ashes into one of the tanks in Erbil to celebrate the cyclical and transformative nature of this technology, a simple technology which environmental journalist Hillary Rosner, in Popular Science magazine, in an article on our work, declared the “low hanging fruit” of sustainable development (Figure 34)<br />
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From Africa to Eastern Europe to Western Europe, to the Americas to the Middle East and Asia and back again I've been cross pollinating areas with the fertile ideas of biogas in an endless cycle, visiting on average 10 different countries a year and watching with excitement as others in our network do the same.<br />
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As the network expands, the model of itinerant, peripatetic “apostles of sustainability” preaching the “gospel of biological transduction” grows rhizomally. People I had met in Nairobi while on the first National Geographic/Blackstone Innovation Challenge asked me back to teach in the Mukuru slums there with the German Arts NGO Simama e.V, and while working there I met Christian missionary groups who asked if I would introduce the technology to Hungarians and Slovakians to help with other issues that could benefit from this easy waste-to-energy-and-fertility technology such as the problems facing the gypsies and other marginalized groups in Europe. Through presentations at UNESCO the network grew to include former President Obasanjo of Nigeria who invited me to build systems and teach workshops at his home and in several schools and church hospitals. Presentations I had made at the Los Angeles Eco-village led to introducing this technology to the Global Eco-village network in Damanhur Italy and the Solar village of Tamera, Portugal. This in turn led to our Solar CITIES Open Source Biogas system being deployed in the favelas of Sao Paolo by students I trained in their global campus in Portugal. Through our facebook group <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/methanogens/">“Solar CITIES Biogas Innoventors and Practioners”</a> our solution has also been adopted in several other countries and locations I've never had the chance to visit, including Senegal, shown here (Figure 35, 36).<br />
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Meanwhile, the builds in the Middle East go on, with a large scale Puxin from the molds that we brought to Iraq recently completed by the marvelous Baghdadi engineer Taha Majeed and the team from MOST (Figure 37) at a sacred Shiite Shrine in the desert , while I continue my own research into small scale DIY biogas systems for colder climates using local material and thank all of the people and institutions who have invested in this work.<br />
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My vision and hope now is twofold:<br />
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1) To introduce the larger Chinese mold based systems of 4m3, 6m3, 10m3 and larger in strategic community locations around the world for institutions with significant amounts of food and toilet waste that can help spread awareness and build capacity.<br />
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2) Use the public awareness that the community builds and workshops create to inspire an interest and demand for the true (r)evolution in waste management and renewable energy: the introduction of market based mass produced home scale biogas systems that can create true independence from centralized and unwieldy and disaster vulnerable systems. As Solar CITIES e.V. we already have partnered with several suppliers of home biogas and will be helping them introduce their products (like the<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyB9z8nyjco"> TevaGas systems</a> integrated with hydroponics gardens shown below) into the appropriate locations in the world until we reach a time when kitchen and toilet wastes cease to be considered a problem in development, and are seen as the solution to our troubles that they really are once we create a truly recycling economy (Figure 38, 39)<br />
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Food and toilet wastes are embedded solar energy. They are the only resources we ALL have in common, whether we live in Alaska or New York or Baghdad. They will always be with us. And as such, properly transformed through biogas systems, they are the real solutions that Solar CITIES e.V. believes can be our true path to creating a sustainable "Heliopolis", an enduring and joyful "City of the Sun".T.H. Culhanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02974539190597507374noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1334849659163883527.post-35045010015155612562013-02-11T12:06:00.000-08:002013-02-11T12:06:24.833-08:00Go with Your Gut.<div id="microbiome_hed">
<div id="microbiome_hed_h2">
Teaching Human Behavioral Psychology and Environmental Psychology this semester at Mercy College in New York I challenge my students to face the task of chipping away at the conundrum "why do we humans behave the way we do?"<br />
<br />
The ultimate goal of my courses each year is to have students come up with their own personalized vision of "Eutopia" -- the good place -- based on references and ideas they accumulate during the semester. It can be to some degree a flight of fancy (what eutopian scheme isn't?) but it must also be grounded in science so as to lend at least enough plausibility to the effort to make each student's contribution have at least heuristic value to others. That is to say, it should stimulate further questioning along lines that might one day be useful.<br />
<br />
As the professor of the classes, and as co-director of Solar CITIES, I have my own vision of eutopia, of course (a world of solar cities "connecting community catalysts integrating technologies for industrial ecology solutions"!), and a plan to get there. <br />
<br />
The plan, you may or may not be surprised to learn, doesn't just involve recommendations for the rapid integration of technologies based on solar energy in its various manifestations (active solar thermal and photovoltaic transformations of light and heat, passive solar architecture and thermal masses to harness the benefits of absorbtion, convection and radiance, the energy of wind and falling water and stored solar energy in the chemical bonds of food wastes, human and other animal wastes and agricultural residuals). These industrial ecology solutions are key to our vision of a clean, just and sustainble society. But it also involves harnessing AND BEING HARNESSED BY the natural ecology of our living planet.<br />
<br />
And it involves an understanding (or belief) that human beings are not the apogee of creation, the be all end all purpose of a teleological narrative in the universe. It is predicated on the assumption that we human beings are, ourselves, a transitional species, built to serve higher purposes and play our role in the establishment and functioning of evolving ecologies whose sole purpose is to live, to be fruitful, to multiply.<br />
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I'm no existentialist. And I'm no aetheist. I don't believe the universe is devoid of meaning. I just don't think we are the sole keepers of wisdom and enlightenment, and I don't believe that the satisfaction of our needs and desires is our purpose or the reason for our seemingly contradictory, often counterintuitive and sometimes suicidal behaviors.<br />
<br />
I believe that as much as we think we serve ourselves and purposes that are quite obviously human constructs, and as much as we serve our "selfish genes" and behave in accordance with ancient encodings operating statistically over evolutionary time periods honed by natural selection, we are also behaving as the "extended phenotypes" of other beings, the sum total of whose pushings and pullings of our humors and tuggings on our heart strings and passions and bendings of our faculties for reason and logic lead to us following a much larger and more complex set of teleological puppet strings. <br />
<br />
Recognizing this and getting into coherence with the patterns these puppet strings form and trying to understand the various and often competing imperatives of the ecology of minds operating on us is my first priority for charting out a path to some kind of satisfactory eutopia.<br />
<br />
My path to a eutopia rests first on philisophical undergirdings gleaned from the philosopher Jean Francois Lyotard and his thin tome "Post Modern Fables"<br />
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A blogger named <a href="http://everything2.com/title/A+Postmodern+Fable">Glowing Fish sums up the work very nicely here</a>:<br />
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"A Postmodern Fable" is an <a class="populated" href="http://everything2.com/title/essay" title="essay">essay</a> by French <a class="populated" href="http://everything2.com/title/post-modernist" title="post-modernist">post-modernist</a> <a class="populated" href="http://everything2.com/title/Jean-Francois+Lyotard" title="Jean-Francois Lyotard">Jean-Francois Lyotard</a>, where he tells a story detailing the evolution of life on the <a class="populated" href="http://everything2.com/title/Planet+Earth" title="Planet Earth">Planet Earth</a> from the first begininnings of <a class="populated" href="http://everything2.com/title/The+Sun" title="The Sun">The Sun</a> through the development of <a class="populated" href="http://everything2.com/title/life" title="life">life</a> and <a class="populated" href="http://everything2.com/title/civilization" title="civilization">civilization</a>, to the final exit of <a class="populated" href="http://everything2.com/title/human+life" title="human life">human life</a>, or something resembling human life, from the earth at the time of the sun's final death. <br />
Lyotard claims that it is post-modernistic rather than a traditional eschatological fable, because it does not promise an ultimate end, but rather just talks about a continuing process of <a class="populated" href="http://everything2.com/title/openness" title="openness">openness</a>, where material constructs and <a class="populated" href="http://everything2.com/title/language" title="language">language</a> both allow opportunities for <a class="populated" href="http://everything2.com/title/novelty" title="novelty">novelty</a> and further development. In fact, Lyotard, making a somewhat unusual political endorsements, says that the form of government known as a <a class="populated" href="http://everything2.com/title/liberal+democracy" title="liberal democracy">liberal democracy</a> allows uncertainty to be built into <a class="populated" href="http://everything2.com/title/human+society" title="human society">human society</a>, thus maximizing the space needed for future <a class="populated" href="http://everything2.com/title/scientific+progress" title="scientific progress">scientific progress</a> and <a class="populated" href="http://everything2.com/title/social+progress" title="social progress">social progress</a>. <br />
In the end...Lyotards fable does have <a class="populated" href="http://everything2.com/title/humanity" title="humanity">humanity</a> surviving in a possibly altered form."<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.bu.edu/arion/the-enlightenment-gone-mad-i-the-dismal-discourse-of-postmodernisms-grand-narratives/">Another good analysis of Lyotard's Fable is here. </a><br />
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One of the key take away quotes from Lyotard's "fable" are here:<br />
<br />
"The narrative of the end of the Earth is not in itself fictional, it's really rather realistic.<br />
What the final words of this story cause us to ponder is not that the Earth will disappear with the Sun, but that something ought to escape the conflagration of the system and its ashes. And it's also that the fable hesitates to name the thing that ought to survive: it is the Human and his/her Brain, or the Brain and it's Human?<br />
... You can see the immense work yard the Earth will be for millenia prior to the Sun's death. Humanity, whatever might still be calling itself Humanity at that time, is meticulously preparing spaceships for the exodous... Over thousands of centuries, it draws up embarkation operations.<br />
You can see the antlike busyness with some realism because some of the means are already realizable at the time the fable is told. There remain, there only remain, a few billion solar years to realize the other means. And in particular, to make it so that what are today called human beings are capable of realizing them. There remains much to be done, human beings must change a lot to get there. The fable says that they can get there (eventuality), that they are urged on to do it (need), that doing it is in their interest (obligation). But the fable cannot say what human beings will have become then." p. 84<br />
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The question I've pondered since reading Lyotard as a graduate student at UCLA is "what is it that is urging us on, creating this need, despite our existential crisis and our crises of faith? What could possibly have an "interest" in getting us off the earth, moving outward at sufficient velocity, prior to the sun's terminal and deadly expansion and demise, given that we can retreat into our own navel gazing suicidal bliss, our turn inward reinforced by drugs and virtual worlds and entertainments that make getting off our asses to go to outside our own apartments difficult, much less constructing rockets and life support systems and biospheres capable of continuing the co-evolutionary process?<br />
<br />
Returning to Lyotard's Post Modern Fable we recall that this notion of a motivating teleology greater than that which human minds have invented, actually needs no supernatural or extraterrestrial intelligence to operate, "It merely continues the discourse of Galileo, Darwin and Freud: man is not the center of the world, he is not the first (but the last) among creatures, he is not the master of discourse." (p. 101)<br />
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If not us then, and not (directly) God, who then would be the master of the discourse that can guarantee the survival of life in the the post solar era? What creature or creatures besides Homo sapiens would have the "authority" to write the narrative that would enable us to shepherd life's journey to the stars?<br />
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The new age extension of the Gaia hypothesis has a certain intuitive strength -- the idea of a conscious planet -- mother Earth -- seeking to reproduce itself. It taps into the residue many ancient belief systems, with deist and animist strands reinforcing it. But it always struck me as too "group selectionist" and as such lacked a mechanism I could reconcile with my more hard core training in the way natural selection operates.<br />
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To find a non-spiritual authority capable of guiding our behavior I decided that I have to go with my gut.<br />
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Literally.<br />
<br />
I decided that the "white elephant in the room" that we have all been ignoring, with the most explanatory power for how and why human beings behave the way we do, could very well be...<br />
<br />
... our very own microbiome. <br />
<br />
It's sheer diversity and potential for interconnectedness may yield fruitful insights into not only why we often do what we do, but into what we should do if we want to survive and create a mutually satisfactory "eutopia" that is sustainable not just for the next few hundred thousands of years, but unto the nth generation, when even our planet is no more.<br />
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In <a href="http://www.wired.com/magazine/19-10/">Wired Magazine on September 27, 2011</a> Carl Zimmer created one of the most powerful fantasy metaphors for explaining a newly revealed truth about our relationship with nature that I have ever read. I came across it at a Swiss airport news-stand on the way to the Green Phoenix Rising conference at Schweibenalpe and used it's implications effectively for my presentation there. I repeat it over and over again as I travel around the world, and I think it is worth reproducing here in its entirety:<br />
<br />
YOUR OWN PERSONAL ECOSYSTEM</div>
"If some twisted genius vaporized all 10 trillion cells in your body —
along with the hair, the fingernails, and other tissue they create — it
would not leave empty space behind. A body-shaped cloud made of
bacteria, viruses, and other former stowaways would hover briefly in the
air. The cloud would outline your skin, delineate your lungs, trace
your digestive tract. You might be gone for good, but your shadow
biosphere would remain.<br />
We got our first glimpse of these tiny tenants — now known
collectively as the microbiome — in the late 17th century, when a Dutch
lens grinder named Anton van Leeuwenhoek noticed a layer of white scum
between his teeth. He mixed some of the gunk with pure rainwater and
then placed it under one of his handmade microscopes. “I found, to my
great surprise,” he wrote, “that it contained many small animalcules,
the motions of which were very pleasing to behold.”<br />
With the advent of fast DNA sequencing, today’s microbiologists can
delve deep into this weird inner universe, and they’re just as amazed as
Van Leeuwenhoek was. It’s not just the sheer quantity of microbial
cells (100 trillion or so for one person alone) but also their
diversity: Each of us is home to thousands of species of microbes, and
no two people have quite the same mix.<br />
We’re just beginning to learn the effects our microbiome has on us,
but it’s clear that they can be profound. Certain species help digest
food and synthesize vitamins; others guide the immune system. Medical
researchers have linked obesity, heart disease, and anxiety to
properties of the microbiome. In many cases, it’s not the individual
species that seem to matter but the richness of the ecosystem. Just as
the health of a forest depends upon diversity, our own health appears to
benefit from the presence of a wide range of uninvited guests, many of
which coevolved with us.<br />
See below for a guided tour of your own personal ecosystem. From the
top of your head to the depth of your gut, there’s a jungle in — and on —
you."<br />
<br />
My first scientific research involved a year in the jungles of Indonesia on a Michael C. Rockefeller Fellowship to the primary Rainforests of Borneo, working with Professor Mark Leighton at the Harvard University field site of Gunung Palung Nature Reserve in West Kalimantan. There I learned first-hand to appreciate the incredible benefits of biodiversity -- in undisturbed "climax" forest the weather was almost always cool and comfortable, the mosquitoes and leeches and biting flies rarely troublesome, the smells a bouquet of floral essences and the sounds a delightful and often melodious cacophany of songbirds, Argus Pheasants, monkeys and gibbons (which the occasional grunting thunder of a male orangutan declaring his territorial imperative .. "Unnngggguh! Unnnnnguh!"). At times I truly felt I was in some paradise, a veritable garden of Eden.<br />
<br />
Visits to the swamp forests, to disturbed secondary forest areas, to agricultural plots and to the Melayu and Dayak villages, on the other hand, carried all the discomfort one associates with hair-raising (and bloody awful) adventures. And by bloody awful I mean it literally, with the sangre-sucking parasitism of the insects and leeches leaving our camouflage army fatigues (worn to keep the animals we were tracking from noticing us) covered in our own red body fluids, making us look like we had been in the middle of a war, our fingers swollen by toxins that made it impossible to hold our binoculars. Where the forest had been disturbed it felt like the world was running a fever every day, and heavy rains brought not solace but flooding, as if the body of the jungle had a terrible runny nose.<br />
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We saw the health of the rainforest at its best (in its core) and at its worst (at the margins), and it was hard not to conclude that the most important thing we can do to make a better world is to increase species richness. This is the concept behind Phyllis McGinley's religious poem <a href="http://holyjoe.org/poetry/McGin2.htm">In Praise of Diversity</a>, (a phrase we actually learned to revere in E.O. Wilson's Evolutionary Biology classes at Harvard in the early 80's, presaging ideas he talks about in his book<a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674074422"> </a><span class="st"><a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674074422"><i>Biophilia</i></a> about our relationship with "The <i>Diversity</i> of Life") </span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span>
<span class="st">With that understanding (or belief) dawning on the human race, what do we do when we, as a species, discover, like Horton when he hears his first Who, that there is another rain forest like environment, not just "elsewhere" (coral reefs turn out to be similar to jungles in the ocean environment) but ON US AND IN US?</span><br />
<span class="st">How do we assimilate the information coming in about the complexity and power of the MICROBIOME?</span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span>
<span class="st">Before I describe the impact this information is having on my scientific and religious beliefs, let's take a look at the diagrams that accompanied the article in Wired Magazine:</span><br />
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One of the conclusions these diagrams suggest is that our diet affects our microbiome and that the microbiome changes throughout our lives depending on both our diet and our external environment and the way we think and feel. The studies are beginning to vindicate the wisdom of ingesting "Pro-biotics" and avoiding "Anti-biotics". That makes sense.<br />
<br />
But for me there is more and it goes much deeper.<br />
<br />
Considering the microbiome makes me think on far more esoteric lines. For one thing it recalls to me the "biological" theory George Lucas came up with to explain the mechanism behind "The Force" in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace" -- The Midi-Chlorians that are present at such a high concentration in Anakin Skywalker, forcing Quin Gon Jinn and Obi Wan Kenobi to declare "the Force is strong with this One".<br />
<br />
Conjuring up Lynn Margulis and Carl Sagan's<a href="http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/9834092339/student_view0/chapter4/animation_-_endosymbiosis.html"> theory of Endosymbiosis </a>as the foundational science for the Star Wars fiction, Lucas explained (in an interview reproduced at<a href="http://www.theforce.net/midichlorians/midi-what.asp"> http://www.theforce.net/)</a> , "<b>Midi-chlorians are a loose depiction
of mitochondria</b>, which are necessary components for cells to divide. They
probably had something--which will come out someday--to do with the
beginnings of life and how one cell decided to become two cells with a little
help from this other little creature who came in, without whom life couldn't
exist. And it's really a way of saying we have hundreds of little creatures
who live on us, and without them, we all would die. There wouldn't be any
life. They are necessary for us; we are necessary for them. Using them in
the metaphor, saying society is the same way, says we all must get along
with each other."<br />
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The idea that we are, if not universally connected, at least, terrestrially connected makes some sense when you begin to look at eukaryotic cells as mere collections and rearrangements of prokaryotic cells. I go a little further with my fantasy and now think of my body as a massive colony of prokaryotes, some clustered together within the membranes that make up my own human tissue cells, others living on my surface integument and just beneath, others freely moving about in my guts and vascular and lymph systems and everywhere in between. <br />
<br />
If all life forms turn out to be assemblages of microbes then the divisions between the 6 Kingdoms of Earthly life forms illustrated above (Archaea, Animalia, Fungi, Protista, Plantae and Bacteria) don't seem to matter as much. One could say that we truly are "one".<br />
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When I start thinking of the microbiome and its diversity as not just a metaphor but the fundamental reality we are capable of comprehending, the real "Matrix" in which we live and operate, I imagine that I have "taken the red pill" (that allows us to perceive reality in the movie "The Matrix"...<br />
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...or that I am wearing the special glasses from the John Carpenter movie "They Live" that enables us to see aliens among us.<br />
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And by paying careful attention, we should be able to figure out what it is THEY who live within us and without us, many of whom are, in a certain sense, immortal, might "want" us to do.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf-NESFxp7HSQSSMNgnr8XbWAbqanq7WGrzA8MmvA0MtLsTbKUk_dCzm8GoveS3CDJk6luSdlVJwVyyqWrYMQrytnTqmZ7HmwBPWKd_2BIR6w06ofA4hwWyxRBSnHKXYfoDhwP3aKfqw/s1600/they-live.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="164" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf-NESFxp7HSQSSMNgnr8XbWAbqanq7WGrzA8MmvA0MtLsTbKUk_dCzm8GoveS3CDJk6luSdlVJwVyyqWrYMQrytnTqmZ7HmwBPWKd_2BIR6w06ofA4hwWyxRBSnHKXYfoDhwP3aKfqw/s320/they-live.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
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Except when it comes to our microbiome microflora and fauna these aliens ARE US. They aren't space invaders or body snatchers or mind warping machine intelligences. To me they could be conceived as nothing less than the biological equivalent of the God Particle (the real God Particle is said to be the Higgs Boson, but that is another level of abstraction; I prefer to stay with things a little more readily observable for the layers of the onion that I feel comfortable trying to peel back).<br />
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There is an awful lot of speculation about "What God Wants" (I thoroughly enjoyed reading Neal David Walsh's books by the way, and met him briefly when he came to premier his autobiographical movie in Essen Germany).<br />
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But before we can begin to speculate what an omniscient, omnipotent super being that allegedly created us and loves us wants us to do on a daily and yearly basis, I think we need to sidestep the unfathomable for a moment and first get some consensus about what the laws of physics, chemistry and biology imply about what we are supposed to be doing here in our little corner of the observable universe. And before we get into the difficulties of figuring out what the laws of quantum mechanics and entanglement and causality and fractal mathematics and statistical mechanics imply about our purpose on earth, I think it is better to start with something we can at least observe and experiment with here on our home planet and with technology that exists and is proven and available.<br />
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Bonnie Bassler "How Bacteria Talk". At the best you are ten percent human. "I think of you as 90 to 95% bacterial".<br />
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span id="altHeadline"> Jonathan Eisen: Meet your microbes</span></span><br />
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(This post is unfinished. More to come!)<br />
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T.H. Culhanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02974539190597507374noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1334849659163883527.post-86683502630855714242012-12-25T09:59:00.001-08:002012-12-25T15:18:11.849-08:00Fuel without end, Amen.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"></table>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><span class="caption" data-ft="{"tn":"L"}">"And in the left corner, ladies and gentleman, uninvited methane flaming at a <span class="text_exposed_show">woman's
sink in the middle of America from fracking (courtesy National
Geographic). And in the right corner, ladies and gents, very happily
desired methane flaming at a woman's sink in the middle of Germany --
from a kitchen garbage-via- Insinkerator fed biogas digester on our porch.
courtesy of my wife <a data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=658035701&extragetparams=%7B%22group_id%22%3A0%7D" href="https://www.facebook.com/sybille.culhane?group_id=0">Sybille Fruetel Culhane</a>. Compare and contrast ... who will be the winner of the sustainability contest? Place your bets now!</span></span></b></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="caption" data-ft="{"tn":"L"}">This month the picture on the left -- of a woman igniting methane in her kitchen somewhere in the US -- appeared in National Geographic magazine. Today, Christmas day 2012, (in what is apparently still a "world without end" -- sorry prophecy fans!) I took this picture of my wife igniting methane in our kitchen in Germany. The former represents a problem, the latter a solution. The former shows flames from a fossil gas reserve, obtained by poisonous chemical fracking, the latter shows flames from a biological gas reserve on our porch, obtained by grinding our food waste with our Insinkerator in the kitchen sink and sending it to our biodigestor on the porch via a sump pump. The former is fuel with no future, the latter is fuel with no end, in a world without end, sustainability harvested, amen.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent">The
question is, when will a major magazine or news outlet start showing
images like the one from our kitchen with</span></span></span></span></b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent"> the </span></span></span></span><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent">positive, wholesome message we </span></span></span></span></b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent"><span style="font-size: small;">small-scale biogas <span style="font-size: small;">practitioners</span> are sharing around the world</span></span></span></span></span><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent">
about how methane can help us preserve our environments and
civilizations? </span></span></span></span></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent">Why isn't the news getting out that women and children
everywhere can immediately be spared the scourge of indoor air pollution
and the world spared the scourges </span></span></span></span></b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent">caused by</span></span></span></span><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent"><b> </b>deforestation, charcoal, oil and
fossil based un-natural gas? Who among you is willing, this holiday
season, to pick up this cross with me and bear witness to the miracle of
microbial synergy that transforms all waste into rebirth and renewal
and the possibility of a better life for all?</span></span></span></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent"> To be fair, a <a href="http://www.insinkerator.com/en-us/Household-Products/Garbage-Disposers/Environmental-Benefits/Pages/default.aspx">great article on our work</a> did come out a couple of years ago in <a href="http://www.insinkerator.com/en-us/Documents/Disposer/Popular-Science-July-2011.pdf">Popular Science magazine</a></span></span></span></span></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.insinkerator.com/en-us/PublishingImages/InSinkErator/Disposer/PopSci.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.insinkerator.com/en-us/PublishingImages/InSinkErator/Disposer/PopSci.jpg" /></a></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent"> and though the piece focused on work we were doing with biogas at an arts school in the Mukuru slum of Nairobi, Kenya, the editor devoted his entire editorial to our concept of using the Insinkerator and other in-sink food waste grinders to turn kitchen scraps and plate scrapings into biogas, lauding the wonderful solution that we all have available to us for turning a problem (smelly garbage) into a solution (clean fuel and fertilizer). </span></span></span></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent"> But so far no magazine, newspaper or news show has done anything on what we at Solar CITIES feel is the real answer to this whole fracking/drilling/pipline debate: homescale and community scale biogas from kitchen, cafeteria, restaurant, grocery store and vegetable and meat market and slaughterhouse wastes. </span></span></span></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent">Grind it all up, put it in a tank that had some toilet wastes (humanure or animal manure</span></span></span></span></b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent">) introduced to it</span></span></span></span><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent"> and keep the tank between 20 and 35 degrees C and it will make abundant clean methane every day, come rain or come shine, storm or calm, no matter the weather, winter spring summer and fall. Keep feeding it ALL our organic wastes and it will keep making gas long after the cows come home. Forever. World without end. Amen.</span></span></span></span></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2a2jVuFA60dhkgF6Awg5n4rpJnj_S_msjPidtpHXAFQat63L8DSsf1JQdthO9mhuUHNADBBPgotwrF32mGGuz1-rpsA5wpGmmZuC9QYfqSqZfS-3VUtNdcL-OZi5uCdWkJAr13gyNPA/s1600/20121225_153525.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2a2jVuFA60dhkgF6Awg5n4rpJnj_S_msjPidtpHXAFQat63L8DSsf1JQdthO9mhuUHNADBBPgotwrF32mGGuz1-rpsA5wpGmmZuC9QYfqSqZfS-3VUtNdcL-OZi5uCdWkJAr13gyNPA/s320/20121225_153525.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></b></span> </span></span></span></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent"> My wife and I cook on our home made biogas every day. It comes from our two porch biodigesters which work all year round because they are heated by our bath and shower and dishwashing water. Both digesters are made of recycled IBC tanks but the one on the right is a thousand liter IBC with 4 cm of styrofoam insulation around it held in place by black stretch wrap plastic (black so it will heat up the greenhouse in the sun)</span></span></span></span></b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent"> su<span style="font-size: small;">rrounded by the <span style="font-size: small;">inexpensive (~ 250 euro) polycarbonate greenhouse panels</span></span>, </span></span></span></span><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent">while the one on the left is a 700 liter IBC tank sitting in a 1000 liter IBC tank that had its top cut off. The space between the 1000 liter tank and the 700 liter tank is filled with water that is connected to the solar hot water heater in the foreground. Then the 1000 liter tank is surrounded by 4 cm of styrofoam held in place by black stretch wrap (you know the kind they wrap luggage in at the airport, only black so it will get hot in the sun and thus help contain the heat inside the tanks since heat goes to cold and not vice versa).</span></span></span></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_fpPxm9NmIltrGQqDyYcIkw8Oaaxo107UqE5G_EqtIOIYoaQztZMwD5xYga7xcVKqwP0A4OvIcwxnrbKkblUEciB4Qna6y5mn_JEsIyGqaYHBjLaLcqbOPc_B_YhbLpbOY0mS66E2pw/s1600/biogassnowporch.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_fpPxm9NmIltrGQqDyYcIkw8Oaaxo107UqE5G_EqtIOIYoaQztZMwD5xYga7xcVKqwP0A4OvIcwxnrbKkblUEciB4Qna6y5mn_JEsIyGqaYHBjLaLcqbOPc_B_YhbLpbOY0mS66E2pw/s320/biogassnowporch.JPG" width="320" /></a></span></b></span></div>
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</span></b><span style="font-size: small;"> One of the digesters (on the right) is in a greenhouse, as I mentioned, the other (on the left) gets some of its heat from the hand-made solar hot water panel in the center (decorated with the yellow National Geographic rectangle colors). </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The solar hot water heater is just an old radiator painted black in an insulated wooden box with a plate of glass on it. It has a 12V water pump behind it that runs off of the 50 watt solar electric panel lying on the solar hot water heater. There is a thermostat in the box that turns on the pump whenever the heat gets to 40 C or higher and turns off when it drops below that. This pump circulates hot water to the 'water jacket' tank on the left. But both the greenhouse digester and the water jacket digester get their primary heat from hot water feeding -- i.e., whenever we use our Insinkerator to grind up the kitchen waste that is our primary feedstock we use hot water while we are grinding, which is pumped with the ground up food scraps into the tanks. They are also heated by our bath and shower and dishwasher hot water (yes, you can put soapy hot water into your biodigesters because the soaps, as long as they aren't specifically anti-bacterial, become additional food for the microbes in your digester, being made of glycerol and fatty acids and phosphates, all good food for microbes once they have done their cleaning work in the sink or bath). </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">All of our nice warm greywater goes into the biodigester tanks which are filled with plastic bioblocks to ensure that the bacteria can form good biofilms throughout the tanks, at all the depths and temperatures and <span style="font-size: small;">feedstock concentrations, </span> and so that they and the food particles don't get washed out every time we load the digesters with a hu<span style="font-size: small;">ndred l<span style="font-size: small;">iters or so of </span></span> hot bath water.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">We have a vacuum tube heat-pipe solar hot water system on our roof for our baths and dishwasher and clothes washer (it gets up past boiling on sunny days because vacuum tubes are so efficient, and even works on cloudy days) but though our bath water heat is "free" we feel it is a waste to stand under the shower and let that great hot water pass over our head and body for mere seconds before washing down the drain. So much heat and energy investment lost -- until you hook it up to your biodigester and realize that the longer the shower you take the warmer you are making your biogas system bacteria. And that makes them HAPPY (while taking long hot showers or baths makes us happy, so it is a win win)!</span></span><br />
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So we really have two solar hot water systems -- one for us domestically and the other our little hand made one to keep the water jacket warm on sunny days and help the bacteria along.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC9dj3FSHHxSDmg5iigMk-IUSuo-VBWjGKyNcDgh_3kt-nTvbV2UQJeqZcMZ04DoVkKeSUCsPlZ3VF2EOH_BDXpD8ABuy2VqiyYPRP08bx1eh-zdmzWeEBPdIahyphenhyphenkR5MVUV5KLBZ-b8g/s1600/20121206_121358.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC9dj3FSHHxSDmg5iigMk-IUSuo-VBWjGKyNcDgh_3kt-nTvbV2UQJeqZcMZ04DoVkKeSUCsPlZ3VF2EOH_BDXpD8ABuy2VqiyYPRP08bx1eh-zdmzWeEBPdIahyphenhyphenkR5MVUV5KLBZ-b8g/s320/20121206_121358.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Behind the yellow hand made solar hot water heater is the gas holder,
made from a 300 liter garbage can upside down in a 500 liter rain water
barrel with some pvc tubes around it to keep the gas holder from falling
when it is full. Because the 300 liter barrel is taller than the 500 liter barrel it sits in (which is filled with water) we can't get all the gas out. We lose 100 liters of dead space when the tank is "empty" so we are really only working with 200 liters of usable biogas a day. That isn't so bad -- it still gives us more than a half hour of cooking gas every day from the previous days garbage, but if we were to start all over we'd try to find tanks of matching size (that isn't easy in Germany!) a<span style="font-size: small;">nd we'd make them larger to<span style="font-size: small;"> store mo<span style="font-size: small;">re gas (it is theoretically possible for a famil<span style="font-size: small;">y o<span style="font-size: small;">f four to six people </span></span> to generate a cubic meter of biogas from their food and toilet wastes every day<span style="font-size: small;">, which would </span></span></span></span></span></span>give the use values indicated in the following picture:<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2L76LyRuXl5KidsDwGyolrp4lUugramoKvkUp6eddYGZVqpKwilNrkOrPCIW_8ni9_ESakjGAleylaTKoWA9l9VxqPyuDANufHKDfzPSAFdOARgdzOLMCkqQWSZ7tJ-ieRnFVLYMPPA/s1600/Biogaspage21.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2L76LyRuXl5KidsDwGyolrp4lUugramoKvkUp6eddYGZVqpKwilNrkOrPCIW_8ni9_ESakjGAleylaTKoWA9l9VxqPyuDANufHKDfzPSAFdOARgdzOLMCkqQWSZ7tJ-ieRnFVLYMPPA/s320/Biogaspage21.JPG" width="235" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chinese Biogas manual from<a href="http://www.knowledgepublications.com/methane_uses_and_fuels.htm"> Knowledge Publications.com</a> showing what can be done with 1 cubic meter (1000 liters) of biogas.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Those values are t<span style="font-size: small;">he following:</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
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<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[21].[1][2][1]{comment453904528001512_453907761334522}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[21].[1][2][1]{comment453904528001512_453907761334522}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[21].[1][2][1]{comment453904528001512_453907761334522}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]">1 cubic meter of biogas is equal to:</span><br id=".reactRoot[21].[1][2][1]{comment453904528001512_453907761334522}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[4]" /><br id=".reactRoot[21].[1][2][1]{comment453904528001512_453907761334522}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[5]" /><span id=".reactRoot[21].[1][2][1]{comment453904528001512_453907761334522}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[6]">Illumination equaling that of a 60-100 watt bulb for 6 hours.</span><br id=".reactRoot[21].[1][2][1]{comment453904528001512_453907761334522}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[7]" /><span id=".reactRoot[21].[1][2][1]{comment453904528001512_453907761334522}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[8]">5.2 kg of CCl4 (Carbon tetrachloride)</span><br id=".reactRoot[21].[1][2][1]{comment453904528001512_453907761334522}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[9]" /><span id=".reactRoot[21].[1][2][1]{comment453904528001512_453907761334522}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[10]">0.7 kg petrol</span><br id=".reactRoot[21].[1][2][1]{comment453904528001512_453907761334522}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[11]" /><span id=".reactRoot[21].[1][2][1]{comment453904528001512_453907761334522}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[12]">can run a 1 horse-power motor for 2 hours</span><br id=".reactRoot[21].[1][2][1]{comment453904528001512_453907761334522}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[13]" /><span id=".reactRoot[21].[1][2][1]{comment453904528001512_453907761334522}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[14]">can generate 1.25 k electricity</span><br id=".reactRoot[21].[1][2][1]{comment453904528001512_453907761334522}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[15]" /><span id=".reactRoot[21].[1][2][1]{comment453904528001512_453907761334522}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[16]">can drive a 3-tonne lorry 2.8 km</span><br id=".reactRoot[21].[1][2][1]{comment453904528001512_453907761334522}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[17]" /><span id=".reactRoot[21].[1][2][1]{comment453904528001512_453907761334522}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[18]">can cook 3 meals for a family of 5-6</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQS_wbMm75Doyq04oviXVVBV9tcM3olEXW6ORhQ5X8SqEjSYKQGMqSyIBc1nEV0bYUp3Wp3aKxAFaRtg-j4duwiyFqAUrEU8LZkbAhsHtQNpK-imGiFLtxQzRu1YVjo16VsKWz_osW9Q/s1600/20121206_121415.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQS_wbMm75Doyq04oviXVVBV9tcM3olEXW6ORhQ5X8SqEjSYKQGMqSyIBc1nEV0bYUp3Wp3aKxAFaRtg-j4duwiyFqAUrEU8LZkbAhsHtQNpK-imGiFLtxQzRu1YVjo16VsKWz_osW9Q/s320/20121206_121415.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></b><span style="font-size: small;">On the coldest days this December, when the outside temp got below freezing, the hot water feeding from our grey water kept things going. Here you see the temp in the water jacket in the left tank. The outside air was about 2 C and the bottom of the water jacket was 11.1 C while the water at the top was 16.4 C. That's not all that bad considering things had dropped below freezing over night and the biogas bacteria keep working (albeit more slowly) at 15 C.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFePFyLKPGKVAfoGK_6I5d7arK1W82PC9CDFHzmcERAuiTMMcntdp6fKlOGaUGvT3MdzPjzVM0ht2BxJQ6jL0Dl9CjeXd8YoZn6yTzaKUoKuD4rsLWVXAIKGxHd3Ns_Gxsp8pLfM6gtg/s1600/20121206_121430.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFePFyLKPGKVAfoGK_6I5d7arK1W82PC9CDFHzmcERAuiTMMcntdp6fKlOGaUGvT3MdzPjzVM0ht2BxJQ6jL0Dl9CjeXd8YoZn6yTzaKUoKuD4rsLWVXAIKGxHd3Ns_Gxsp8pLfM6gtg/s320/20121206_121430.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> The greenhouse biodigester did a bit better. The water in there stayed over 20 C (and the air temp surrounding the greenhouse, though there was no sun, was near 3 C).</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJYO8i7vatjydVROfZ_UySn2ygg5TEFKavSLvUImccS7jorWR38OgXDOClEOnnAdYUzOpYlkGUGCJaPLRbyG4GcVP6UdX-mc4dPKWnHQpe_60ZxOgQEjB0CmwamFEVDgxPPzS9Qm2XJw/s1600/20121206_121452.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJYO8i7vatjydVROfZ_UySn2ygg5TEFKavSLvUImccS7jorWR38OgXDOClEOnnAdYUzOpYlkGUGCJaPLRbyG4GcVP6UdX-mc4dPKWnHQpe_60ZxOgQEjB0CmwamFEVDgxPPzS9Qm2XJw/s320/20121206_121452.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Between the two digestors we keep getting our daily flame, day af<span style="font-size: small;">ter day, year after year (our digestors have been running reliably for almost 4 years now!<span style="font-size: small;">)</span></span>:</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKigj5Y8MQAzyEG_2Kx6_6AUbUmYsi7WQ-AgLzC5e-20txRrCgpM44Xdm21JpPWx_OyFeu2MqtaKkviVVw8-D-G4JZ4-W9PyRUlCQaX00yX86BsHgCoSMvJC-NsEvqp9S2Vdx1PDufaw/s1600/20121206_122523.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKigj5Y8MQAzyEG_2Kx6_6AUbUmYsi7WQ-AgLzC5e-20txRrCgpM44Xdm21JpPWx_OyFeu2MqtaKkviVVw8-D-G4JZ4-W9PyRUlCQaX00yX86BsHgCoSMvJC-NsEvqp9S2Vdx1PDufaw/s320/20121206_122523.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></b><span style="font-size: small;">So we can cook no matter what <span style="font-size: small;">ene<span style="font-size: small;">rgy crises the rest of the world is experienc<span style="font-size: small;">ing</span></span></span>. And if we need to we can use the methane we make to <span style="font-size: small;">in turn make electricity <span style="font-size: small;">by p<span style="font-size: small;">iping i<span style="font-size: small;">t into the carb<span style="font-size: small;">uretor of our 4 stroke generator.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg71yuBPK7UFP3x9ss60OA4b3ndC9YUjK13eM1sb8h5L-aLzsn2DWSnxr-TIrE0EZ_wkSoOjWt2blqKrr6vXLjp79_RVKQPT535ctT5pPHj4O68LjotM6mCWFvf8PXLGb7vCR81feXSNA/s1600/20121222_192601.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg71yuBPK7UFP3x9ss60OA4b3ndC9YUjK13eM1sb8h5L-aLzsn2DWSnxr-TIrE0EZ_wkSoOjWt2blqKrr6vXLjp79_RVKQPT535ctT5pPHj4O68LjotM6mCWFvf8PXLGb7vCR81feXSNA/s320/20121222_192601.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></b><span style="font-size: small;"> Biogas is a very safe fuel, which is why my wife feels confident holding the gas pipe and igniting it in the kitchen as we set up a picture intended to echo the famous one in National Geographic showing the tragedy of gas leaking into people's kitchens through fracking. In our case we are delighted to have free fuel which we make ourselves along with rich fertilizer from our garbage (the biodigester eliminates the need to compost).</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQnQFwRWZLn1ePRUtmfAu98JJu7ykh3yw4IrpLxXYA1bp4uZK25y3mT3eYoxxLvj3iGOA5Y5EbLQwTpYBqAluXq71l1-jzQCHu51Q9HHdamt0wRwwL5Ml3ZJTXXK9ayZ3HRZamfbkHMA/s1600/20121225_150937.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQnQFwRWZLn1ePRUtmfAu98JJu7ykh3yw4IrpLxXYA1bp4uZK25y3mT3eYoxxLvj3iGOA5Y5EbLQwTpYBqAluXq71l1-jzQCHu51Q9HHdamt0wRwwL5Ml3ZJTXXK9ayZ3HRZamfbkHMA/s320/20121225_150937.jpg" width="240" /></a></span></b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></b><span style="font-size: small;"> The gas comes into our kitchen at a pressure we determine by placing bricks on the gas holder (for cooking we don't need any bricks at all because the weight of the plastic barrel is enough to push the gas to the stove once you have removed the usual restrictor pin from the stove). "Brickage" is useful for running an electric generator on the gas, or a gas space heater, but isn't necessary for either the stove or the Dometic gas refrigerator we have, which uses a very small flame. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidHkHmYtgCvYlYvM3yFpncs0qcXDyxiU621NWaKq2CCcufPj3h6qVB1IqE4xZ75E3h8beNS6FjYFPgFK5gVCsWKtvSbEG68WMk5ajZse1HzooWUfH6_weTCe-baM4qABxOEJkZI7L4SA/s1600/20121225_151513.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidHkHmYtgCvYlYvM3yFpncs0qcXDyxiU621NWaKq2CCcufPj3h6qVB1IqE4xZ75E3h8beNS6FjYFPgFK5gVCsWKtvSbEG68WMk5ajZse1HzooWUfH6_weTCe-baM4qABxOEJkZI7L4SA/s320/20121225_151513.jpg" width="240" /></a></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The fire produced by biogas is clean, odorless, blue and hot, even though it contains about 30 percent CO2 and 70% methane. The CO2 reduces the flashpoint and makes it safer to work with. There are trace amounts of Hydrogen Sulfide which we don't bother to filter out when we aren't using the generator (when we do, we simply put steel wool in the tube for the sulfur to interact with so it doesn't eat at the engine). But we like having some H2S in the gas to give it that distinctive gas odor that would let us know if we left the gas on unlit. Once ignited it has no odor at all. Here my wife is cooking bacon covered dates today for our Christmas meal. There's nothing like cooking on gas -- clean, hot, delicious!</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2a2jVuFA60dhkgF6Awg5n4rpJnj_S_msjPidtpHXAFQat63L8DSsf1JQdthO9mhuUHNADBBPgotwrF32mGGuz1-rpsA5wpGmmZuC9QYfqSqZfS-3VUtNdcL-OZi5uCdWkJAr13gyNPA/s1600/20121225_153525.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></span></b></span></div>
<div class="uiStreamMessage userContentWrapper" data-ft="{"type":1,"tn":"K"}">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent">When the picture below of the woman with the flaming sink first appeared in National Geographic it made the rounds in all of our facebook groups with the query: "What's wrong with this picture?". The intent was to stimulate a debate about the merits and demerits of the world push to replace oil and coal with natural gas and to call attention to the severe environmental and social/health costs of chemical 'fracking'. When the picture appeared on our Facebook Biogas Group "<a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/methanogens/">Solar CITIES Biogas Innoventors and Practit</a><a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/methanogens/">ioners</a>", I wrote the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/methanogens/permalink/446195122105786/?comment_id=446195228772442&offset=0&total_comments=34">following response:</a></span></span></span></span></b></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1lJfISyPVnOaLFqP-ybaqitsNrLM3khSht1A6epuXOlS-k-99P5d80FSxg2Y4Of7JZEAKE_v-GSlmC3Rz8RqI1HgXLzF_vCot1mo6RNs6CqFtNz10mLFnYVCQBMavGEbk2EYkMQGgmQ/s1600/frackingkitchensink.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1lJfISyPVnOaLFqP-ybaqitsNrLM3khSht1A6epuXOlS-k-99P5d80FSxg2Y4Of7JZEAKE_v-GSlmC3Rz8RqI1HgXLzF_vCot1mo6RNs6CqFtNz10mLFnYVCQBMavGEbk2EYkMQGgmQ/s320/frackingkitchensink.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></b></span></div>
<div class="uiStreamMessage userContentWrapper" data-ft="{"type":1,"tn":"K"}">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;">
"
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[1].[1][2][1]{comment446195122105786_446195228772442}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[1].[1][2][1]{comment446195122105786_446195228772442}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[1].[1][2][1]{comment446195122105786_446195228772442}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[0]">What's
wrong with this picture? </span></span></span></span></span></b></span></div>
<div class="uiStreamMessage userContentWrapper" data-ft="{"type":1,"tn":"K"}">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[1].[1][2][1]{comment446195122105786_446195228772442}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[1].[1][2][1]{comment446195122105786_446195228772442}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[1].[1][2][1]{comment446195122105786_446195228772442}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[0]">" I'm going to express a very unpopular opinion
here and get myself in trouble -- what I think is really wrong with
this picture is that the woman isn't capturing a "free" source of
relatively clean energy that is coming right out of her faucet. This
image and ones like it are being used, in my opinion, to distract us
from the real dangerous sources and uses of energy and their extraction.
Methane is the most benign of our fossil fuels and once the
infrastructure has been put in place, swtiching us from liquid petroleum
products to gaseous ones, it will be easy to switch to biogas or
hydrogen/biogas blends. Until that happens - until infrastructure and
public awareness of the benefits of gaseous fuels in general and methane
and hydrogen in particular -- are well in place we will continue to do
unimaginable damage through the extraction, transport, refining and use
of petroleum, coal and uranium. If I were this woman I'd be smiling from
here to thursday, and would quickly hook up my faucet to a gas storage
bag or an ARTI style floating tank.</span></span></span></span></span></b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[1].[1][2][1]{comment446195122105786_446195228772442}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[1].[1][2][1]{comment446195122105786_446195228772442}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[1].[1][2][1]{comment446195122105786_446195228772442}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[0]"> I would hook my faucet up to my own
biogas digestor. Methane is lighter than air and outgasses from water. I
would collect the water and pass it through a filter and drink it or
cook with it -- once the methane has outgassed it is fine -- it is the
same as using swamp or pond water, which has lots of methane bubbles
dissolving in it, and filtering it. </span></span></span></span></span></b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[1].[1][2][1]{comment446195122105786_446195228772442}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[1].[1][2][1]{comment446195122105786_446195228772442}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[1].[1][2][1]{comment446195122105786_446195228772442}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[0]">The only problem with fracking, in
my opinion, is that the greedy profiteers are unregulated and
irresponsible and use toxic chemicals to get the methane out. These
heavier hydrocarbons poison the water. They don't need to do this though
-- they do it because it is cheaper. But those insidious chemicals
don't show up in pictures like this -- they are invisible. And we don't
discuss them enough as the real problem with fracking. </span></span></span></span></span></b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[1].[1][2][1]{comment446195122105786_446195228772442}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[1].[1][2][1]{comment446195122105786_446195228772442}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[1].[1][2][1]{comment446195122105786_446195228772442}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[0]">We make it an
"either or" issue, turning environmentally minded people against a rapid
conversion to natural gas which paves the way for a biogas or hydrogen
future. This is dangerous to me, more dangerous than a few contaminated
wells. There may not be any easy way to get to clean coal, but there are
easy ways to get to clean gas.</span></span></span></span></span></b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[1].[1][2][1]{comment446195122105786_446195228772442}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[1].[1][2][1]{comment446195122105786_446195228772442}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[1].[1][2][1]{comment446195122105786_446195228772442}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[0]"> What I'm not too keen about reading the
nat geo piece this month is that it talks about methane, whether coming
from the thermokarst lakes explored by our friend Katey Walter Anthony
in Alaska and Siberia, or from fracking, as a controversial "problem"
but doesn't talk about biogas as long term and quick to reach solution
and the transitional nature of fossil natural gas to get there.</span></span></span></span></span></b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[1].[1][2][1]{comment446195122105786_446195228772442}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[1].[1][2][1]{comment446195122105786_446195228772442}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[1].[1][2][1]{comment446195122105786_446195228772442}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[0]"> It
doesn't talk about our own work with Katey on those flaming lakes
harnessing the psychrophilic bacteria to replace fossil fuels. So yes,
it is a dramatic photograph, but when I see it I see the wonderful flame
of methane and think only of how quickly we can bring down the net
carbon load in the atmosphere and the poisons and wars and terrorist
threats from petroleum, coal and uranium. Please feel free to take me on
about this, and share the debate with everyone you know. I think we
need to push for safe fracking, compensate families that have had their
water suppllies contaminated, pay the full costs of cleanup, and
continue extracting natural gas in safe ways while turning all wastes
into the real natural gas -- biogas. So... that's what's wrong with this
picture as far as I'm concerned."</span></span></span></span></span></b></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL0fmoMJ6DkqCadnJnp0UQfulBguG4hztEtcfZg_IEzi-Rdue0U6jGUXBiGfpFPJFvZUwpp1TsmYAYc0lI9nk36oB3UTyvchl0lMuP9IqX3ojvz03d5LvffmJU02aZWe0psc8_J3_EVA/s1600/sybillebiogas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL0fmoMJ6DkqCadnJnp0UQfulBguG4hztEtcfZg_IEzi-Rdue0U6jGUXBiGfpFPJFvZUwpp1TsmYAYc0lI9nk36oB3UTyvchl0lMuP9IqX3ojvz03d5LvffmJU02aZWe0psc8_J3_EVA/s320/sybillebiogas.jpg" width="240" /></a></span></b></span></div>
<div class="uiStreamMessage userContentWrapper" data-ft="{"type":1,"tn":"K"}">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"> <span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent">In contrast to those now finding unintended methane appearing in t</span></span></span></span></b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent">h<span style="font-size: small;">eir kitchen sinks</span></span></span></span></span><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent">, we love having truly natural gas in our kitchen. It is there every day, and always will be because as long as we are alive we will have garbage and toilet wastes. And both of these can and should go in the biodigester, returning all the nutrients that were in our food back to the soil through the liquid fertilizer that results while enabling us to capture the useful truly natural gas that the microbes release as they make the nutrient rich fertilizer.</span></span></span></span></b></span><br />
</div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>If making your own methane is so simple, how come I haven't heard of this before? </b></span></span></div>
<div class="uiStreamMessage userContentWrapper" data-ft="{"type":1,"tn":"K"}">
</div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">S</span></span><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent">ome people will say that the reason this simple solution to the fracking problem and our domestic energy woes isn't better known is because there is some kind of conspiracy against the autonomy that DIY or decentralized energy solutions like this food-and-toilet-waste-to-fuel-and-fertilizer technology provides. </span></span></span></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent"> </span></span></span></span></b></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;">
<b><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent">If such a co<span style="font-size: small;">nspiracy exists then we are all part of it, all complicit in keeping silent about the "low ha<span style="font-size: small;">nging fruit" of energy produc<span style="font-size: small;">tion that <span style="font-size: small;">anyb<span style="font-size: small;">ody can do at home. Y<b>ou </b><span style="font-size: small;"><b>know what they say: "if you aren't part of the solution, you're part of the problem"</b></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></b></span></b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">If there is a bigger conspiracy than <span style="font-size: small;">the usual evil but banal twins of ign<span style="font-size: small;">orance and club convergence (<span style="font-size: small;">"</span>we just do what the <span style="font-size: small;">neighbors do, and they don't do biogas at home, so why <span style="font-size: small;">would we?") it prob<span style="font-size: small;">ably isn't <span style="font-size: small;">the fault of b<span style="font-size: small;">ig business or government.<span style="font-size: small;"> It could be a <span style="font-size: small;">"conspiracy of the middle men" who are, as ever, <span style="font-size: small;">resistant to any changes </span>(see my p<span style="font-size: small;">revious post <a href="http://solarcities.blogspot.de/2012/11/is-big-oil-against-development-of-small.html">"Is b<span style="font-size: small;">ig oil <span style="font-size: small;">against the develoopment of s<span style="font-size: small;">mal<span style="font-size: small;">l scale </span></span>renewable energy systems?"</span></span></a></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span>). <br />
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></b></span></span></span></span></span></b></span><b><b> </b></b><b><br /></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent"> </span></span></span></span></b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[0]"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[0].[0]">W</span></span></span></span></span></span><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[0]"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[0].[0]">e talked about this with oil company execs who were our friends and band-mates in
Egypt. They agreed with our logic: With home and community scale biogas and solar technologies in place we can stop subsidizing gas and electricity for the
poor and middle class (and certainly the upper class)<span style="font-size: small;"><b>. </b></span> </span></span></span></span></span></span></b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[0]"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[0].[0]">P</span></span></span></span></span></span><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[0]"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[0].[0]">rivate companies and governments can sell their
fossil holdings to the highest bidder</span></span><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[0]">
on the international market. The amounts they have available for sale at the higher price inc</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[0]">r<span style="font-size: small;">ease dramatically, easing tensions about shortages or unrest that drive investors away. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[0]"> Our proposal to them was that we use public funding and private grants to help groups like
Solar CITIES do the simple training and building that lets every family
have the security of the amount of gas their garbage can produce (about 2
hours per day). For<b>-</b>profit entities can rest easy knowing that all consumers will then be willing to pay top price
(</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></b></span><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[0]"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[0]"> in the case of the poor </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></b></span>if and when they have money, but in any event e</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[0]">nlarg<span style="font-size: small;">ing the consumer base</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[0]">) for extra gas</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[0]"> that they want for </span></span></span></span></span></span></span><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[0]"> luxury uses (cooking for
big parties, taking long hot showers, running air conditioners and
refrigerators and plasma TV screens etc.) </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[0]">T</span></span></span></span></span></span></span><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[0]">he lions share of the gas can go to industry and business who have the money to pay full m</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[0]">a<span style="font-size: small;">rket prices but</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[0]"> need never fear costly and destabilizing shortages again.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></b></span></div>
<div class="uiStreamMessage userContentWrapper" data-ft="{"type":1,"tn":"K"}">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[0]"> Tiered pricing is already a
reality and the top tiers are where utilities make their real money, not
from the poor. The subsidies that are in place around the world to keep the poor from rioting are a net
loss to society and to the companies. No oil company wants their
pipelines bombed by people who are in a rage. And many exe</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[0]">c<span style="font-size: small;">u<span style="font-size: small;">ti<span style="font-size: small;">ves and policy makers really do want to <span style="font-size: small;">help make energy affordable for the masses. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[0]">So </span></span></span></span></span></span></span><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[0]"> they and governments feel
obliged to take losses to profits just to make sure that low income
people are able to squeak by while unw</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[0]">itt<span style="font-size: small;">i<span style="font-size: small;">ngly creating perverse disincenti<span style="font-size: small;">ves <span style="font-size: small;">for society to create higher <span style="font-size: small;">effici<span style="font-size: small;">encies (see <span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox">Je</a><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox">von's Energy Efficiency </a><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox">Par</a><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox">adox</a> for more on that!<span style="font-size: small;">)</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span>.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[0]">Our solution is a win win -- garbage
produced methane won't enable factories or truck fleets to operate, and
these are the areas where the big companies can always sell petro</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[0]">le<span style="font-size: small;">um based fuels</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[0]"><span style="font-size: small;"><b> </b></span>at top dollar.
Biogas at our level just enables the "other 90%" to </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[0]"><span style="font-size: small;">pursue a dignified <span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">and more secure</span> life, and enables</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[0]"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></b></span>subsidy transfer or removal while enabling the poor and lower income/middle income people to eliminate the grave public health problems produced by toilet and food wastes</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[0]"><span style="font-size: small;"> and</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[0]"> while enabling them to have enough gas to get through the week and through disasters or crises when supply shortages are inevitable</span></span></span> </span>.</span></span></span></b><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"> So I
think the problem -- the reason we aren't seeing more pictures like the ones from my home -- isn't interference from the big companies or governments. I think it is the ignorance
and mythology </span></span></span></b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]">that has infected </span></span></span><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"> the rest of us. We, ourse</span></span></span></b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]">l<span style="font-size: small;">ves,</span></span></span></span><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span style="font-size: small;"><b> </b></span> are actually the ones keeping these
solutions from wider acceptance through b</span></span></span></b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span style="font-size: small;">elief in </span></span></span></span><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]">our own conspiracy theories and
the inadvertant fear mongering and laziness they create.</span></span></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[0]"> </span></span></span></span></span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[0]">Once we accept our own responsibilities for sharing the good news -- this new gospel of this very old natural technology, we can truly sing with John Lennon "So this is Christmas, and look what we've done, another year over and a new one just begun... have a very merry Christmas, and a happy new year; let's hope its a good one... without any fear..."</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[0]"> </span></span></span></span></span></span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[0]">War is over... if you want it!</span></span></span></span></span></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0"><span id=".reactRoot[61].[1][2][1]{comment10152341723560551_18091900}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[0]">God bless us, everyone. Merry Christmas. </span></span></span></span></span></span> </span></b></span></div>
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T.H. Culhanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02974539190597507374noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1334849659163883527.post-47081919143302305902012-11-01T09:59:00.001-07:002012-11-01T10:17:30.278-07:00 Is 'big oil' against the development of small scale renewable energy systems?<br />
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<br />
<br />
<abbr>This being election time in the Unites States, I was complaining to my social media friends that any candidate who is primarily sponsored by companies whose profits come from the extraction and sale of fossil fuels would not be likely to create a business environment favorable to those of us in the decentralized energy/renewable energy sector. I went so far as to suggest that an administration backed by big oil would have a negative effect on small scale producers of clean energy.</abbr><br />
<br />
<abbr>A friend of mine who works with oil companies in Africa wrote me the following response on facebook recently,</abbr><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"...to believe that "big oil" even cares the least little about you starting
up a new business in bio-gas or any other energy is pretty inflated
thinking as I see it. Unless you think that you are going to have access
to at least $500 million in venture capital funding for your start-up, I guarantee you that no one in "big oil" will give a damn, until you get
large enough to show a profit of at least $50MM per year and do so for a
couple of years. Further, at that point, they will then just want to
buy you out. I have seen several very large, multi-million dollar
bio-gas projects in the USA recently and they are not being shut down,
in the least. Big oil does not hate competition, it just wants to be
sure that there is a way for them to buy into the game, once someone
shows that it is viable."</blockquote>
I can't disagree with those statements when it comes to large multi-million dollar bio-gas projects.<br />
<br />
Big dollar companies tend to work things out, B2B, with other other big dollar companies.<br />
<br />
But I was talking about small scale biogas, about home scale biogas. I was speaking of encouragement for truly small businesses, not the multi million dollar businesses which one of the candidates may continue to call "small business" but which most of us who earn under 250,000 dollars a year would never recognize as fitting the definition of small. I'm speaking about E.F. Schumacher style "small is beautiful" small businesses.<br />
<br />
But even there, if we are talking about the well
educated heads of these big corporations, I can't really disagree with the 'no need to worry' scenario.<br />
<br />
My friend and his company work on big
and small enviro tech contracts in Chad and Libya with big oil companies
like Esso and have been successful in getting them to work on win win
solutions for waste management that now involve composting/arable land
restoration and wetland restoration. In future I'm quite confident they will be successful in getting their oil company partners and African
government partners to enable their company to do significant
waste-to-biogas transformation work that will benefit Chad and her
multinational partners.<br />
<br />
I don't doubt this for a second. The business plan will allow the big players to buy into the game once it has been shown to be
viable. Biogas will become just another part of the energy portfolio of companies and this is a good thing. <br />
<br />
Similarly my friends in Big Oil in Egypt (whose business heads and
engineers I used to meet when some of us played together in a rock/country band in the Sinai and in
Cairo) were of course never threatened by the do it yourself solar and
biogas work we were doing in the slums and informal areas of Cairo. They
applauded it and probably could have been convinced to support it if we
had stayed longer.<br />
<br />
My friend is right that the educated heads of fair playing companies are not
involved in any conspiracy to squash little NGOs doing cute work to help
the desperately poor. We have faced no resistance doing
household biogas in areas of great need where most well off people
really would prefer not to go anyway.<br />
<br />
We field workers are the in the
trenches folks that do the social outreach work that gives sponsoring
companies a warm and fuzzy feeling. And as I mentioned, big oil, as far as I an see, has no
issue with BIG installations in Germany or the US or elsewhere; when
there is profit to be made they are usually partners and eventually will
buy out any serious competition.<br />
<br />
The problem is that what current policy and business practice will NOT do
is create favorable conditions for disaggregated, decentralized,
distributed generation solutions to our problems.<br />
<br />
Leadership by people
involved with big oil or big government or big corporations seem to have
an active aversion to models that do not allow for easy conglomeration,
mergers, acquisition and ultimately command and control. This is the essence of being big and getting bigger. Centralization is the logic of power. It is why we rightly fear empires and fear the systems that socialism and communism seem to inevitably create, and it is why we created the American Capitalist system as a foundation for our experiment in a civilization that fosters freedom and allows for all people to have a shot at life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.<br />
<br />
The point of
good governance in America was always merely to bust the inevitable
formation of monopoly power which is the natural tendency of wealth --
that is the paradox of the capitalist free market system; one of its
famous contradictions. Capitalism needs steerage to prevent it from its own
excesses. We love capitalism because it provides a better path to
freedom given that human nature has never shown itself capable of real
socialist or communist behavior in the 'good' sense of those much
maligned terms. No socialist or communist experiment has ever succeeded,
so we vilify these terms which now describe only the failed attempts
which caused so much misery.<br />
<br />
Capitalism succeeds by accepting human
nature as it is, but its success requires constant oversight.<br />
<br />
All
systems tend to corruption in time because of cronyism, tribalism,
in-group and out-group isms, but socialism and communism go bad quicker.
Capitalism can reinvent itself in a million ways and stay vibrant if we
observe the principles of fair play, open access, constantly relevelled
playing fields and competition.<br />
<br />
Small biogas systems in developing
countries are no competition at all, they are mere relief systems for
people dying from the inefficiencies of poorly thought out technologies
and resource strategies. Both governments and corporations will support
these little efforts without worry.<br />
<br />
Big biogas systems in developed
countries are part of evolving energy portfolios. Where they run into
trouble is in the resource access area -- each garbage mafia has their
own claim to waste material and tipping fees for landfills, trucking
fees and other rents make change difficult. It is actually the littler
players in these fields that impede broader big scale biogas penetration
-- people want to protect jobs and profits and their territories, and
these are not the big companies who could actually care less if the
landfill shuts down or the garbage workers have fewer runs to make and
need to lay off workers.<br />
<br />
But what it appears big corporations will not easily tolerate are
small businesses that could be potential game changers in the very
nature of how energy is created and delivered.<br />
<br />
And usually it is not the
heads of these companies, who have diverse portfolios of investment
anyway, and would change their strategy at the next whiff of profit
("screw oil as our commodity", says BP, relabeled 'Beyond Petroleum', "now lets corner
the biogas market or solar market, or sell metered transactions or
whatever can pull in profits"). The problem is usually middle management, folks in the
hierarchy still clawing their way up the ladder. These people, living in a state of constant anxiety, usually have the ability to say
'no' to anything that will affect their promised path to the good life
of Reilly. They are the gate keepers prohibiting real change.<br />
<br />
The truly wealthy, the real 'big' guys, are pretty immune to the effects of game
changers; they actually get excited by the new game.<br />
<br />
But their underlings want to
keep systems rigid on the chance that they can join the ranks of the
super wealthy and then relax and even perchance become generous -- once they are secure at the top of the pecking order.<br />
<br />
So my observation is that when we talk about "big oil" blocking progress in renewable energy and stymieing small business and start-ups from creating and effectively deploying solutions to climate change we aren't really talking about the wealthiest 1%. And thus we keep targeting the wrong area and wonder why we aren't seeing the change we desire. My observation is that when we find our efforts to expand the use of decentralized, distributed generation of power from waste materials and forms of solar energy that are available to everybody somehow meeting resistance and getting blocked , we are dealing with
folks in medium power positions reacting with fear.<br />
<br />
I have a friend, for example, who is trying to start a home biogas company, building backyard digestors that are simple and low cost and turn kitchen wastes into clean energy and fertilizer. His business model is similar to that of another friend of mine in Kenya, but where the latter is succeeding and getting a lot of support, local politics in the US has
gotten in the way of his growth. The permit givers became with-holders. The gate keepers shut him down through all sorts of ridiculous hurdles and disincentives and discouragements.<br />
<br />
It wasn't the big oil players who shut down home biogas this round, it was the little politicians and regulators. The problem is that these middleware folks take their marching orders from
their perception of what big oil wants. Or what they are afraid they don't want. Often they really don't know
because they are in the pecking order on a needs to know basis.<br />
<br />
Because
of the nature of hierarchical systems they don't really get to sit in on the
deeper more philosophical board meeting discussions and strategic
planning meetings that concern long term futures. Ironically we
academics and foundation people and service company leaders like my friend in Africa and
even some or us in the NGO world often have more access to top business
and government leaders than people working in those systems.<br />
<br />
The middle men get in the middle and muck things up. They feel they have struggled to get in line and get on what they hope will a reliable conveyor belt to the big time, and they are going to fight tooth and nail to preserve the status quo as they understand it. But make no mistake -- they aren't big oil. They aren't big anything. They may work for big companies but they are really just the cogs and wheels in a vast machine that even their superiors would like to find a way to change. The problem is that there are just too many vested interests, and until all the key joints in this ungainly system are lubricated and feel they can be reconfigured without threat, they aren't going to favor innovation. Certainly not if involves systemic change that derails their conveyor to the top.<br />
<br />
Because of these realities I think it is urgent that we have political
leadership that sends the SIGNAL to the gate keepers at various levels
that it is perfectly okay and even desired to change the nature of the
game.<br />
<br />
We need presidents of both countries and companies to tell the
world, the nation and all employees that we want to play by the original
fair rules of the free market and that we mean it this time.<br />
<br />
We need to
say "all energy options are on the table, no negative externalities or
cheating allowed, you can't spew your toxins into the public commons,
you have to pay all clean up and remediation costs yourselves, you have
to allow free enterprise at all levels, no collusion, no back room
deals, no turning the other way and allowing people to suffer so you can
get richer. "<br />
<br />
With the rules of fair play clear (as in 'main street and wall street have to play by the same rules' and 'pollution can no longer be your path to profit' and 'full cost accounting -- no un-costed residuals of production') middleware folks will see that the only way to stay on the conveyor is to adopt the new game and abandon the old one, because the conveyor will have clearly changed direction.<br />
<br />
When I was at the Energy Round Table in Aspen with business and
government and military leaders during the Shell Oil Spill (Shell was
there too, along with EPA director Lisa Jackson) we heard from the
corporations about the desperate need for clear signals of where policy
was going to take us.<br />
<br />
They said, "if Washington would definitively say
what it was going to do in terms of carbon trading, we would be able to
make projections based on that and we'd all be happy. But you leave us
in an uncertain landscape and that uncertainty makes planning
impossible. Of course we resist changes in this environment. Signal to
us and make clear that spills and exhausts and carbon and millirads of
radiation and whatever will cost this much or that much, and that
subsidies will be increased or reduced by this much or that much, and
fines will cost this or that much, and Pigouvian taxes this or that much
and we will respond. "<br />
<br />
The business leaders told us "We don't want to damage our environment, but we
have to compete with other countries that are playing by different rules
and we are stuck. Make international agreements, get cooperation and
tell us where the energy landscape is going and business will respond.
Right now the waters are too murky."<br />
<br />
And why are they murky? In large
part because people and groups in the middle are mucking things up until
they can be guaranteed what they feel is there share of the spoils. So
they are spoilers of game changes they aren't really privvy too and both top level and bottom level game changers they don't have access to.<br />
<br />
Former Senator Paul Simon and I talked a couple of times in Syria when he was
there promoting his book "Tapped Out: The coming water crisis" and I
showed him a model but functioning regenerative unitary fuel cell. He
said, "I wish more young people like you who know something about
technology and its implications would come to us in Washington. All we
get are these lobbyists clamoring for their piece of the pie. If you
want change you have to come to us and get your ideas in the mix too."<br />
<br />
He told me that the lobbyists frequently had their own agendas and the
implication was that often they don't even do a good job of representing
the industries they supposedly are lobbying for. A lot of folks are
just lobbying for themselves, and that may be why American companies
have been so often sideswiped by leaner, faster competitors, like the
Japanese auto industry and the Korean steel industry and other more
modernized, cleaner, more efficient producers.<br />
<br />
I remember reading the vision of the young Ford -- our generation's Ford,
not his ancestor -- speaking of his vision for the company making the
best and most efficient cars. But he wasn't allowed to run his company
toward that end. Similarly, GM spent billions on the best electric cars
on the market and were defeated not because corporate leadership didn't
want it or government didn't want it but because of the disruptive
impact on all the parts suppliers, the gas station owning companies,
and other middle ground players. Lobbyists thinking they are being loyal to their corporate heads but never really understanding the dynamics of Schumpeter's Creative Destruction (perhaps willfully because they are worried they'll get destroyed) make deals with mid-level politicians in Congress or the Senate and they all tie the hands of presidents -- both the President of the United States and the presidents of our best companies. <br />
<br />
The heads of oil companies, I maintain, aren't worried about a new world of decentralized energy. They will adapt. They will make money regardless. They will, as my friend says, buy up battery factories, charging stations, local component manufacturers... at that level it is
all a game. They aren't threatened. But the status quo is.<br />
<br />
The status quo is created through a perception of how stable the fortunes of the upper middle class and the lower upper class are and will be within a given set of rules. Only government can state the rules in such a way that every business must comply. That is why we pool our resources and make governments, otherwise the tendency is always for big fish to get bigger and bigger and swallow up the small fry. This stifles innovation and progress. So we build appropriately sized governments to take down the biggest most rapacious fish and reintroduce lean competitiveness to the system. You want small government, you gotta downsize big business. Then they will be on par. As long as we have ungainly big businesses filled with middleware that is poorly connected the the thriving heartbeat of innovation, we need counter-weights in government, checks and balances to a system that on both sides has grown to powerful. We are in quite a fix, but we can untangle this if we understand where the worries are and acknowledge the fears of folks in insecure but promising positions on the conveyor belt who unfortunately can control some of the valves and pumps feeding the heart.<br />
<br />
For small biogas to thrive, and for any small scale renewables to thrive, said
the leaders at the Aspen Energy Forum, we not only need clear signals
for planning to assuage the fears of people trying to plan in an uncertain market, we also need to reconceive energy using the information
technology business model.<br />
<br />
They called for ET to be like IT (energy tech like info tech).<br />
<br />
One of my contributions was to champion the role of bricoleurs, tinkerers in
energy production, using my early experience as a Ham Radio operator
(KC6MBN is my handle) to inform energy -- i.e. we buy parts and assemble
energy systems at home or at the community level; everything is modular
and plug and play.<br />
<br />
This was also the vision of the leaders at the HVAC
and energy conference hosted by Irene Stillings at the California Center for Sustainable Energy in San Diego -- they said, "we need to appliancize all renewable energy
-- the same way you buy a toaster or a refrigerator or a dish washer,
you should be able to buy off the shelf energy components for your home
-- solar panels for electricity and heated water and air, biogas
digestors, heat pumps, efficient heat exchangers, wind mills, whatever.
Everything should be a module you buy and plug into the house."<br />
<br />
And
this was Amory Lovin's path that he spoke about when I met him, his
hypercar concept where the car itself produces energy for the house and
vice versa is part of this new modularity with consumer goods taking on the role of dis-aggregate energy production.<br />
<br />
So the visions are out there, at the top levels, at the bottom levels...
Somewhere in between things get lost. I attribute that to an
environment of fear and suspicion among the ranks of the middle men.
We aren't getting clear signals from the top and the upper middle is wallowing in worry. And they are blocking.<br />
<br />
That is where we need strong leadership -- a vision clearly expressed that
signals to people in the middle "its gonna be okay; we are going to
phase out fossil fuel combustion as rapidly as possible but we are going
to give you support for all of your creative ideas to replace them.
And please note, my fellow Americans -- phasing out combustion doesn't
mean we are going to throw you out of work. We have oil and coal and
fossil gas in America and we will use them, we just <i><b>aren't going to burn
them</b></i>. We will use them in Fuel Cells like the hydrocarbon transforming
Franklin fuel cell which emits nothing but water and CO2 which can be
recaptured and used for biological plant growth. We can turn them into
graphite and carbon nanotubes and build up a better infrastructure of
roads and bridges and materials and rockets and automobiles. Carbon is
an essential building block -- to<b>o </b> important to let go up in smoke. We
will research nuclear fusion and deploy fission and fusion in space
exploration and space mining, but we won't need it here on earth where
it can damage cell organelles. We will transform all wastes into new
materials and into clean energy. No meaningful jobs will be lost, no
sustainable profits will be lost. We are in this together and we all
want the same things : prosperity, equality, a healthy environment for
our children and the chance to pursue our own happiness. "<br />
<br />
" All options to
make that dream a reality will be on the table and we will be your
public servants in upholding the laws that protect our citizens and
guarantee your rights."<br />
<br />
That is the speech I'm waiting to hear from somebody... anybody. And it is for that vision that I cast my vote.T.H. Culhanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02974539190597507374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1334849659163883527.post-70373584364818283502012-10-13T15:27:00.001-07:002012-10-13T16:16:45.417-07:00Using inexpensive 2 pin Infra-red transmitters and receivers with ArduinoSolar CITIES is moving into environmental sensing training in developing countries and impoverished areas in developed countries. That means besides teaching folks how to build their own biogas and solar and other renewable energy and water and waste systems, we are increasingly going to integrate training in... environmental robotics.<br />
<br />
We realize that, as Paul McCartney famously sang, "you used to say live and let live, you know you did, you know you did; but in this ever changing world in which we live in, makes you give it a cry... say live and let die!" And we don't like that (though we love the song and the movie; as long as it is fiction...)<br />
<br />
There is talk about the "47%" by one candidate and the "30%" by his vice-candidate, and it isn't nice talk. There are promises being made of 12 million new jobs in 4 years by the pair of them, but it isn't realistic talk. The fact is that the micro-controller revolution is enabling artificial intelligence to be embedded in everything. Computer programs and robotic machines will replace most jobs. That isn't a bad thing, since most jobs leave much to be desired, and many are degrading for any sentient being. But it does create a problem for people whose skills are being outsourced not just to other countries but now to other beings. Non-human beings. Non-biological beings. AI empowered, environmental sensing machines.<br />
<br />
At Solar CITIES we embrace new technologies. But we want to make sure that everybody gets a fair shot at learning how to creatively work with these new technologies and these new silicon based beings so that nobody from the carbon based life form camp is left behind who doesn't want to be.<br />
<br />
Environmental technologies, including solar, biogas, wind and other energy technologies, and various water and waste management and food production technologies, are being automated. That is a wonderful development which should increase their effectiveness and cut down on their costs so they can be deployed everywhere. And the key to improving both our technologies and our environments is good environmental sensing.<br />
<br />
We and our robots need to be better aware of our surroundings, and everybody who wants to needs to be able to design, build, install, troubleshoot and repair environmental sensing and manipulation technologies that can make their environment better.<br />
<br />
<b>Enter the Arduino </b><br />
<br />
Since the release of the open source Arduino micro-controller and Integrated Development Environment (IDE, the software to control the micro-controller) embedded computing, sensing and robotics have suddenly become understandable and affordable for everyone. An Arduino Uno controller, used now with various sensors around the world to monitor temperature, pH, pressure, proximity of objects, light levels, colors and a host of other parameters that once demanded dedicated expensive equipment, costs only $30. The software is FREE. Tutorials on how to use it are also free, with a huge and generous open source community posting every day.<br />
<br />
The other vital piece of the puzzle is using inexpensive sensors. And the fact is that their cost is coming down all the time.<br />
<br />
<b>Basic Environmental Sensing 101</b><br />
<br />
Most larger organisms on this planet use light as their principle means of interacting with their environment. Some use light and heat, but heat is often detected as a form of light (longer wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum than the ones we call "visible light") so it amounts to almost the same thing.<br />
<br />
There are other ways of detecting one's surroundings -- hearing is another, depending on pressure waves (i.e. sound waves), and we all know that bats and cetaceans (dolphins, whales, porpoises) use sonar as does the Navy.<br />
<br />
Then there is touch, and taste and smell (the latter two involving chemical gradients).<br />
<br />
Now we are equipping our machines and our devices and all of our systems with different variations of these 5 senses so that they can become aware of their environments and report to us data about our changing world as well as control actuators that can change the environment (think of turning on heaters or cooling systems, blowers, pumps, irrigation systems, nutrient loading systems, cleaning systems etc.).<br />
<br />
The simplest system to start with, to get involved in environmental sensing technology we believe is to start with light. With simple eyes. And the least expensive of those is probably the Infra-Red emitter and receiver.<br />
One sends out a beam of invisible infra-red light, which bounces off an object and reflects back to be picked up by the other one, a receiver. This is the sonar that bats and dolphins do, and you can do it too, for very little money.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>The simplest IR sensor: A pair of 2 pin IR diodes</b><br />
<br />
In this post I would like to give you an introduction to the idea of using very low cost Infra-red sensors to measure distance or detect objects or avoid collisions. Generally people tend to spend between 10 and 20 dollars for Infrared range finders like the excellent Sharp IR range finder series (I'm experimenting with the Sharp 2D120X for close range detection; it goes from 4 to 30 cm). But even that can really add up if you are trying to detect objects from many angles or are using many of them.<br />
<br />
A cheaper alternative is to use simple IR components, i.e. a simple IR transmitter and a simple IR receiver. You can find many tutorials on this; the problem is that most demand the use of a 3 pin receiver, and in some areas (like where we live) the local stores don't always carry them.<br />
<br />
Here is a great tutorial, for example, from Garage lab on setting up a simple IR transceiver with arduino that uses a 3 pin receiver: <a href="http://garagelab.com/profiles/blogs/tutorial-arduino-ir-sender-and-receiver">http://garagelab.com/profiles/blogs/tutorial-arduino-ir-sender-and-receiver </a><br />
<br />
You'll find a lot of these as you hunt around. The problem is that you don't find much about using the really inexpensive two pin infrared receivers that we find in most places.<br />
<br />
Because of this lack of information I thought I would post something quick here to help those struggling with this.<br />
<br />
What we are experimenting with now is using the IR transceiver 2 pin pair sold at <a href="http://www.conrad.de/">Conrad Electronics</a>. <br />
We are using an<a href="http://www.conrad.de/ce/de/product/153470/IR-Fototransistor-im-klaren-Plastikgehaeuse-Osram-Components-LPT-80-A-LPT-85-A-Gehaeuseart-Sidelooker-im-Kunststoffgehaeu"> LPT 80 A Receiver</a> for 98 cents, and a <a href="http://www.conrad.de/ce/de/product/153679/IR-LumineszenzdiodeEmitter-im-Kunststoffgehaeuse-Osram-Components-IRL-80-A-Gehaeuseart-Kunststoffgehaeuse-Wellen-Laenge-950">IRL 80 A Transmitter</a> for 85 cents. These are both two pin IR diodes.<br />
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Here is a picture of a basic test design to see the signal in the serial monitor:<br />
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<span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent">This
is a very simple set up: The IRL 80 A IR sender (glowing blue at bottom
right) has its long lead connected to arduino 5, the short lead to
ground. Behind it is the LPT 80 A IR receiver (hard to see because
clear) with its long lead connected to 5V and short lead connected to
both A1 on Arduino and to a 10 K resistor that goes to ground. The
closer the sender and receiver are, given that we made the sender
shorter than the receiver so they don't block, the better they work, but
this is hard on a bread board. Better to make a little pcb and snug
them right up to each other. </span></span></div>
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<span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent"> The schematic we used came from the generosity of <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/therobotronics/arduino/connect-a-phototransistor-to-arduino">Robotronics</a>, reproduced below:</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibOB2xxADX0tcXf6zFUdimVLLldT9haLQC-cE720LVbq-sf_QNkxU7mAJkGOhV5A6ehcHTy3vKkOrRQhILaqHhDRXfU8Unx3CXM8wz-87UtYTq78GitL8G82ToF4ORHLyXMoO8gS-1sA/s1600/arduino-phototransistor.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibOB2xxADX0tcXf6zFUdimVLLldT9haLQC-cE720LVbq-sf_QNkxU7mAJkGOhV5A6ehcHTy3vKkOrRQhILaqHhDRXfU8Unx3CXM8wz-87UtYTq78GitL8G82ToF4ORHLyXMoO8gS-1sA/s320/arduino-phototransistor.jpg" width="160" /></a></div>
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<span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent">The code is very basic to read the changing
signal on the serial monitor.<br /> <br /> // Pin 13 has an LED connected on most Arduino boards.<br /> int led = 12;<br /> int IRSled = 5;<br /><div class="text_exposed_show">
int IRRled = A1;<br />
int val;<br />
<br />
// the setup routine runs once when you press reset:<br />
void setup() {<br />
<br />
Serial.begin(9600);<br />
// initialize the digital pin as an output.<br />
pinMode(led, OUTPUT);<br />
pinMode(IRSled, OUTPUT); //IRS is InfraRedSender<br />
pinMode(IRRled, INPUT); // initialize the infrared receiver<br />
}<br />
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// the loop routine runs over and over again forever:<br />
void loop() {<br />
<br />
digitalWrite(led, LOW); // turn the LED off (HIGH is the voltage level)<br />
digitalWrite(IRSled, HIGH);<br />
<br />
analogRead(IRRled);<br />
<br />
val = analogRead(IRRled);<br />
if (val <= 300) digitalWrite(led, HIGH);<br />
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Serial.print(val);<br />
Serial.print(" ");<br />
Serial.println();<br />
delay(10);<br />
}<br />
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If you want to see this set up in action giving a robotic car the ability to avoid objects, check out <a href="https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11012">Spark-fun's ProtoSnap MiniBot kit </a>($79) which is basically a tiny arduino with a usb converter board and a motor controller board using similar two pin IR transceiver pairs for collision detection. It turns whenever it encounters an object on either side of it, as if it had eyes on the side of its head like an ungulate.<br />
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Here is mine:<br />
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<span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent">The bottom line is that if we are going to be able to preserve our environment in a cost effective way, we need to enlist the help of environmental sensing technologies. The idea of giving our homes, farms, gardens, offices, and in fact every object or location we value their own five senses -- eyes, ears, noses, tongues, fingers and sensitive skin -- is not at all far fetched. The idea that we can all learn how to create and work with environmental sensing robotics is not far fetched either.</span></span></div>
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<span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent">We hope you will join us in making a world where robots don't replace humans but give us all the chance for a more dignified meaningful, fun and healthy, sustainable life.</span></span></div>
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<span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent">Look for more introductions to the world of environmental sensing technologies that you can build yourself here in our Solar CITIES blog and in our workshops!</span></span></div>
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..........<br />
For more on environmental sensing robots check out this BBC Future article on a hybrid electronic-organic robot that uses "cyberplasm" for sensing water pollution:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20121010-sink-or-swim-for-biohybrid-robot">http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20121010-sink-or-swim-for-biohybrid-robot</a>T.H. Culhanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02974539190597507374noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1334849659163883527.post-47821313401714970122012-07-20T16:46:00.002-07:002012-07-20T16:46:56.054-07:00Uniting the Avengers: More synergistic possibilities for Google Science Fair finailists to come together to save the world...It's that time of the year again. Tomorrow morning I fly from Dusseldorf to San Francisco to be a judge in the annual Google Science Fair, where we will be honoring the work of 15 extraordinary young people from around the world and rewarding one of them with a coveted $50,000 award.<br />
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Last month I had the honor of helping judge the Scientific American Science in Action award finalists, another set of 15 young people who dedicated their research and efforts and budding scientific acumen toward finding solutions to challenging environmental, health and social problems.<br />
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We ultimately selected two very deserving 14 year old boys from Swaziland, Africa, who came up with a scalable yet inexpensive hydroponics system for their homeland, and these two boys are also entrants in the general Google Science Fair.<br />
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During the judging process <a href="http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/budding-scientist/2012/07/19/google-science-fair-uniting-the-avengers-of-innovation/">I wrote a blog post about a fantasy I had for finding a way to reward all these great young people so they could continue to work together to "save the world"</a>. In effect I wanted to explore the idea of creating a kind of "Marvel Team-Up" uniting these internationally dispersed kids into a kind of "youth Avengers" whose special talents and projects could be put together synergistically to create a whole much greater than the sum of its parts.<br />
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<a href="http://solarcities.blogspot.de/2012/06/synergies-for-science-in-action.html">I described my own ideas for how each Science in Action kid's project could fit like a puzzle piece into a holistic "best practice model." </a><br />
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Now I would like to take the opportunity before flying to meet the Google Science Fair finalists to do the same thing with their projects -- a possible "neural network" for synergy, a first stab at finding some connections that could lead to positive unintended consequences.<br />
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<b>How they might fit together:</b><br />
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I start my journey of connections on the far right side of this "<a href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/events/sciencefair/index.html">map of the Google Science Fair finalists". </a><br />
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<a href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/events/sciencefair/projects/gsf29.html">Raghavendra Ramachanderan</a>, 17, has discovered a way to win energy back from spent fuel through the process of "Visible Light Deoxygenation". The idea is that, for example, a liquid fuel like hexane (a hydrocarbon) can be oxidized through burning or through a fuel cell to create work or electricity, and then the spent fuel reconstituted through catalyst mediated exposure to sunlight. We can describe this as a kind of "solar reforming" of burned fuel. By carrying the process out on glucose and turning it into hexane, Raghavendra demonstrated the possibility of taking this radical process for energy conservation further. His conclusion,<span style="font-size: small;"> " <span lang="EN-US">The success of this experiment will
show that fuel can be used repeatedly, since converting used fuel to
fuel again using sunlight, behaves like a system where sunlight is
trapped into molecules of fuel, which is released upon burning them."</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">So Raghavendra is working on solving our energy problem, helping ensure that we never run out of fuel, even when the oil runs out.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US"> Meanwhile, nearbye, <a href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/events/sciencefair/projects/gsf14.html"> Rohit Fenn</a>, 16, has re-visited a technology that hasn't changed much since it was designed over 300 years ago: the flush toilet, invented by John Harrington in 1596. Rohit lamented the fact that in much of India today not only is sanitation poor and power lacking but clean water is scarce, so simply flushing an average of 72 liters of drinking quality water per day per household could be considered criminally irresponsible.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">He also noted that many of the urban and rural poor can't even begin to consider upgrading from disease carrying pit latrines to hygienic toilets because the water resources simply don't exist. Either the water itself is unavailable or the electric power needed to pump it is lacking. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">His solution: to invent a simple foot-pedal powered vacuum pump design that any plumber could build out of local materials and get the same efficiency per flush using only half the water.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">Luckily, Raghavendra and Rohit live in the same city so theoretically they could get together, but in an urban agglomeration as large as Bangalore, with over 8.5 million citizens, it is unlikely they would ever meet. Fortunately they will meet this weekend at Googleplex in Moutain View California half a world away, and have the chance to bring their solutions together for all of us.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">It makes sense: if, for example, we built a demonstration eco-home as a best practice model and installed Rohit's new toilet design, we would radically reduce our water consumption. But we would still need energy to pump the water to the holding tank so we could flush. And that is where Raghavendra's invention comes in.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">Many households throughout the world (and certainly in India where electric infrastructure is spotty or lacking or subject to interruptions) rely on a gas or diesel generator for either primary or backup electricity. But fuel is expensive. And when the fuel is all used up, not only do their lights go out, but taps run dry and the toilets don't flush. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US"> I experienced this difficulty in the Guatemala City slum of Meskital when staying with a Maya Quiche friend -- there was a city wide blackout that lasted in this impoverished neighborhood for an entire week. With 8 people staying in the same tiny apartment and only one small bathroom things got difficult needless to say. Since I was staying on the top floor near the unfinished roof (where I was installing a 400 Watt Air403 Wind generator as a gift to the family) I solved my own problem by getting two paint buckets, filling one with leaf and grass clippings snipped from weeds along the road and using the other as a composting toilet that I only had to empty into a ditch in a vacant lot once a week. The others weren't yet adapted to this solution so they had the hardship of walking to a public toilet. The home bathroom, which was useless and backed up and smelling, had to be simply locked until the electricity was restored a week later. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">Having gone through this experience I can immediately see how Raghavendra and Rohit's innovations could help in situations like this. With only half the water needed for toilets a one time pumping event could fill the roof tank and it would last twice as long. Meanwhile, the spent fuel from the generator (assuming it was collected appropriately) could be recycled using a catalyst in sunlight back into fuel -- or, probably more realistically, glucose containing food wastes could be sunlight reformed into liquid fuels like hexane for combustion in the generator.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">So this is an example of synergies in science and action with just the first two finalists. It will be great to observe them meeting and interacting.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US"> But let's continue our journey across the map.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">Moving north to Lucknow, India, we meet<a href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/events/sciencefair/projects/gsf7.html"> Sumit Singh</a>, 14, who created a system for "Verticle Multi-Level Farming to Increase Crop Yields - An Affordable and Feasible Design". Sumit is familiar to readers of our blog because his project was also a finalist in the Scientific American Science in Action award, and is now up for consideration in the Google Science Fair too.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">Using Google Sketchup and a brilliant application of vector geometry in the virtual world and then building a real-world prototype from common bamboo and mud bricks, Sumit made it possible to radically improve food crop yields in constrained spaces such as rooftop gardens. He demonstrated the proper horizontal and vertical spacing to make maximum use of the sunlight available and realized a design that would use gravity to use limited quantities of water most efficiently.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">When I think back to my week in the Meskital slums of Guatemala putting up the wind-mill generator, I wish we had Sumit's solution for rooftop agriculture. I can envision, in our best-practice model eco-home, having Sumit's Verticle Multi-Level urban farming solution on the roof beneath a 2000 liter water storage tank. Using fuel created from waste starch using Raghavendra's solar catalysed deoxygenation reaction, we would pump water to fill the tank and recharge batteries for electric lights. The water would then flow down through drip irrigation into Sumit's agricultural platform towers. Then it would make its way down pipes to a toilet tank in the home above Rohit's super low-flush vacuum toilet and on its way to an underground biodigester that would in turn produce cooking fuel for the kitchen and fertilizer for Sumit's rooftop garden design. A truly closed recycling system!</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">But we need a way to make the small scale agriculture even more efficient and cost-effective -- and applicable to villagers in the most remote and poorest areas too. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">So we continue our journey westward to find <a href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/events/sciencefair/projects/gsf31.html">Sakhiwe Shongwe, 14, and Bonkhe Mahlalela, 14</a>, from Swaziland in southern Africa. Sakhiwe and Bonkhe will also be familiar to readers of our blog; like Sumit they were finalists in the Science in Action award, and, in fact they were the award winners.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">They won their $50,000 prize for their project, "</span></span>Unique Simplified Hydroponic Methods; Can The Method be Adapted for Poor Swazi
Subsistence Farmers?".<br />
<br />
Their innovative idea was to <span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">develop "a Unique Simplified Hydroponic Methods (USHM) (which concentrates on
using available village waste materials) that will allow poor Swazi subsistence
farmers to grow their crops and vegetables in very large quantities within
limited space without using soil as growing medium." </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Take Sakhiwe and Bonkhe's soil-less growing medium, made essentially from trash, and combine it with Sumit's vertical growing platforms and you have a no till, water conservative farming solution for all seasons that even begins to address our urban and rural waste problems. </span><br />
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">Can't wait to see the friendships that develope there! </span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">So let us continue our voyage:</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">We head almost due North as the migratory bird flies and reach the Ukraine where <a href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/events/sciencefair/projects/gsf39.html">Alexey Kozlov, 13, and Milena Klimenko, 13</a>, have created the "My Green City" project, focusing on the "study of the effects of vehicle exhaust gases upon the ecology of a large city in real life conditions".</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Alexey and Milena and their team (including Mykyta Gordiyenko who was born 2.5 months too late to be officially registered in the group but who nontheless took all the measurements with his Google One Phone!) would contribute much more to our best practice eco-home than a mere awareness that fossil fuel burning cars, buses and trucks create air pollution. Using GPS data and a program they created in the Python language, along with data display code they generated in JavaScript, CSS and HTML, they were able to take time and location tagged data using a pocket size Carbon Monoxide monitor and put it up on an interactive Open Street Map that they made publically available.</span></div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">What they have created should and would be an essential part of every community and neighborhood and would certainly be included in our eco-home. They have implemented an ability to map out and localize exactly where toxins are accumulating in our immediate environment, correlating the levels of pollution with street intersections, sidewalk and parking lot design, and vegetation. Their work has great planning and policy implications and for our purposes gives us an ability to visualize what is going on in the community. This is particularly important when it concerns problems caused by outside agents, because no matter how ecologically friendly we hope to make our own homes or communities, if people or practices (like idling trucks or buses) and contaminating where we live and threatening our children, all of our own attempts to provide a healthy environment can be in vain.</span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">By giving us a way to map the spatial and temporal irregularities of pollution, Alexey and Milena and co. give us the chance to spot the trouble spots and take action.</span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">And while we are on the subject of data display and its power to help us pinpoint issues that can then be targeted, every scientist knows that the right kind of graphical presentation can make a world of difference in figuring out how to solve complex problems. <a href="http://www.gapminder.org/">Hans Rosling has shown with "gapminder"</a> that the way we visualize the world's data has profound implications for our ability to affect the health and wealth of nations.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">So for our eco-home demonstration synergy we need team members who can help us create an inexpensive way to visualize spatial information such as that produced by Alexey and Milena, and a way to transmit building and construction information for doing the kind of hydroponics that </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">Sakhiwe and Bonkhe and Sumit have innovated, and the type of toilet that Rohit has designed.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Wouldn't it be easier if we could walk through an interactive 3D model before trying to build anything in the real world? Raghavendra, we remember, has himself created a<a href="https://sites.google.com/a/googlesciencefair.com/science-fair-2012-project-ahjzfnnjawvuy2vmywlyltiwmtjydwssb1byb2ply3qylzcida/home"> brilliant molecular model animation of the novel deoxygenation process he is working </a>on -- what if we could see all of this in real 3D!?</span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">This is what <a href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/events/sciencefair/projects/gsf57.html">Melvin Zammit, 18, from Kirkop, Malta</a> brings to the table. He has created a working prototype of an LED based 3D system that relies on the principle of persistence of vision (POV) and spinning layers of light to create a floating 3D image projection that can be walked around, requiring no glasses. It can eventually can be developed to create "realistic volumetric displays". </span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">Once the stuff of science fiction, Melvin's invention suggests a near future in which visitors to our eco-home can discuss how to build environmetnal technologies or view the results of mapped pollution monitoring in real time and as if in real life. And because the LEDs can be programmed to simulate almost anything, Melvin's contribution would enable us to make certain invisible processes, such as those going on inside the body or in the worlds of microbiology and nanotechnology, to finally be visible to everybody.</span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">Speaking of the invisible world of microbiology, over in Spain, three enterprising students who could definitely benefit from Melvin's technology have embarked on a study that has implications not just for how we see the nano-world in a drop of water, but how we measure the health and cleanliness of water. Just as our Ukrainian friends have been helping us visualize air pollution in Kiev through a publically available OpenStreetMap project,<a href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/events/sciencefair/projects/gsf45.html"> Ivan Hervias Rodriguez 17, Marcos Ochoa 16 and Sergio Pascual 15, from Logrono on the Iberian peninsula</a>, are mapping out "The Hidden Life of Water" and publishing their findings (photographic, video, text and graphs) in an <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/microagua/">on-line database</a>. So far they have created and cataloged over 50,000 pictures and movies, giving a first hand look at the invisible world within water.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">What is most important about their work from our point of view is what it means to our ability to determine whether water is clean or not and what we should do about it. The students came up with four water type classifications: Level I: clean water; Level II: water slightly contaminated; Level III: water that is moderately contaminated and Level IV: water that is heavily contaminated. They not only mapped these types of water regionally, using standard measurements of key parameters for contamination (pH, conductivity, temperature, BOD (biological oxygen demand), and presence of nitrites and nitrates and ions of calcium, but then correlated these water types with the consortia of microorganisms found there.</span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">What is emerging is a sense of what a "healthy" ecology for clean water is. Normally we tend to think that "the only good water is dead water". All sources of water are suspected of containing pathogens and the way we treat it is to sterilize it, "disinfecting" it of all living beings whether they are beneficial or not. We boil it, pour toxic chlorine into it, expose it to UV radiation of dose it with ozone, all in attempt to kill whatever might be there, and we also filter it to keep even the tiniest organism out of what we drink and wash with. All of these measures to kill "La Vida Oculta de Agua" are expensive, time and energy intensive, and many create ancillary health problems (such as the tri-halomethane carcinogens that result from an interaction between chlorine and organic matter in the water). </span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">But what if we could simply determine when "living water" -- water that still has microorganisms in it -- is healthy to drink? For many communities in developing countries that can't afford the chemicals or energy or systems to purify water and who are risking the terrible consequences of deforestation and indoor air pollution trying to fetch and use fuel to boil water, the ability to simply determine which water was safe to drink and which wasn't could save money, effort and lives.</span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">And taking this idea further, what if it was possible to create a "probiotic" inoculant that would allow a natural water ecosystem to evolve that was self regulating and safe to drink and bathe in and cook with. The John Todd Living Machine for water purification points in this direction as does the "Schmutzdecke slow sand filter" concept. But what we really need is some way to assay water sources to know how healthy they are, and identify remediations not necessarily based on killing whats in the water, but on replacing the "bad guys" with "good guys".</span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"> With their database and diagnostic tools, these students from Spain make it possible to get to this point. Eventually people should be able to ascertain quickly whether a water source is potable or not, or useful for cooking or bathing or washing. People should be able to determine if the proper species composition for health and self regulation is possible, much as we use keystone species of macrofauna to determine the health of rain forests, coral reefs and savannah ecosystems.</span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">You would never declare a forest or coral reef "clean" or "healthy" by applauding the ABSENCE of life forms, yet this is what we do with water. Ivan, Sergio and Marcos work gives us a chance to look at water in a new way and finally see just who and what we are dealing with in there so we can better know which organisms to target for support or destruction. It permits a much more nuanced approach to water treatment and their expertise would make a nice fit for our eco-home demonstration -- they could look at the water being pumped into the rooftop tank and at everystep of its journey, from the hydroponic rooftop garden down to the sinks and showers and toilets and on to the biodigester and back up to the garden, determine where it could best contribute to the overall health of the system and where it could be tapped for human consumption. With the proper technological enhancements, the residents could visualize what was going on in the water in 3D in front of them and easily respond when the ecology got out of balance, instead of bombarding their water with chemicals.</span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">Then our ecohome would start concerning itself with how to heat the water -- whether for boiling or bathing, and how to supply electricity to the water pumps and to lights when making fuel isn't practical or is undesirable. </span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">For that we turn to the work of <a href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/events/sciencefair/projects/gsf90.html">Yassine Bouanane, 17 from Laval, Canada. </a></span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">Yassine has developed an innovative low cost solar tracking mechanism based on the embedded computing power now available through the open source Arduino microcontroller platform. It uses two servos to increase the electrical output of a photovoltaic panel by an incredible 36% meaning that, for example, a single 100 Watt panel that would normally produce perhaps 1/2 kWH during an average day could produce nearly .7 kWH during the same time, reducing the cost associated with "going solar", particularly for people who are low income (the cost of the Arduino and servos is considerably less than the cost of an 36 watt panel, for example). The same principle, with more robust hardware, could also be applied to solar thermal tracking for heating water. Using servos connected basically to gimbles holding the solar panel, Yassine's code enables what has become essentially a "robotic solar panel" to do as the Beatles sing and "follow the sun".</span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">In the true spirit of the open source community, Yassine has generously created a website with his schematics and Arduino C code available for download for free so that anybody can replicate his work. He writes, </span> </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="color: black;">
"Optipan.com est un site internet ayant pour but d'aider des personnes
vivant dans des régions pauvres ou éloignées et qui disposent de
panneaux photovoltaïques en leur offrant un système qui permet
d'orienter leurs panneaux photovoltaïques vers le soleil." </div>
</blockquote>
Translated into English this says,<br />
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"Optipan.com is an internet site having as its aim the goal of helping people living in poor regions or in remote locations who want to use solar panels by offering them a way of orienting the photovoltaics toward the sun".<br />
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Where many students are using similar Ardunio based robotics to create revolving turrets to track targets and shoot things, Yassine has turned his skills toward a more wholesome and important target -- shooting for a clean energy future for all.<br />
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His system would make a valuable contribution to our eco-home demonstration and has implications not only for efficient photovoltaics but creating heliostats that can track the sun and concentrate it for water purification! Because even with a sophisticated understanding of the microbial treasures in water, we need to make sure that disease organisms do not infect the residents of our model eco-village, and concentrated sunlight is a great way to distill water and destroy germs.<br />
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But what happens when people <i><b>do</b></i> get sick?<br />
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It turns out that not far south from Yassine, another Google Science Fair finalist is also using low cost microcontroller circuits to solve problems. <a href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/events/sciencefair/projects/gsf76.html">Catherine Wong, 16, from Morristown USA</a>, who was also a Science in Action finalist, designed a cell-phone compatible, bluetooth enabled electrocardiograph (EKG) prototype that was capable of transmitting an EKG image over the cell phone network for remote examination. Her goal is to ensure that people experiencing poverty and often far from medical services can use their own already purchased phone technology to gather important data about their health and get it to professionals without incurring the costs and dangers of either docotor or patient having to travel. Her dream is to make things that work for those of us the least well off and in her references she cites one of my most influential and favorite works, "Design for the other 90%": <br />
Chau, R. (2006). <i>Design for
the other 90%: Internet Village Motoman network</i>. Retrieved October 5, 2010,
from Smithsonian Institution website: <a href="http://other90.cooperhewitt.org/%E2%80%8CDesign/%E2%80%8Cinternet-village-motoman-network" rel="nofollow">http://other90.cooperhewitt.org/Design/internet-village-motoman-network</a><br />
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With Catherine's technology and java program on-hand at our eco-home demonstration we can site our best practice model away from city services and medical services and feel much more secure that we have a place that is safe to raise our children and take care of our elderly and loved ones.<br />
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So with this team of youthful superhero avengers on our side we are moving rapidly toward a world where we can take care of most existential issues ourselves, with low cost devices that we can often build ourselves, and visualize our environmental and personal health data ourselves and can telecommunicate with experts when necessary.<br />
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What we still need is a way to cut down on the costs of accessing experts, whether we are talking about doctors or environmental scientists or educators. As Marx pointed out in the labor value theory of capitalism, it is the cost of labor that really makes the economy work; the problem is that the poor often remain poor because they can't afford quality expertise. This is true for engineering and it is also true for education. <br />
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What is needed is a way to use inexpensive AI to help us advise, consult and teach. And this is what <a href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/events/sciencefair/projects/gsf70.html">Martin Schneider, 14 from Dresher USA and Joshua Li, 14 </a>from Ambler USA are doing with thier "Can You Beat Bob?" project. <br />
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Martin and Joshua have captured the spirit of the age -- the Zeitgeist, if you will -- and are keenly aware that "educational video games have emerged as a new medium for teaching core concepts and supplementing existing curriculum". What they bring to this emerging field is empirical evidence that a virtual competitor (who they named "Bob") could significantly increase the time fourth-graders in an elementary school engaged in productive math games. <br />
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With their help and their awareness that what they demonstrated through some rather good science can be applied to gaming that teaches science and history, we can go a step further in realizing what I've been calling "a sustainable development simulator" where people can turn their own homes and communities into sustainable development demonstrations by first "playing their way to success" in a gaming simulation and then taking the STEM skills they learn into the real world for application.<br />
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What often holds people back from reifying their desire to apply concept to the real world, however, is a feeling that they can't do it without an "expert" with them. By having virtual experts available tirelessly at all times to guide and motivate people learning real life skills we radically increase the likelihood that they will be able to use what they learn in a gaming or educational situation in their own lives.<br />
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Now while we are on the topic of the benefits of applied artificial intelligence, we come to the work of <a href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/events/sciencefair/projects/gsf83.html">Brittany Wenger, 17</a>, moving south from Martin and Joshua down to Lakewood Ranch, USA.<br />
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In effect what Brittany is doing is creating and training that "medical expert" that poor people and most of us couldn't afford to consult with for the early detection of Breast Cancer. Like Catherine, Brittany is keenly aware that the costs of health care exceed the ability of the afflicted to pay and with 1 out of every 8 women getting breast cancer urgent solutions are needed. Personally motivated by the suffering cancer caused in her own family she dedicated herself to making diagnosis faster, less invasive and cheaper as well as more effective.<br />
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In Brittany's experiments she developed a custom-crafted neural network in Java that could learn to recognize the difference between malignant and benign cancer samples obtained using a simple Fine Needle Aspirates (FNAs), the least invasive biopsy. She writes, "<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<h2>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: small;">Artificial neural networks detect patterns too complex to be recognized
by humans and can be applied to breast mass malignancy classification when
evaluating Fine Needle Aspirates (FNAs). </span></span></h2>
</blockquote>
By letting her "medical Bob" AI to do the prescreening, the need for doctors to do more invasive and expensive procedures can be diminished. And by opening up the learning to "the cloud" Brittany has been able to validate her approach with 7.6 million trials using existing dataset instances, showing the power of open-source data approaches and cloud computing to solve big problems. Unlike commercial products which lack certain capacities she says "<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;">the network has been published in the
cloud, allowing for global submissions and benefit". And the benefits of opening things up to world are that </span></span>her predictive success was 97.4% . With more samples we "may achieve perfection" she says and "maybe ready to diagnose actual patients."<br />
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Once again, with this tool as part of our toolkit, the best practice model for sustainable living gets a step closer to being realized -- using Yassine's solar tracker to help provide the necessary electricity for running a computer and internet satellite connection (we brought such equipment to the remotest part of Nepal in our recent "last mile technology" expedition with Alton Byers and Chris Rainier) people can now access an artificial diagnostic expert from anywhere and at low or no cost, and in this case the AI is capable of things no human expert could do.<br />
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As we continue west on to Piano USA in the middle of the United States, we meet <a href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/events/sciencefair/projects/gsf71.html">Kimberley Yu, 16, and Phillip Yu, 14.</a> This brother sister team has taken on the challenge of finding a cure to Frontotemporal dementia (FTD), a fatal neurodegenerative disease akin to Alzheimer's that afflicts a quarter of a million Americans but currently has no
effective treatments. Similar to Brittany, the Yu's passion for solving this problem comes from a sad personal experience - a devastating form of dementia affected their great grandfather in rural China. So once again we have young people inspired to solve problems on behalf of "the other 90%" with solutions that can be applied anywhere.<br />
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The Yus have done ground breaking original research that has opened up new avenues of study and treatment by actually identifying which specific proteins (FUS) and pathways (NF-kB) lead to the chronic inflammation that results in frontotemporal dementia. With their discoveries targeted drugs and therapies can now be developed that goes right to the source of the problem and corrects it rather than having to rely on a shotgun approach that is expensive, time consuming, filled with dangers of side effects and ultimately perhaps useless. In effect the Yus are creating a map for the pathways that lead to cellular abnormalities. <br />
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With such a team on our team we have in our problem solving community a couple of people who as young siblings were "always curious about science" and now know how to take issues that look to the experts like they have no solution and then work with the right methodology and insight to put their finger on the answer. <br />
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Moving on to San Diego we come to <a href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/events/sciencefair/projects/gsf63.html">Jonah Kohn, 14 </a>whose project "Good Vibrations" "combines science and music to try to help people. The goal of my device", he says, "is to improve the quality of life for people with hearing loss, especially severe hearing loss". Using the concept of "multi-frequency tactile sound" which he learned about through bone conduction of his guitar strings via his teeth, he went on to investigate "what haven't reseraches done?" and realized that current work on frequency discrimination has focused on speech which has a limited range. Noting that though cochlear implants have "eight to twenty four channels" they "don't help as much with music because the frequencies tend to be different than for speech" he worked on a device that could use sensory information from the fingers to compensate for information the ears couldn't distinguish. By dividing the sound spectrum into multiple frequency ranges and using vibrating speakers to apply those ranges through multiple contacts to a user's body, he was able to demonstrate that tone discrimination, pitch discrimination and volume hearing were all significantly improved (36 to 52 % ) among cochlear implant subjects under the age of 50 (after which tactile sensitivity diminishes dramatically). Interestingly, normal-range hearing subjects experienced almost no benefit from his device as the brain seems to ignore the redundant information coming in from other sensory organs. <br />
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As a musician I can attest to the importance of being able to perceive the richness of this artform in creating human well-being and couldn't imagine not being able to listen to music. For our sustainable living team to have somebody on board like Jonah who thinks not just about the needs of the "other 90%" but of that percentage of people suffering the deprivation of this important sense -- hearing -- gives us the chance for true equity and compassion for our fellows, a prerequisite for a sustainable civilization. What is more, the ability to break physical phenomena like music down into constituent frequencies and then create devices that can help different brains reconstitute that data into a whole from different sensory pathways has important implications for whole-brain holistic learning and multiple intelligences and works nicely with the 3D data visualization of Melvin with his spinning LED layers and the mapping of air pollutants by Alexey and Milena. They should find some great synergies discussing different forms of data visualization and how best to present information to our brains.<br />
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As we move up the coast to Los Gatos California we meet <a href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/events/sciencefair/projects/gsf79.html">Sabera Talukder, 16,</a> who was also a finalist in the Google Science in Action contest. <br />
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Sabera's "low cost solution to clean drinking water", "Pani Purification" (Pani is Hindi for water) adds another piece to the puzzle for providing best practice infrastructure for our model sustainable home and community. A Bengali-American teenager, she made a summer trip to her father's village in Bangladesh and came home determined to help solve the unfortunate water problems plaguing the people in the area. <br />
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While other girls her age were working on putting together the right accessories for their wardrobe, Sabera was working on putting together an effective solution to water contamination using Jute Bag and Copper Mesh fileters, solar battery powered UV lights and activated carbon. Simple but effective solutions like painting tubing white to reflect the UV light and increase its efficiency were implemented. Flow control via pressure sensitive valves conserved energy so that she could use a very small and inexpensive PV panel to trickle charge a normal car battery and get effective results.<br />
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Sabera's attention to the details of how to create a system that locals could build out of ubiquitous and cheap materials rather than expensive imports makes her system a nice addition to the others cited above. Her criteria should be in the handbook for every would-be engineer hoping to engage in development work:<br />
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The Criteria: <br />
T<span style="font-size: x-small;">he apparatus must be portable.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">-It must be made of cheap materials.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">-It must cost under 25$.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">-It must be self sufficient.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">-It must be durable.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">-The materials must be locally available.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">-It must be easy to fix if problems arise.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">-It must be able to weather different climates.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">-Local villagers must be able to maintain and operate it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">-It must be easy to deploy, and accessible for everyone.</span></div>
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In addition to building and testing the prototype, she ran tests to prove the efficacy of the system, running separate and combined UVc and Activated Carbon treatments on known pathogens in the three major shape groups like Rhodospirillum rubrum (spiral shaped) , Bacillus subtilis (rod shaped) and Mircococcus luteus (sphere shaped). <br />
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With Sabera on our team we can much better protect the health of our families; combined with the know-how of Ivan, Marcos and Sergio we some powerful answers emerging to the question "how can we ensure that everybody has safe clean water to drink and use and return to our environment?"<br />
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The final stop on our journey West takes us to Tigard USA where we meet <a href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/events/sciencefair/projects/gsf84.html">Yamini Naidu, 17. </a><br />
Yamini's work synergizes nicely with that of Melvin and Raghavaendra. Where Melvin creates floating 3D images through light interference patterns and Rhaghavendra used 3D animation to model the deoxygenation reaction driven by sunlight that he is studying, Yamini creaed a "homology model of a human receptor protein using a computer modeling program". The goal?<br />
To go "from models to medications: identification of medication leads for treating methamphetamine addiction".<br />
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It is all fine and good for us to try to pool all the talent we find at the Google Science Fair to create a best practice model eutopia that can provide clean, abundant energy, food and water and eliminate our wastes, and that allows us to monitor our health in youth and old age, visualize data so that we can end environmental threats and disease threats and ensure that all people can enjoy the benefits of life and music and art and civilization and the company of loved ones until the end of our days. But if we truly are going to make a better world, we also have to use today's tools to solve yesterdays self-inflicted problems, often born out of a deep dissatisfaction with the status quo.<br />
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Drug addiction is a terrible social problem that we can hope living in a sustainable community that is back in touch with nature and guided with intelligence will prevent. But what do we do with the millions of people who are already addicted? What about those who chose to drop out and now can't find their way back in?<br />
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Yamini's computational chemistry work toward a rational drug design approach helps us answer that question. She discovered two novel allosteric binding sites and "put her creativity to the test" to design novel chemical compounds (called YTN) to interact with those sites and displace METH. The TAAR1 receptor she has identified is also associated with Diabetes, Schizophrenia, Depression, Alzheimer's Disease and stroke, so there are promising synergies between Yamini and Kimberly and Philip Yu that we can anticipate. Meanwhile, her recognition of the potential for the TAAR1 to be used in the creation of a biosensor binding to toxic compound leading to "the devlopment of efficient methods to treat environmental pollution" that can be "done through in silico modeling analysis" gives her nice resonance with the environmental sensing work her fellow finalists are doing in the Ukraine and in Spain.<br />
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One can also hear her discussing the possibility for virtual screening of 3D homology models related to the receptors she is studying with Brittany, exploring how computer programs can do the jobs that human experts once did, but with greater speed and accuracy, and talking to Martin and Joshua about developing computer games that, rather than addicting kids, help kids get off of real drug addictions by coming up with virtual solutions during "in silico" experimentation that can be applied "in vivo".<br />
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Motivated by the loss of her uncle due to a stroke, and recognizing that Meth users also suffer strokes, she is hopeful that her research will also help provide insight "in the treatment of strokes whose etiology is still unknown". But when not engaged in her medical research, she trains in a form of classical Indian dance, using this skill and art "to help the community by participating in performances to help raise funds for various causes sponsored by local charitable and cultural organizations."<br />
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This desire to use art and music to help others creates a nice synergy with the goals of Jonah and indeed is a thread that binds all of these extraordinary young people, who are as multi-dimensional as one can imagine, reflecting not just good STEM education (Science Technology, Engineering and Math) but the right variant on what we call STEAM education (Science, Technology, Engineering ART and Math, or Science, Technology, Edutainment, Art and Music).<br />
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Yamini's personal statement seems to be applicable to all the contestants: "an aspiration to use science for the benefit of humanity, linking together... civic affairs with science innovation [with the] goal... to give back to the community because the community has given me so many oppportunities... asking not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."<br />
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These are an incredible group of young people, and it will be fascinating to see how they interact and share ideas.<br />
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I can only hope that one day we, as a society, can provide more opportunities for these high caliber minds and hearts to come together and share their ideas and outlooks and ultimately put them into synergistic practice, creating an implementation space we can all turn to, lighting a path for the rest of us to get out of the darkness of environmental destruction, poverty and disease.<br />
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We hear the song that reminds us to believe that "the children are our future". Properly nurtured and supported and encouraged to work together, these children certainly are!<br />
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<br />T.H. Culhanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02974539190597507374noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1334849659163883527.post-17096717171195365092012-07-16T04:43:00.004-07:002012-07-16T04:43:54.578-07:00Analysis of Renewable Energy Potential in the Hinku Valley Part 2(In our last post we reported on the installed solar electric capacity of the Hinku Valley trail from Lukla to Khare at the base of Mera Peak. In this post we explore solutions to the indoor air pollution and deforestation challenges facing the region.)<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjomq780-TRCAjTn1Bc-0escIUznLsoBWKhMWQ1Jdn34MpQLwDidkTAZkEIiedLmt9ULledMeqdG5Jir5K-iepc_uEJ_6YyclQp-DBXvz7Kst1TJXCeVT_FKoC13CCx_01legwVgfLesw/s1600/20120508_102917.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjomq780-TRCAjTn1Bc-0escIUznLsoBWKhMWQ1Jdn34MpQLwDidkTAZkEIiedLmt9ULledMeqdG5Jir5K-iepc_uEJ_6YyclQp-DBXvz7Kst1TJXCeVT_FKoC13CCx_01legwVgfLesw/s320/20120508_102917.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgMJEGkDdxEJbD5COjxsFksFMoBxrscIMlh5IodkteBlt3AMO8172OJL7lnHeGtbl4Glek8IZIkszbD0q1LhX1rlqcnLE7MyLH3Z14vgWULm4tzVB96Fs3dOblD5OHYWlvAZEr8FdifA/s1600/20120509_114107.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgMJEGkDdxEJbD5COjxsFksFMoBxrscIMlh5IodkteBlt3AMO8172OJL7lnHeGtbl4Glek8IZIkszbD0q1LhX1rlqcnLE7MyLH3Z14vgWULm4tzVB96Fs3dOblD5OHYWlvAZEr8FdifA/s320/20120509_114107.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
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<b>The problems: Deforestation and Indoor Air Pollution</b><br />
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Despite a successful ban on the collection of the slow growing shrub juniper and its replacement with kerosene and despitee the growing penetration of photovoltaics in the Hinku Valley of Nepal (roughly 2 kilowatts of installed capacity throughout the valley with an average of 20 Watts per lodge) and the presence of 4 solar cookers (2 in each of two villages), the fate of the forest and general alpine ecosystem is still very uncertain.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzI6quWWoLDFt7RoTCV-4tPo3_GBDOzlBUZE1Ae5mPpYYZitdOftHuaNlXvaqlw9vZLdkr5RKpQXLisU_LbN8TwqaO2jCDAz32d-VGaKcnrWIxKSDDTeU8e9waKKa1okWeNPYFTlxlUQ/s1600/20120508_164015.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQp2c3RnY9nPpMr0-8ublbkFig_gUi9Em82OC7wNqdlVJKMWsJu5y8Ur5xcxYfKBsA7yBJceNdHFdhw0Zv1KeBfRavJPDoOhVP88aaooptoNmokKqXrq_n5LK7tpXLMqH6pBWjtv5Drw/s1600/20120509_115502.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQp2c3RnY9nPpMr0-8ublbkFig_gUi9Em82OC7wNqdlVJKMWsJu5y8Ur5xcxYfKBsA7yBJceNdHFdhw0Zv1KeBfRavJPDoOhVP88aaooptoNmokKqXrq_n5LK7tpXLMqH6pBWjtv5Drw/s320/20120509_115502.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
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Additionally, indoor air pollution is still a major health hazard, claiming lives and causing respiratory and eye illnesses as well as cancer, particularly among women and children.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHDumMAVGWIZdCQUFWWj-pC4F9UeqaqurXiLWnUkYDwhZ01Igp6LOZVJdIcV3B02T4Ti8tTvWjLvj2YC6lGuY7YnMC5HAqtkpcbusZPEFRDcwy7tbNo4o9UZBfCWXvUELzLdzL0g2cug/s1600/20120508_160647.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHDumMAVGWIZdCQUFWWj-pC4F9UeqaqurXiLWnUkYDwhZ01Igp6LOZVJdIcV3B02T4Ti8tTvWjLvj2YC6lGuY7YnMC5HAqtkpcbusZPEFRDcwy7tbNo4o9UZBfCWXvUELzLdzL0g2cug/s320/20120508_160647.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdAm90iccLM2sv15lLmvBd_eIxwhaCxuFn7oPZE7-AQuXqyr3KXXOMs1wHeb3TGddgCgepcSn_BndGmCBKWnNjbd0FI_1wxqH-olvE8wPKxAr1m3OpGsMn8F2GxN1Gok5sYHhg4FuEgQ/s1600/20120508_160652.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdAm90iccLM2sv15lLmvBd_eIxwhaCxuFn7oPZE7-AQuXqyr3KXXOMs1wHeb3TGddgCgepcSn_BndGmCBKWnNjbd0FI_1wxqH-olvE8wPKxAr1m3OpGsMn8F2GxN1Gok5sYHhg4FuEgQ/s320/20120508_160652.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
Firewood continues to be the primary fuel used for both cooking, heating bathing and washing water, and for keeping the homes and lodges warm.<br />
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The Hinku doesn't have large yak populations so yak dung for these purposes is in short supply, and even in areas like the Khumbu Valley where there are still substantial yak populations, yak dung, while a sustainable fuel from a production and consumption standpoint, still causes great discomfort and suffering through air pollution when used for combustion.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZDLStSg5NrvOytV9kac7YmXsULLPxQYVMXFQ6s58uUkDtwTxIVYz4wHenKkMZIVpf_3_uOuaXhR_WUvwWOyqZNlp1b3qpJw72J-BPdvWvZzDmQBWdUPeB-DmIfe52rAQgd9s94qtWeQ/s1600/20120511_090546.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZDLStSg5NrvOytV9kac7YmXsULLPxQYVMXFQ6s58uUkDtwTxIVYz4wHenKkMZIVpf_3_uOuaXhR_WUvwWOyqZNlp1b3qpJw72J-BPdvWvZzDmQBWdUPeB-DmIfe52rAQgd9s94qtWeQ/s320/20120511_090546.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A yak and a solar cooker - two ways of heating water in the village of Khare at the base of Mera Peak in Nepal.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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In summary, as Balgain and Shakya (BSP report 2005) point out<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"The heavy dependence on fuelwood resources has a negative impact on the environment resulting in deforestation around villages and the deterioration of soil stability on the affected hillsides. In addition, the burning of dung reduces soil fertility. With deforestation around villages, the daily labour required for collecting fuelwood increases impacting primarily women and children and leaving little time for education as well as for productive tasks. Additionally the smoke emitted from the burning of the biomass has adverse health effects on women and children causing widespread eye and respiratory diseases." (p. 6).</blockquote>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzI6quWWoLDFt7RoTCV-4tPo3_GBDOzlBUZE1Ae5mPpYYZitdOftHuaNlXvaqlw9vZLdkr5RKpQXLisU_LbN8TwqaO2jCDAz32d-VGaKcnrWIxKSDDTeU8e9waKKa1okWeNPYFTlxlUQ/s1600/20120508_164015.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzI6quWWoLDFt7RoTCV-4tPo3_GBDOzlBUZE1Ae5mPpYYZitdOftHuaNlXvaqlw9vZLdkr5RKpQXLisU_LbN8TwqaO2jCDAz32d-VGaKcnrWIxKSDDTeU8e9waKKa1okWeNPYFTlxlUQ/s320/20120508_164015.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8WJ7GJDx_utiUlNfZRSJCAvUco18MmjzBwuZ5PKSJRKBHzeOgFQOVdhkaez09romNC5EAjk0kbGItMm4oWhh0IDKuafDiBKbqd5DVRrXQ8p_jJPZlhGdzNhRcTuoKEE7Q9cGCbqf0ag/s1600/20120508_164104.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8WJ7GJDx_utiUlNfZRSJCAvUco18MmjzBwuZ5PKSJRKBHzeOgFQOVdhkaez09romNC5EAjk0kbGItMm4oWhh0IDKuafDiBKbqd5DVRrXQ8p_jJPZlhGdzNhRcTuoKEE7Q9cGCbqf0ag/s320/20120508_164104.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjHopPL0sCeSMfX77R6yBqbSDJrhfYHY7ebwoYHkuwWe6OPbwBmm62nO8yE5pTl2MKypnEzax7Eupxcm_I-glzpXGt1nR6ddkLKyjMtdrRs8AYkJSDeTxkRNAonHMJqzHr4DxCWfuwaQ/s1600/20120508_164113.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjHopPL0sCeSMfX77R6yBqbSDJrhfYHY7ebwoYHkuwWe6OPbwBmm62nO8yE5pTl2MKypnEzax7Eupxcm_I-glzpXGt1nR6ddkLKyjMtdrRs8AYkJSDeTxkRNAonHMJqzHr4DxCWfuwaQ/s320/20120508_164113.jpg" width="240" /></a><br />
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The kerosene that has replaced shrub juniper in the highest alpine areas carries with it its own health risks (the hydrocarbon smoke and fumes are both poisonous and carcinogenic) and carries with it substantial economic risks (prices can fluctuate wildly as the supply comes from India and relies not only on price and social stability there but on an entire supply chain that must get the fuel parsed into appropriate containers and transported for many days through the narrow passes up to the mountain villages.) <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizPYQbnGkzpNZACP48Vh6VH2cSW_ennAhPQMucl4-oXZfDNY9upGmIb9XkiH2HYFiMbXLExsSZiM8HASbRr4uaK2amu3fOy7ZaP5HlmqaHgB_-ZeIPWS9Qbb7j5LuntWXnTBKEXyTvZQ/s1600/20120516_185150.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizPYQbnGkzpNZACP48Vh6VH2cSW_ennAhPQMucl4-oXZfDNY9upGmIb9XkiH2HYFiMbXLExsSZiM8HASbRr4uaK2amu3fOy7ZaP5HlmqaHgB_-ZeIPWS9Qbb7j5LuntWXnTBKEXyTvZQ/s320/20120516_185150.jpg" width="240" /></a><br />
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<b>The Sun as Solution</b><br />
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There is a widespread belief that solar energy can provide the solution to the energy problems faced by people in remote areas, and this is true but only if all forms of solar energy are considered, including organic wastes. The naive assumption that electricity, whether derived directly from the sun through photovoltaics, or indirectly through wind power or hydro power, can provide the answer inhibits real solutions from being implemented.<br />
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The "energy-ladder" assumption that electricity is considered the apogee of energy development has been called into question when full environmental and cost accounting is done (see "<a href="http://www.rembio.org.mx/2011/Documentos/Publicaciones/C4/from-linear-fuel-switching-to-multiple-cooking-strategies.pdf">From Linear Fuel Switching to Multiple Cooking Strategies: A Critique and Alternative to the Energy Ladder Model"</a> by Masera Saatkamp and Kammen, 2000). Instead, as Masera, Saatkamp and Kammen point out, "rural households do not ``switch'' fuels, but more generally follow a multiple fuel<br />or ``fuel stacking'' strategy by which new cooking technologies and fuels are added, but<br />even the most traditional systems are rarely abandoned." To help solve the problems in highland Nepal we need to understand how local people weigh the costs and benefits of any given technology and consider with them what the best mix might be at any given time.<br />
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Westerners accustomed to using electric water heaters, electric space heaters and electric stoves usually do not understand that converting electricity into heat is the least efficient use of this energy medium and that electrical resistance heating uses so much electricity that it is nearly impossible to deliver on a material or cost-effective basis for poverty alleviation.<br />
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Electricity generated in remote areas, whether via fossil-fuel powered gensets, or any of the renewable sources, has been found to be insufficient for sustainable cooking or heating; its appropriate use is for lighting, communications and computer equipment and power tools.<br />
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For all forms of heating where electricity is in limited supply or costly, people will continue to use wood, charcoal, biomass (like dung and brush) or liquid fuels (like petrol, diesel or kerosene) unless we can supply them with more efficient direct forms of heating. Even in areas where reliable micro-hydro electricity has been developed, for example in the Khumbu valley and around Lukla, there are seasonal outages and rationing and problems with siltation and most lodges must rely on backup generators just to provide lighting. We experienced frequent interruptions in electric service on this expedition when we were staying in Lukla. Climate change and disruptions of the normal cycles of glacial buildup, thaw and melt will increase the challenge of year-round reliance on hydroelectricity as an answer to all energy needs, even where it is available and well developed. Thus, other options must be made available to create a diverse portfolio of solutions that is resistant to disruption.<br />
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Solar Water Heating (SHW), particularly through the use of highly efficient vacuum tubes which quickly create hot water ranging from 80 C to 110 C, is a marvelous solution that is easy to implement in the Hinku as we discovered during the 2011 expedition to Dingboche (one must merely be careful to pack glass tubes very carefully and securely for transport and ensure that nothing can fall on them once installed). SHW is ideal for bathing; for cooking purposes solar hot water can also be used, usually as preheating solution to get the water from its ambient temperature in the region (normally between 0 and 15 C) to temperatures well above 50 C. Using SHW for base energy it then takes very little additional fuel to get it to boil. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKvAUYiKJEl-4q0uClRAD4uBatD2Vf3pQhakaK_NCrRFUtdZLvdSPi_06eRxR1UbfI2uPB0PIRHDjxzro-P4tbeohmsiDpSdW5UjI_FQWtP2mrETqRrZTBz5BBzwR22WikMRRx9oWofA/s1600/20120511_101657.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKvAUYiKJEl-4q0uClRAD4uBatD2Vf3pQhakaK_NCrRFUtdZLvdSPi_06eRxR1UbfI2uPB0PIRHDjxzro-P4tbeohmsiDpSdW5UjI_FQWtP2mrETqRrZTBz5BBzwR22WikMRRx9oWofA/s320/20120511_101657.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
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Solar Cookers have also proven themselves popular in the Himalayas, but are still rare in the Hinku, and can not be relied on during cloudy weather.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK6llaKFrEqu4B6sCI_EI2_M_BiZoSiQezR_KEZyxBiliVPj1SlLyXTsoYpbyaTmUii4xRyftPUii4_6Xa3ITXDgJwuLfvFoSDqww_rowKB7NqKwRIRiM1-Y7xcVbzOaEjuszzYbgRqw/s1600/20120511_095120.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK6llaKFrEqu4B6sCI_EI2_M_BiZoSiQezR_KEZyxBiliVPj1SlLyXTsoYpbyaTmUii4xRyftPUii4_6Xa3ITXDgJwuLfvFoSDqww_rowKB7NqKwRIRiM1-Y7xcVbzOaEjuszzYbgRqw/s320/20120511_095120.jpg" width="320" /></a> <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOb-t43KJcNYqh6Ld2FNdpqoyc4t9054P91RJzLW9if4cWcpMnvKAGc5OMARyYEcDdJmHZKlfyC51PITguD6NB9Ji52IOX89q9JJQOuYX46jj5xcKas2HGN_lPFjSAYrsBz2krtpa0Xg/s1600/20120512_114124.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOb-t43KJcNYqh6Ld2FNdpqoyc4t9054P91RJzLW9if4cWcpMnvKAGc5OMARyYEcDdJmHZKlfyC51PITguD6NB9Ji52IOX89q9JJQOuYX46jj5xcKas2HGN_lPFjSAYrsBz2krtpa0Xg/s320/20120512_114124.jpg" width="240" /></a><br />
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Greenhouse heating as an adjunct to space heating is a very plausible answer to mitigating the use of forest resources but has not been observed despite the presence of two green houses in the Hinku Valley -- these were detached from the lodges so the heat was not utilized for human habitation. Nonetheless the possibility exists with some awareness training and examples.<br />
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Other forms of solar space heating (passive solar architecture,<a href="http://www.reuk.co.uk/Make-a-Simple-Solar-Air-Heater.htm"> the construction of solar space heaters using black paint coated aluminum cans in a glass box piped into the house and facing South</a>) have not been observed in Nepal but could be easily implemented; interestingly none of the houses or lodges we observed in the Hinku valley were oriented to use the sun's light or heat; there were no south facing windows to permit solar gain, no thermal masses used to retain solar heat; nothing in the construction of the lodges or homes seemed to be designed to permit heat gain or avoid losses. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKmRJbGJQuVpv8URM5ZUlFuhXaCw8s7NUjl-FT4JDLapPwRCEbR1l2EkVHzOEAZi1_bU1VnMSjLf8xcf6Ro4j1tAFM3bOu5fjnU0c8cMGtHHiUpS4o0PmYIX4uWFk3JAbgIrOfo6lOrg/s1600/20120511_085447.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKmRJbGJQuVpv8URM5ZUlFuhXaCw8s7NUjl-FT4JDLapPwRCEbR1l2EkVHzOEAZi1_bU1VnMSjLf8xcf6Ro4j1tAFM3bOu5fjnU0c8cMGtHHiUpS4o0PmYIX4uWFk3JAbgIrOfo6lOrg/s320/20120511_085447.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">In this overlook of the village of Khare at the base of Mera Peak it is clear that there is no consideration of orientation to the sun used in the building of lodges or dwellings. Passive solar architecture is not utilized in this region</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBbiYozlR0ggG6Do78bypJrYKrVS-GZTd2s_bBaP2CCo1dre6Qonqr5-7Fnc9lRpC-3YQgr45Cu6-uAzLqZBGSSA8c74dwBWZkhyphenhyphenCFWKyKzVLtpffJaN-63-uMolirNBYht_4uu9X6-g/s1600/20120512_082611.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBbiYozlR0ggG6Do78bypJrYKrVS-GZTd2s_bBaP2CCo1dre6Qonqr5-7Fnc9lRpC-3YQgr45Cu6-uAzLqZBGSSA8c74dwBWZkhyphenhyphenCFWKyKzVLtpffJaN-63-uMolirNBYht_4uu9X6-g/s320/20120512_082611.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our lodge in Thangna (the village before Khare on the trail to Mera Peak) had PV for light and emergency phone, facing south, but thesmall windows were boarded up, had no panes of glass or plastic, and faced west, generally covered in shade.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-siTTc7zl2ReB8-HYd-OK85WkVqU4ctlpvY0eRB4TpKXSutMVzr4Eq7cDf3UUSWXG3ql4EYvb6yoeoJpzBLtE_9jP4KCj4ZeHj8DA_Vqotr-5mXctGz9fe7MvZXKlJMSXGZzgVv4alA/s1600/20120511_095022.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-siTTc7zl2ReB8-HYd-OK85WkVqU4ctlpvY0eRB4TpKXSutMVzr4Eq7cDf3UUSWXG3ql4EYvb6yoeoJpzBLtE_9jP4KCj4ZeHj8DA_Vqotr-5mXctGz9fe7MvZXKlJMSXGZzgVv4alA/s320/20120511_095022.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
<br />
Anrita Sherpa from the Mountain Institute pointed out to many of the lodge owners in the Hinku how his brother in Naamche Bazaar, who uses solar vacuum tube systems, solar cookers, heat exchanging efficient stoves, on-demand propane gas heaters, photovoltaics and large south facing windows, also insulates his lodge by placing hundreds of recycled PET water bottles between the stove walls and the plywood, creating a dead air space that keeps most of the heat in and reduces the need for fuel. <br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAT2KFrRuNXn1Rwt1aFWuITVoP_0gFH7QUc-qYIPz2Qhq2DXvRY4g5HWpTTmanOg6jrSXEDzEwICxbAEsUw4AF3dNNFpZHpwqWsWVuM8a_T3uoe77IojCEcja2-9NUfbvRGSKuPGT40A/s1600/20120510_162140.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAT2KFrRuNXn1Rwt1aFWuITVoP_0gFH7QUc-qYIPz2Qhq2DXvRY4g5HWpTTmanOg6jrSXEDzEwICxbAEsUw4AF3dNNFpZHpwqWsWVuM8a_T3uoe77IojCEcja2-9NUfbvRGSKuPGT40A/s400/20120510_162140.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A sign inside the lodge at the base of Mera Peak reads "Please note: Wood Precious. Heater Charge is Rs 200. Please remember to pay". There is no insulation other than sporadic thatch coverings on bare stone walls and no glass or plastic paned windows; the few windows that do exist for ventilation in the smoke filled areas are small and face random directions.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1rv8U7ukmBcFGsSUNfdoRlE69O1ylJ_HaQe3_TiitwkXcCXQABmhqcUifO4LPPgKJ_soW0cSGWrO-96CZm4vxx8kbwkRx_oi59Ti4SjYcx45FngdenQc262hx7TcaNn0RpCNYyxSTDA/s1600/20120510_083126.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1rv8U7ukmBcFGsSUNfdoRlE69O1ylJ_HaQe3_TiitwkXcCXQABmhqcUifO4LPPgKJ_soW0cSGWrO-96CZm4vxx8kbwkRx_oi59Ti4SjYcx45FngdenQc262hx7TcaNn0RpCNYyxSTDA/s320/20120510_083126.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A similar sign at Sona Guest House in Thangna reflects the same reality with a "notice for heater charge" apologizing to trekkers with the note: "Please don't feel more expensive because we have wood problem."</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
Insulation may be the single most important and easy to implement immediate solution for direct reduction of woodfuel in the Hinku. Besides this, the <a href="http://survivalcache.com/dual-survival-emergency-blanket-heat-shelter/">use of mylar reflective sheet to keep heat inside</a> the lodges would also have a profound effect. In this case one would be applying the principle used by emergency "silvered" blankets to save people from hypothermia and the principle used by the inside of thermos containers.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b> Foodscraps and human and non-human bodywastes: reliable sources of solar energy through biogas</b><br />
<br />
In our opinion, concerning the transition away from burning biomass or fossil fuels, the simplest solution to both the environmental and the health challenges posed by firewood and kerosene is the use of biogas.<br />
<br />
Biogas is an oft neglected form of stored solar energy that nonetheless can be made available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, come rain or shine. If the Cole Porter song "Night and Day, you are the one..." were rewritten to speak about the potential for renewable energy, it would be speaking about biogas.<br />
<br />
Rather than falling on solar thermal panels or vacuum tubes to heat up water which must be stored in a hot water tank, or on photovoltaic panels to create electricity which must be stored in batteries, biogas production depends on sunlight stored in the chemical bonds of organic material -- plants and animals, fungi and microbes, and the waste products they produce.<br />
<br />
In general the cycle is very straightforward: sunlight is absorbed by plants in a farmer's field, humans and animals eat the plants and convert some of the stored solar energy into movement and growth and excrete some as their manures. A significant portion of the stored solar energy that was converted into chemical bonds through photosynthesis is contained in plant parts that humans and animals <b>do not eat or is in left over food scraps</b>, and this reliable and easily obtained form of sunshine is simply thrown away in the garbage, paradoxically creating health and hygiene problems.<br />
<br />
All of that stored solar energy, whether in the hydro-carbon bonds found in human and animal wastes, plant wastes or left-over food wastes, can be easily converted into methane gas (CH4) by anaerobic bacteria and Archaea that are ubiquitously found in the stomachs and intestines of all animals as well as in lake and pond mud all over the world. The procedure for creating biogas is deceptively simple: one simply creates an "artificial stomach" from any kind of container (plastic, cement, mud, canvas, leather...) fills it with water and any source of the abovementioned bacteria, and fits to it a feeding tube that goes under the water level into which organic waste can be fed, and effluent tube that comes from a spot a little higher than the feeding tube, but still underwater, and a gas outlet tube that comes from the topmost part of the "stomach" where the lightweight biogas will accumulate. That is it. There is no secret and no special technique that needs to be applied. The microbes do the rest.<br />
<br />
One can always improve the gas production by finding ways to increase the surface area inside the artificial stomach (we use hundreds of small plastic cylinders like the "bioblocks" found in pond filters that permit biofilm growth) and one wants to make sure not to overfeed with food waste lest the stomach get too acid -- the bacteria need a neutral pH. Similarly, to work properly the bacteria need to be kept between 20 and 40 degrees Celsius, but this are trivial plumbing and insulation and feeding rate concerns, not any kind of rocket science.<br />
<br />
In fact biogas production is probably the simplest and most efficient way that any human being, family or community can make good use of solar energy immediately. Everybody has the main ingredients (the bacteria live in our own guts and can be obtained from our feces, and everybody has food wastes of some kind).<br />
<br />
Where people are still burning wood and charcoal and suffering from the effects of indoor air pollution and deforestation we must ask ourselves what the reasons are that this easiest of technologies has not yet been implemented in their community. <br />
<br />
<b>Biogas in the fight against indoor air pollution in Nepal</b><br />
<br />
Nepal has a long and successful history of biogas training, installation and use and is one of the few countries to have several agencies dedicated to dissemination and improvement of this radically simple and effective technology.<br />
<br />
Nepal supports biogas principally in a effort to stop the suffering and mortality caused throughout the country by indoor air pollution. A secondary priority is the ability for biogas to help curtain deforestation. However, as EPA director Lisa Jackson told a group of us at the Aspen Energy Forum in 2011, if we focus on end-goals that have broad support and appeal (like stopping deaths of women and children from indoor smoke) we will also achieve the other goals (stopping reliance on firewood and charcoal which exacerbate deforestation). <br />
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5Ysxptjs2eAUgR7BCctleLgve92n_4XAP1wAVcxSAonvWwaZbHR9B4dMlQI-dNi5cJALBPpwPUJwyorHa1rn8EauhBVWVXFRmR2RODeHsE1SkjX5Yq4bIT0FYqedaJKwQup0ywz4EXQ/s1600/20120516_181838.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5Ysxptjs2eAUgR7BCctleLgve92n_4XAP1wAVcxSAonvWwaZbHR9B4dMlQI-dNi5cJALBPpwPUJwyorHa1rn8EauhBVWVXFRmR2RODeHsE1SkjX5Yq4bIT0FYqedaJKwQup0ywz4EXQ/s400/20120516_181838.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A moving mural on the street in Kathmandu near the river warns the public of the tragic suffering that indoor air pollution created by cooking fires causes in women and children. This depiction of a pregnant Nepalese woman tragically exposing herself and her unborn child to toxic fumes underscores how important it is for us to get clean food-scrap based biogas into common usage as the ideal replacement for firewood and charcoal and not merely "improved cooking stoves" which a<a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=improved-cookstoves-little-reduce-harmful-indoor-emissions&WT.mc_id=SA_DD_20120712"> recent study reported in Scientific Amercian shows are actually ineffective</a>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSQbjj3AMhNTtCASfRmhnV9YxdELlJZkqXXHjc92zHzj-sEHFsuPTMx-DVavB8VmrE2zL3ffuCz-lUY_mh-jS-k5xZdYVBcot5-nGkzK66FKvtW51HdU1JCiqf8_PuDvMKpvn86BOCTw/s1600/20120508_153403.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSQbjj3AMhNTtCASfRmhnV9YxdELlJZkqXXHjc92zHzj-sEHFsuPTMx-DVavB8VmrE2zL3ffuCz-lUY_mh-jS-k5xZdYVBcot5-nGkzK66FKvtW51HdU1JCiqf8_PuDvMKpvn86BOCTw/s320/20120508_153403.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This improved cookstove in Khare uses a 9 Volt computer fan to increase the burn efficiency of the wood fuel. The fan is powered by a battery recharged by a 10 watt solar electric panel. </td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg6VtWttRTTuKUlWw8TPcPRL7R6QYGZHUF-7PUHISoPRvHH5nebZayH4KfZoUh1MeFATqrGbPRfXkUezQ0NmOzWSs30LuuvFZio4SxgqggKYGFiy4qPu-8afP9wShlR5lqj4efrJ_C-A/s1600/20120509_120310.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg6VtWttRTTuKUlWw8TPcPRL7R6QYGZHUF-7PUHISoPRvHH5nebZayH4KfZoUh1MeFATqrGbPRfXkUezQ0NmOzWSs30LuuvFZio4SxgqggKYGFiy4qPu-8afP9wShlR5lqj4efrJ_C-A/s320/20120509_120310.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Some homes have hand powered fans that bolt on to the stoves to increase their effeciency. This one has a handle on the other side that the woman turns as she is cooking to blow air through the stove so that the wood burns cleaner.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaX0GIMvf56LPXFgoCf9keWjbjIssqF_H9Yqi977zbeNx0IV1-mmUBdSMrKs4M8j-BD0b7mW-gofxuCjBQFkgdpBKRBLBMhfJtDRk5MQO2xyqaXbrDIqtNGzBIs6cDufKXo4Xr6Xpljg/s1600/20120508_153145.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaX0GIMvf56LPXFgoCf9keWjbjIssqF_H9Yqi977zbeNx0IV1-mmUBdSMrKs4M8j-BD0b7mW-gofxuCjBQFkgdpBKRBLBMhfJtDRk5MQO2xyqaXbrDIqtNGzBIs6cDufKXo4Xr6Xpljg/s320/20120508_153145.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
<br />
<br />
Across from the United States Embassy in Kathmandu on the second floor of a small building complex is the office for <a href="http://www.pciaonline.org/indoor-air-pollution-and-health-forum-nepal">"The Partnership for Clean Indoor Air</a>" . Their mandate is <br />
<br />
Project 1: Improving Households Energy Management Practices in Sacred
Himalayan Landscapes, Langtang National Park-Rasuwa Funded by GEF/UNDP
Small Grant Programme<br />
Project 2: Advocacy for Gender Sensitive Energy Policy in Nepal funded by ENERGIA Network<br />
<br />
They are partnered with an International Organization, orignally UK based but now with offices in Bangladesh, Kenya, Peru, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, Sudan and Nepal called <a href="http://practicalaction.org/">"Practical Action".</a> <br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJjOQdT7wikrhgkVuX1LrNpsnjAhH9TgR9dmJg0R9HOCGmAKS32uTj1VmiutcgHskWhhMXraPmIo-GJYBlJhWYk8nVFya4YqjwwsqubZp6OmuTjNeAYzxqJUS7V1yQEcE5nHu0XGK2_g/s1600/20120517_132758.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJjOQdT7wikrhgkVuX1LrNpsnjAhH9TgR9dmJg0R9HOCGmAKS32uTj1VmiutcgHskWhhMXraPmIo-GJYBlJhWYk8nVFya4YqjwwsqubZp6OmuTjNeAYzxqJUS7V1yQEcE5nHu0XGK2_g/s320/20120517_132758.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsuDg7K8YDyo37DldExVbSmCqnCX39QGl1bazbUO640kewYlP7jje6GtLk2FrV3Boft5ge_0Cv__APcdNzMShtgWaUIznSwsIhvpa0FDduDYmY3wPg7-Qz_Xyqm8k03PxHwIHZrioF8A/s1600/20120517_132807.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsuDg7K8YDyo37DldExVbSmCqnCX39QGl1bazbUO640kewYlP7jje6GtLk2FrV3Boft5ge_0Cv__APcdNzMShtgWaUIznSwsIhvpa0FDduDYmY3wPg7-Qz_Xyqm8k03PxHwIHZrioF8A/s320/20120517_132807.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRNhc3jEZdFlBzwX4deaHwvWI1BZjTmcOIdHcTKM2YaZDWbZ_TfudrRIu71EGfHgzbAiKUKXiS1xSXyc4FXAH_-RhkR4ZJegNz3CRRsNEQJ5xuPQVcy5LLZ1t-8SOb010jdBsIy8xSLQ/s1600/20120517_152816.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRNhc3jEZdFlBzwX4deaHwvWI1BZjTmcOIdHcTKM2YaZDWbZ_TfudrRIu71EGfHgzbAiKUKXiS1xSXyc4FXAH_-RhkR4ZJegNz3CRRsNEQJ5xuPQVcy5LLZ1t-8SOb010jdBsIy8xSLQ/s320/20120517_152816.jpg" width="240" /></a><br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_eIw_1gG1vNXpHvZlp5SI_rSnTmAAa5-MNGFmAqgNIjZe359QT6DAw-JbvOoX7dVQDrykIhQHuvG6t0Z_qzWCTY4Ytiee3LhuF1F9FS-GEWPzgpoknFAMljj9f1kEdCFhV3cJ0RnIpA/s1600/20120517_152844.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_eIw_1gG1vNXpHvZlp5SI_rSnTmAAa5-MNGFmAqgNIjZe359QT6DAw-JbvOoX7dVQDrykIhQHuvG6t0Z_qzWCTY4Ytiee3LhuF1F9FS-GEWPzgpoknFAMljj9f1kEdCFhV3cJ0RnIpA/s320/20120517_152844.jpg" width="240" /></a><br />
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<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6yKUeSExKwAxSIsUqTqCZt46XLzCq47QnbnoIHM7M1W7gzJ5_570-h2ALs4x2wEMDjW3XA3cSpkm97-59GXZTfJPDV21VfTIy6Tb40nhM3qy38kyr7WBe9qdBWLOU9uCAbqAyc8d1MQ/s1600/20120517_153054.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6yKUeSExKwAxSIsUqTqCZt46XLzCq47QnbnoIHM7M1W7gzJ5_570-h2ALs4x2wEMDjW3XA3cSpkm97-59GXZTfJPDV21VfTIy6Tb40nhM3qy38kyr7WBe9qdBWLOU9uCAbqAyc8d1MQ/s320/20120517_153054.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
<br />
In 2009 Practical Action Nepal published a book called "Inventory of Innovative Indoor Air Pollution Alleviating Technologies in Nepal" which primarily covered improved cookstoves and solar cookers, but which had a chapter on "biogas technology" as disseminated in Nepal. I visited the office in Kathmandu and they kindly gave me a copy which is also available in its entirety as a .pdf on the web. I have reproduced the relevant sections here in these photographic scans:<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-K5E1baeQGMe_VOHsNQ3y8QiI3hxd6Gj14PSym1N-WCa0ooJrBKX-cZb-ACJhGbFp7C63AK79a4B-evOF7WFGeCLdCa_C1oDbUDUGDPBTK2Kul0lzPdPWghoCQm1Bl4GqoPpMuGWf7A/s1600/NepalPracAction.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-K5E1baeQGMe_VOHsNQ3y8QiI3hxd6Gj14PSym1N-WCa0ooJrBKX-cZb-ACJhGbFp7C63AK79a4B-evOF7WFGeCLdCa_C1oDbUDUGDPBTK2Kul0lzPdPWghoCQm1Bl4GqoPpMuGWf7A/s320/NepalPracAction.png" width="243" /></a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaJGbFvI6K7uyaMkMMfpgyaGc5G53owhaoM4IDHYvj9u4xmlAoqhGvs1ox-vBvC3kGOcNFunWsvtCCjpIRRaTpd6qL_31XCJD-FLRD99jA3g2K-huFbK5Z0EXY1uJ_tGcxu6WtsY4Tng/s1600/PracticalActionBiogas1.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaJGbFvI6K7uyaMkMMfpgyaGc5G53owhaoM4IDHYvj9u4xmlAoqhGvs1ox-vBvC3kGOcNFunWsvtCCjpIRRaTpd6qL_31XCJD-FLRD99jA3g2K-huFbK5Z0EXY1uJ_tGcxu6WtsY4Tng/s320/PracticalActionBiogas1.png" width="243" /></a><br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQuyKTZ_6tCXJUn6iQR8kYektsR9WKjLoQtzY9Lmu53Q8wfFFNGCPCut3uAuiHzTbWG2QZgDYdHGVSYvrxEZlKvZYp2eBkZy2AiGVRXNXRaTeeH72t0TNvYKIHZhgW8D79nJAMAGC1YA/s1600/PracticalActionBiogas2.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQuyKTZ_6tCXJUn6iQR8kYektsR9WKjLoQtzY9Lmu53Q8wfFFNGCPCut3uAuiHzTbWG2QZgDYdHGVSYvrxEZlKvZYp2eBkZy2AiGVRXNXRaTeeH72t0TNvYKIHZhgW8D79nJAMAGC1YA/s320/PracticalActionBiogas2.png" width="244" /></a><br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibUCMZoKsmYmiKhRnM3L_FwADII7YP_y1CqHqPnyFaTMMlDKbXunar8vWjlugb6gv3Z46N3vHJVL0lUGyHceXrdZvCnNpsDUYV66H5sE4C-wmsykbfUiQszfzfFTYODYNPcTnKaihIkA/s1600/PracticalActionBiogas3.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibUCMZoKsmYmiKhRnM3L_FwADII7YP_y1CqHqPnyFaTMMlDKbXunar8vWjlugb6gv3Z46N3vHJVL0lUGyHceXrdZvCnNpsDUYV66H5sE4C-wmsykbfUiQszfzfFTYODYNPcTnKaihIkA/s320/PracticalActionBiogas3.png" width="244" /></a><br />
<br />
<br />
Nepal has already successfully introduced more than 250,000 domestic biodigestors in their country of some 30 million people and the technology is well known throughout the lowlands. Through awareness campaigns and targeting subsidies the number of digestors is growing daily. Only in the Himalayan communities is the biogas solution either still unknown or considered "difficult" to implement.<br />
<br />
Nonetheless verybody I met with in Nepal who is involved with biogas seemed to think that
high alititude biogas is both important and doable. In fact they have been
testing several systems in high altitude with good results. The
Practical Action report states, <br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204,204,204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
"A
research is undertaken to develop appropriate biogas plant designs for
altitude higher than 2,100 m. Two plants were installed during the 3rd
Phase in Khumjung and Lukla of Solukhumbu district with greenhouse
technology. However,despite the merit of the design and technology, the
project cost was very high. Four years ago, three other simpler new
designs were tested in Beni VDC of Solu district with much lower project
cost. One of the three designs, a simple addition of heap composting on
top of the digestor is found to be the most appropriate and
cost-effective design. This design is thus widely promoted between 2,100
and 3,000 m altitude as part of the regular national programme with
subsidy. The GGC-2047 design with heap composting technology was
approved for commercial dissemination last year. Till date, some 40
biogas plants with heap composting are constructed in upper part of
Rasuwa district and more are under construction. Some 30 plants with
such heap composting are installed in Solukhumbu district. The results
are satisfactory. <span class="il">BSP</span>-Nepal is going to
undertake more promotional work in remote districts of Karnali and other
areas like Manang and Mustang for construction of biogas plants with
heap composting technique. Further research was initiated in 2007 in
Rasuwa district (Langtang area) between 3,000 to 3,850 m using modified
GGC-2047 (improved design with provision of multiple feeding , heap
composting and warm water feeding." </blockquote>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix7LAfQUvcjDEFCqIIlSlYltucrUGKHD5sms5fmh5Vy1IdlEd-OZ1GmbXMIPLmrFK0bgB-MB_NCUC8VKN2eIB8zPu-vQzI8JTQ_0P20MrQSNtkvEN2BJaWCantcdHka7X2hjhLCteHqw/s1600/20120516_170725.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix7LAfQUvcjDEFCqIIlSlYltucrUGKHD5sms5fmh5Vy1IdlEd-OZ1GmbXMIPLmrFK0bgB-MB_NCUC8VKN2eIB8zPu-vQzI8JTQ_0P20MrQSNtkvEN2BJaWCantcdHka7X2hjhLCteHqw/s320/20120516_170725.jpg" width="240" /></a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmIfhg9SplEEK_zosdgWF9XotwLbPrq_p6Mxn2Sapa6Lkx7WnivPtUFmIIGoLhjv_1WBFODeVQCh3WX6x19aRl1k1YfXLL043EayiZmjqdz-MzJ9k3mIWY8XHkjjGPNRTUcrvc8kOM9g/s1600/20120516_170732.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmIfhg9SplEEK_zosdgWF9XotwLbPrq_p6Mxn2Sapa6Lkx7WnivPtUFmIIGoLhjv_1WBFODeVQCh3WX6x19aRl1k1YfXLL043EayiZmjqdz-MzJ9k3mIWY8XHkjjGPNRTUcrvc8kOM9g/s320/20120516_170732.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
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Since 2003 Nepal has had a robust "<a href="http://www.bspnepal.org.np/">Biogas Support Programme</a>" (BSP) which is a "Development Cooperation among AEPC <a href="http://www.aepc.gov.np/">(The Government of Nepal Alternative Energy Promotion Center</a>), SNV (<a href="http://www.snvworld.org/">The Government of Netherlands Netherlands Development Organization</a>), the kfw Entwicklungbank (<a href="http://www.kfw-entwicklungsbank.de/">Government of Germany German Development Cooperation</a>) and The World Bank.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkC8tpMseIPrI4RLhKD4T5aly_F18pH8DJlP_drLon2GhO2TnThyphenhyphen7BR8tD-OKHYpOdgHYM-iqdoREcAEHABf8H08F_Y8_qG7tQPcEQOFesLrE6sywthkhvZIvTLNvaDoMMJrhRy0Vq-g/s1600/20120516_170748.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkC8tpMseIPrI4RLhKD4T5aly_F18pH8DJlP_drLon2GhO2TnThyphenhyphen7BR8tD-OKHYpOdgHYM-iqdoREcAEHABf8H08F_Y8_qG7tQPcEQOFesLrE6sywthkhvZIvTLNvaDoMMJrhRy0Vq-g/s320/20120516_170748.jpg" width="240" /></a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj507QFbIS0aXnqyOdRuCNKLuP13UcLWqZHAWthv90yZjsDUedQW_oEda8X75iogXxOuPhJuHZJ1b8p0q26RKgt41OfT6XzxV0aq86Uc4z6loMO2PZKJGvuUiZm-ibJdqiAjxUMeX6NA/s1600/20120516_144052.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj507QFbIS0aXnqyOdRuCNKLuP13UcLWqZHAWthv90yZjsDUedQW_oEda8X75iogXxOuPhJuHZJ1b8p0q26RKgt41OfT6XzxV0aq86Uc4z6loMO2PZKJGvuUiZm-ibJdqiAjxUMeX6NA/s200/20120516_144052.jpg" width="200" /></a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip4czuKtnAOZo-2sSEpHEt9PPrc7a_EeU3gOBsMBUeDl2mt2C3aypT1qA1HQj1d3XNapyP0UKU4viNo7TWPjs1qF6Yfj3v7QJzSqu_n95DAFKxVj9p92n5huPz-8SGeK08ZOh1oaK_HA/s1600/20120516_170805.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip4czuKtnAOZo-2sSEpHEt9PPrc7a_EeU3gOBsMBUeDl2mt2C3aypT1qA1HQj1d3XNapyP0UKU4viNo7TWPjs1qF6Yfj3v7QJzSqu_n95DAFKxVj9p92n5huPz-8SGeK08ZOh1oaK_HA/s400/20120516_170805.jpg" width="300" /></a><br />
<br />
The BSP has published a very useful book on the success of Nepal's biogas program, which is available as a .pdf here: <a href="http://draft.blogger.com/goog_963673686"> </a><span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text"><a href="http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTENERGY/Publications/20918309/NepalBiogasSupportProgram.pdf"> "The Nepal Biogas Support Program: A Successful Model of Pulbic Private Partnership for Rural Household Energy Supply" written by Sundar Bajgain, Indira Sthapit Shakya and editted by Matthew S. Mendis. </a> It is filled with great
graphs, facts and figures, including success measurement indicators on a
social level, as well as designs and economic and financial assessements. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnxSaw0XGtInK3wszsKbe9FzSfCsloTAdHuddbOJut8fcTj1vlNlx-QSpXyjjzEz_s75gu4djNkEAovZ0kJT1ty8Vy5hd7ywRdy1MViTBuhjo080t8erf-InmxwMbaG6vO_KnGGg1ZYA/s1600/NepalBSPcover.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnxSaw0XGtInK3wszsKbe9FzSfCsloTAdHuddbOJut8fcTj1vlNlx-QSpXyjjzEz_s75gu4djNkEAovZ0kJT1ty8Vy5hd7ywRdy1MViTBuhjo080t8erf-InmxwMbaG6vO_KnGGg1ZYA/s320/NepalBSPcover.png" width="220" /></a></div>
<span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text"><br /></span><br />
As mentioned Nepal has currently installed more than a quarter million home scale biogas digester systems, most of them directly thanks to the BSP and installed during the first two phases of their BSP program. <br />
<br />
If there is an area that needs to be strengthened in Nepal concerning the provision of low cost clean and renewable energy through biogas it is the adaptation of these systems to the colder high altitude regions of the country, precisely where we are doing our studies. This is acknowledged in the BSP report.<br />
<br />
Sometimes it is the extra cost associated with building a well insulated digester and maintaining its temperature that is cited, other times it is the difficulty of transporting the building materials to the remote areas through narrow and difficult mountain passes, and sometimes, when people understand that digestors can be built with the same lightweight plastic water tanks or sillage bags available in their communities and that lightweight styrofoam insulation is adequate to keep them warm once heated, and that a combination of solar thermal heating and warm water feeding and compost heating are viable solutions to create that heat, the usual barriers cited are worries that their isn't enough feedstock to make investment in biogas digesters worthwhile.<br />
<br />
<b>The belief that animal manure is necessary for biogas production</b><br />
<br />
All over the world it has been successfully demonstrated that almost all organic material can be made suitable for biogas production. In the Mukuru slum of Nairobi we have visited public toilets that produce cooking gas for a neighboring restaurant and in the city of Pune India the Appropriate Rural Technology Institute has appropriated rural biogas digestors, made them smaller and proven that kitchen garbage is actually a simpler and more effective feedstock. In China Puxin biogas company is showing with its new design that grass and leaves can also be used effectively. The Culhane household in Germany produces biogas every day for cooking from a porchtop digester that is fed through an Insinkerator brand food waste grinder attached to the kitchen sink and they find that the food scraps produced by a family of 3 alone is enough for daily cooking. The Culhane's have also successfully produced useful biogas from their child's diaper wastes.<br />
<br />
Nonetheless, in many countries including Nepal the criteria for embracing biogas has been based on a belief that one needs a certain number of stable-fed livestock in order to get sufficient feedstock for useful gas production.<br />
<br />
The BSP booklet states:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Both Hindu and Buddhist religions have a very positive attitude about cattle. They<br />
attach no stigma or cultural inhibitions to the handling of dung coming from cattle or<br />
buffaloes. The cattle are highly valued and as a result, they are seldom sold. They<br />
are kept close to the farmhouse and in many cases are stable fed during prolonged<br />
periods when land grazing is not practical. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The conditions in which cattle are raised in Nepal are thus ideal for providing the<br />
animal dung, the feedstock necessary to fuel small farmer based biogas systems,<br />
Permanence of cattle and the family attending the cattle guaranties an adequate and<br />
a continuous source of feed for the biogas systems. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Only small size (4-10 m3) biogas systems, using cattle and buffalo dung, have been<br />
promoted to date in Nepal. The widespread ownership of cattle provides a good<br />
indicator for the potential of biogas in Nepal. Although some families have only one<br />
cattle, most small farmers have two cattle or buffaloes, which is the minimum<br />
number required for feeding the biogas systems of 4m 3 capacity.</blockquote>
<br />
These cultural norms have been key factors in the success of lowland biogas in the country.<br />
But because areas like the Hinku valley have few animals, and in the
Khumbu the yaks are free ranging, it has been considered impractical to
gather their dung for active biodigestion. The general design of biodigestors promoted in Nepal (the GCC 2047) and its minimum size (4 m3) discourages the use of this simple technology by families that may have only one cow or yak, even though a single animal could provide enough dung on a daily level for a 2m3 digestor which would yield up to two hours of cooking fuel per day, adequate for many small household. Meanwhile, though ARTI India has proven that even a 1m3 digestor, made from plastic water tanks, when fed with as little as 2 kg of kitchen waste or other sugary or starch rich organic waste, can supply a family with anywhere from a half an hour to two hours of cooking fuel per day, this option has not generally been on the table with development agencies.<br />
<br />
The idea of using food scraps from the lodges has not been considered in the highlands of Nepal until recently and for this reason there has been inadequate attention to urban and high altitude installations of systems.<br />
<br />
Solar CITIES Egypt's Hanna Fathy and I found the same situation in Rwanda and discussed this with SNV, who support the project there as well as in Nepal. We were told that SNV had tried food waste based systems but had a poor experience when families believed they could increase the amount of gas they were getting from a small fixed sized system by simply putting in more food waste; the systems went acid and stopped producing gas and there wasn't sufficient followup to teach them that the systems will often recover if left to sit without feeding and can be put back into service by neutralizing the pH with calcium carbonate or sodium bicarbonate or some other alkaline solution (wood ash would also work) or by simply adding more manure or human toilet wastes and waiting for several weeks. It was considered simpler to restrict the program to people who had animals since animal wastes are pH neutral, contain the bacteria necessary for the reaction and can be added in unlimited amounts and so are ideal for families with livestock as a feedstock, even though the energy content is tens to hundreds of times lower than food wastes.<br />
<br />
The last two days of our expedition while in Kathmandu I had meetings with the professors
and students at Tribhuvan university (who remembered me from last
year), the head of the Nepal Biogas Support Program (<span class="il">BSP</span>)
and the head of Practical Action Nepal. They kindly supplied me with lots of
publications to read on the airplane and we had long discussions. <br />
<br />
With <span class="il">BSP</span> and Practical
Action engineers and outreach specialists I had productive
discussions about specific techniques we should be pursuing to keep the digesters warm.<br />
<br />
The use of the compost
toilets for heat is one they recommend, and this is something Solar CITIES also recommended in the first Moutain Institute/Blackstone Ranch/National Geographic Expedition to Nepal in 2011 so we are on the same page there. They also recommend
the use of vacuum tube solar for the "warm water feeding" of the digestors. This is something we started in Dingboche with the installation of a 15 vacuum tube SHW system on the roof of the Mountain Institute Information Center in the village and a workshop we conducted on how we could use the 80 C hot water it produced each day, through the In-Sink Food Waste Grinder that Insinkerator corporation kindly donated, to warm water feed the digestor and keep it at temperature.<br />
<br />
In Dingboche we were able to prove that even over 5000 meters the less expensive vacuum tube solar hot water systems performed well and could supply reliable heat for a digester; the only bad experience with the system we had was when a strong wind blew the cold water tank down from above the system and smashed some of the tubes. Because the cheaper systems lose all of their water if a single tube breaks the system must wait for replacement tubes before continuing to operate. The more expensive "heat tube" vacuum systems, like the Culhane's have on their roof in northern Germany and like the systems on the Italian funded Solar Pyramid en route to Everest Base Camp, continues working even with several broken tubes, and would increase reliability if the budget permitted, but the inexpensive systems are perfectly adequate (this is in contradistinction with the flat pate solar hot water systems which reflect much of the sun's heat early and late in the day and tend to experience burst copper pipes at extreme altitudes due to thermal expansion and contraction).<br />
<br />
<br />
With good insulation (easily achieved with light weight styrofoam) the temperature in a digestor fed by a small vacuum tube solar hot water system like the one we installed in Dingboche over 5000 meters (costing no more than $200) should stay between the required parameters (20 to 40 C) to produce reliable biogas. These digestors can be built from 1000 or 2000 liter plastic water tanks and insulated with styrofoam.<br />
<br />
Besides small plastic digestors, another option is the one time investment in a large cement community digester like the GCC 1047 that the BSP supports, or the Puxin digestor cited in the Practical Action manual, which Solar CITIES recently built in the Philippines in a remote jungle village. Once the fixed costs of materials and transportation for cement (35 sacks, 40 pounds each), sand (obtained lcoally) and gravel (obtained regionally) styrofoam and the Puxin steel molds is paid for, the systems have a lifetime of over 30 years. These can be built underneath the compost toilets and can be connected to solar hot water systems; the technical challenge is actually simpler than transporting rock and cement and timber to build the typical sherpa homes and lodges and toilet and sheds.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJYk7ajjpZtBbE97u5JeuwOo4zrUKb_wsTqesOeQC9zk2sf-DUnL7mMuJb3zGRZqFvzTc1c3K0082OWxZ4RVs_rmTqm6BPMXYE4AIT5PYeHlPJK4SD522I7sqtVrwkP0hT2JPDzU981Q/s1600/20120508_162126.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJYk7ajjpZtBbE97u5JeuwOo4zrUKb_wsTqesOeQC9zk2sf-DUnL7mMuJb3zGRZqFvzTc1c3K0082OWxZ4RVs_rmTqm6BPMXYE4AIT5PYeHlPJK4SD522I7sqtVrwkP0hT2JPDzU981Q/s320/20120508_162126.jpg" width="240" /></a> <br />
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Another option for keeping high altitude biodigesters at the appropriate temperature and making good use of the nutrient rich fertilizer they create is to build them inside a greenhouse structure. In Khote we found two operating greenhouses uses a simple plastic sheet for its greenhouse effect. One greenhouse was next to the Mera Lodge for convenience sake but the heated air was not being used to assist with space heating in the lodge; the other was down near the river. When Culhane poked his head inside the greenhouse during sunlit hours the temperature was sweltering and uncomfortably hot; well over 40 C. It was clear that a simple greenhouse structure like those already existing in the Hinku valley could provide much of the thermal gain necessary to keep the digester at the proper operating temperature if the digester were well insulated and the heat was supplemented by hot water feeding (A note to the thermodynamicists in the audience: a well insulated digester wouldn't experience much heat loss or heat gain due to the ambient temperature of the air in the surrounding greenhouse; the function of the greenhouse would be to prevent <b>heat loss</b>es by maintaining a temperature greater than that of the digester above the digester. This would inhibit heat from flowing up into the greenhouse. Hot water feeding would do the main heating of the slurry in the digester).<br />
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Families in the Hinku Valley and elsewhere in Nepal's highlands could replicate what is being done in China where the fertilizer produced by the biodigester flows into the greenhouse soil, radically improving its productive capacity. As this is occuring, CO2 is expected to build up at the bottom of the greenhouse through bacterial action in the soil, helping to buffer the temperature; one can also burn a portion of the biogas produced directly into the greenhouse to not only keep it warm at night and during cloudy times but to increase the CO2 levels in the entire greenhouse therebye causing an additional "greenhouse effect" -- the same one now threatening our global climate whereby carbon dioxide acts as a heat trapping gas. The elevated CO2 levels would also accelerate plant growth. In all of these ways a combination of biodigester and greenhouse makes a very powerful solution set for improving the quality of life and the quality of food for people in the highlands of Nepal.<br />
<br />
I visited the
labs at Tribhuvan university and saw not only the same Puxin biogas system that we had installed in a girls school on the island of Palawan in the Philippines the previous month, but a bunch of improved
cookstove designs and gasification designs. I also met students working
on biogas and home made wind power solutions. They are now part of our
Solar CITIES biogas innoventors and practioners group on facebook and I
have been corresponding with them since getting back to Germany. The consensus from our conversations has been that high altitude biogas will be fairly simple to achieve, but it needs targeted investment and a dedication to proving the model. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWGKiLj6tBBLGjIiaGPPTBka1lznB3Pc1wHe60FMs3ExRR5DlEtzWfThnVmtrL46PM9ZWicwEFlrq4OZmY5UdYMByXrWoNi9pVcGHbn-hL_iUriEchqGuFkfMP2ZRcilXAV3pRj2W5iA/s1600/20120516_120912.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWGKiLj6tBBLGjIiaGPPTBka1lznB3Pc1wHe60FMs3ExRR5DlEtzWfThnVmtrL46PM9ZWicwEFlrq4OZmY5UdYMByXrWoNi9pVcGHbn-hL_iUriEchqGuFkfMP2ZRcilXAV3pRj2W5iA/s200/20120516_120912.jpg" width="200" /></a><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3bs7U7ItW66BBgRj4nNjA_3JiJHYr7UTegAnqjuxybjPVrhwwMaQL8CeebfoXegSTszsSGsSDK96QLqlHo-ct8Q6TBI9OELrbYPcfISelDBY_7WNuVwTn8k4NBI7c9vrugyNvwLdslA/s1600/20120516_124013.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3bs7U7ItW66BBgRj4nNjA_3JiJHYr7UTegAnqjuxybjPVrhwwMaQL8CeebfoXegSTszsSGsSDK96QLqlHo-ct8Q6TBI9OELrbYPcfISelDBY_7WNuVwTn8k4NBI7c9vrugyNvwLdslA/s320/20120516_124013.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Culhane spent the morning with students at Tribhuvan University who were working on their own windmill blade designs as well as projects to get biogas from tobacco residues.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJuVCA9xTBw3M8FIO7lsX3ldRWZ9v2RAEerSu0_uvwNDSkqBNnkbwe-hdVPlQaHcM6omdYDXe9-2guE0D06ZFs2yE1ZAoRfpFdQel-Tn-Y1XqUNhNKOEhujR69pPePPXaDAp0pGP6xrA/s1600/20120516_131619.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJuVCA9xTBw3M8FIO7lsX3ldRWZ9v2RAEerSu0_uvwNDSkqBNnkbwe-hdVPlQaHcM6omdYDXe9-2guE0D06ZFs2yE1ZAoRfpFdQel-Tn-Y1XqUNhNKOEhujR69pPePPXaDAp0pGP6xrA/s320/20120516_131619.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Tribhuvan University students also showed Culhane simple gasifiers that can be used to turn waste biomass (leaves, grass, wood chips, branches, dung, dried food waste) into a gaseous fuel through pyrolysis and gasification. These devices also can create biochar which can be agglomerated using starch or mud and the resultant biochar briquettes can be used for cleaner cooking. Gasifiers like this thus yield two products -- direct gaseous fuel and char.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
The conclusion of the first chapter of the BSP report gives an idea not only of the importance of biogas for Nepal, but of the huge potential once we can improve the digestors for cold climate and urban operation, which is something Solar CITIES has been successfully working on and is committed to:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: left;">
The biogas systems installed by the BSP ore of the fixed dome type. The capacities<br />
of the systems presently promoted are of 4, 6, 8 and 10 m3, using cow and buffalo<br />
dung and water as the main feed materials. The popular sizes are 4 and 6 m3 sizes.<br />
A 6 m3 system requires 36 kg of dung and an equal amount of water per day in the<br />
hilly areas to burn a stove for 3.5 hours.<br />
Biogas can be used for cooking, lighting, refrigeration as well as operating machines.<br />
However, to date biogas is popularly used in Nepal for cooking. Used for cooking,<br />
biogas has to a large extent helped in reducing the use of fuelwood and hence<br />
conserve the forests, In replacing kerosene for cooking and lighting, biogas has<br />
helped reduce expenses on imported fuel. The slurry from the digester is also used<br />
as fertiliser in the fields. This has enhanced agricultural production and replaced the<br />
use of chemical fertiliser. This technology has social implications such as health<br />
benefits from reduced indoor pollutions and livelihood enhancement from income<br />
generation opportunities such as masonry available in this sector. In recent years<br />
this technology has also indicated potentials as a source of national income through<br />
carbon trading under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).</div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b>1.5. Potentials of biogas in Nepal</b></div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: left;">
Livestock plays an important role in the Nepalese farming system. According to the<br />
Agriculture Sector Census of 2001/02, the total cattle population in Nepal was<br />
estimated to be 2.2 million heads, while 1.6 million heads of buffaloes were<br />
registered. Based upon a study of the technical and geographic feasibility, it is<br />
estimated that a total of 1.9 million biogas systems can be installed in Nepal: 57<br />
percent in Tarai, 37 percent in Hills and 6 percent In Mountain regions (BSP, 2004).<br />
When taking economic factors into consideration, <b>the potential of the smaller fixed<br />dome design (4 and 6 m3) in Nepal is estimated at about half a million units. With<br />innovative financing (subsidy structures, co-operatives) and delivery structures (self<br />help building), the potential can be doubled to one million units</b><b>. Besides the above<br />small domestic biogas systems, there is huge potential of cold climate, industrial as<br />well as municipality systems.</b><br />
The current small fixed dome design works well at altitudes up to 1500m. However,<br />
during the winter months the gas production decreases, especially above the 1500m.<br />
When the fixed dome design is built at altitudes of 2000m or higher, special<br />
adjustments to the design are required such as thermal insulation and warm water<br />
feeding to maintain gas production during the winter.</div>
</blockquote>
The "huge potential" described above can be realized in a very short period of time. Part of what was called for by the BSP to make this happen are "innovative financing and delivery structures (self help building)". Part of the two missions we have made to the Himalayas on these Mountain Institute/Blackstone Ranch Foundation/National Geographic expeditions these past two years have been to explore the concept of "last mile technology, something that National Geographic Fellow Chris Rainier joined Alton Byers and Thomas Culhane on this expedition to investigate. The training workshops that Byers and Rainier and Culhane and Sherpa gave were explorations of these kinds of 'innovative delivery structures'. In this context the annual visits of scientific teams from the Mountain Institute and the National Geographic, partially funded by generous grants from the Blackstone Ranch Foundation, enable us bring and share ideas and expertise on a continuing basis with the requisite follow up. The ability to come together at symposia and conferences like the National Geographic Explorer's symposium each June gives us the chance to refine and improve upon those structures. Solar CITIES, meanwhile, applies the lessons learned in their home laboratory, testing and improving on insights gained in the field.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Heat and Hydrogen from Scrap Aluminum and cookstove ashes:</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b> </b></div>
<br />
<span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text"><span class="text_exposed_show"> One of the lessons learned on the past two expeditions to areas of Nepal over 4000 meters is that there are substantial garbage depots filled with aluminum cans and other waste from the trekking industry and local populations. Because wood fuel is so heavily relied upon, there is also a substantial source of wood ash. Most of this wood ash is from the burning of rhododendron wood which is a hardwood, and it turns out that hardwoods (along with fruit tree wood, palm fronds and banana peels among other plants) are potassium rich and easily yield a strong pottasium hydroxide solution (lye) when hot water is passed through them.</span></span><br />
<span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text"><span class="text_exposed_show"><br /></span></span><br />
<span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text"><span class="text_exposed_show">Culhane found that by collecting hot ashes from the cook fires in the Sherpa lodges and simply pouring dirty water on them in a steel container yielded him a powerful concentrated lye solution the next day. He then found that if he placed scrap aluminum, recovered from the trail where it is easy to find aluminum cans and can tabs, he could generate rather large quantities of flammable hydrogen and that the chemical reaction created heat up to 64 C. He also discovered, in 2011, that if he used a less concentrated lye solution and connected the aluminum to a Joule Thief Circuit, he could generate enough electricity (by creating an aluminum-air battery reaction) to run several bright LED lights. </span></span><br />
<span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text"><span class="text_exposed_show"><br /></span></span><br />
<span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text"><span class="text_exposed_show">Culhane used these reactions to his benefit in the field, lighting his tent for example, and keeping his hands warm, and shared the knowledge he discovered with members of the Sherpa community. Upon his return to Germany he further refined his techniques, demonstrating, for example, that a dinner plate's worth of dirty waste aluminum foil could yield up to 50 liters of H2 gas and heat a small bucket of water to 30 C, then he shared those explorations with the other members of the team at the Explorers conference.</span></span><br />
<span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text"><span class="text_exposed_show"><br /></span></span><br />
<span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text"><span class="text_exposed_show">The refinements and new knowledge will be shared during the next trips to Nepal but they are also being shared actively with our Sherpa colleagues using social media, primarily facebook, youtube and Google Plus. In a similar vein the Sherpa community is sharing its knowledge and innovations with us using the same media and this was one of the rationales for Chris Rainier's last mile technology workshops. Innovative knowledge delivery systems are now available for empowering cross talk across cultures and beyond borders.</span></span><br />
<span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text"><span class="text_exposed_show"><br /></span></span><br />
<span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text"><span class="text_exposed_show">Some of the solutions, like biogas, wind, solar heat, composting toilets and photovoltaics, are ready for immediate scale up. Some, like aluminum-lye reactions for heat, electricity and hydrogen, are still experimental, but through these innovative information transmission mechanisms, can achieve practical results in an accelerated timeline.</span></span><br />
<span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text"><span class="text_exposed_show"><br /></span></span><br />
<span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text"><span class="text_exposed_show"><b>A vision for how to use waste aluminum and wood ash in the highlands of Nepal</b></span></span><br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYFo5nsqXrqlDnOTF8icXD7FrAiGX27KS20a1jNaFGi9IcPpCBCkNnoO-bKfKCaXpOT1aO0zHZnVRAju2dE5KosVsu_DrrZNLrkXSRRhYSWIaE246SWeBYYffLobK-HfTtlH4BUOU7DQ/s1600/20120508_104223.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYFo5nsqXrqlDnOTF8icXD7FrAiGX27KS20a1jNaFGi9IcPpCBCkNnoO-bKfKCaXpOT1aO0zHZnVRAju2dE5KosVsu_DrrZNLrkXSRRhYSWIaE246SWeBYYffLobK-HfTtlH4BUOU7DQ/s320/20120508_104223.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sources of potential hydrogen fuel abound.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
<span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text"><span class="text_exposed_show">Learning about the wood-ash/aluminum/waste water hydrogen reaction, many people have asked "what
is the cost efficiency of buying/making the hydroxide per return in
hydrogen gas BTUs? And how much KOH can practically be made from ashes
where draino is not available?</span></span> "<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC6aRBuQXoGS_C_iGVHvsJG0RQVTr3Y_zuQhzGfhqhWT25L1Jxo5Ez9zjBBwG1A18ArSFSNpwZj0H5xKzksqz6mLANPumeHbKv1bm366HqY68fTb-Ym3IVR1FGn4ZcaQOMQ9LPPYHoNQ/s1600/20120508_103144.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC6aRBuQXoGS_C_iGVHvsJG0RQVTr3Y_zuQhzGfhqhWT25L1Jxo5Ez9zjBBwG1A18ArSFSNpwZj0H5xKzksqz6mLANPumeHbKv1bm366HqY68fTb-Ym3IVR1FGn4ZcaQOMQ9LPPYHoNQ/s320/20120508_103144.jpg" width="320" /></a> <br />
<br />
<span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text"></span><br />
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_50005466c922b2913618469">
The economics do need to be made explicit but when working in remote villages trying to apply "last mile" technologies we can operate along
different assumptions. I ask, "besides making heat and hydrogen with
it, what would you do with the scrap aluminum up in the Hinku valley or the Khumbu Valley or
out in the Okavanga Delta<span class="text_exposed_show"> where there
is no economic incentive to cart the aluminum cans and tabs and foil all the way down to Kathmandu or to
Maun for recycling and it sits in trash dumps and is currently burned?" </span></div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_50005466c922b2913618469">
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQneDRDWQk_PietuEGuHFzARMlyckJ5RL6Khmou_gQc5MhWbRabcjfKUUcyek7-HOXJIJWDJjWNrlJokA5TduZ9-QpI-v5PWlo9eNDt7ekrjjX83sAR5r3lsYUaDHML4rPMVO-NG3qOA/s1600/20120508_104148.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQneDRDWQk_PietuEGuHFzARMlyckJ5RL6Khmou_gQc5MhWbRabcjfKUUcyek7-HOXJIJWDJjWNrlJokA5TduZ9-QpI-v5PWlo9eNDt7ekrjjX83sAR5r3lsYUaDHML4rPMVO-NG3qOA/s320/20120508_104148.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">When people
find out that we can make hydrogen from ashes and aluminum scrap they
often ask, "but where are you going to get aluminum in these remote
areas? You can't make it can you?". The answer is lying on every trail
and in the garbage pits.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_50005466c922b2913618469">
<span class="text_exposed_show"> The hydrogen principally comes from the 80% H20 in the lye solution
(which is generally 20% KOH or NaOH); the Al turns into AlO2 (alum) or NaAlO2
(sodium aluminate) which precipitates out of solution as a kind of gritty powder which can indeed be recycled back into
aluminum and is actually easier to transport that cans or dirty crumpled foil because it has turned into an
amorphous powder. </span></div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_50005466c922b2913618469">
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGoGmeYB9QeQNLI0D3qI3OG-DAfrr5KL7zUfr24bJZEAEmUBm2hzRjLEDsv-pjIWI-mL1e50PBdYW9tvQvPhqaORUjYzf8nL3fhFcZ8-05uq5RCM8ZAhTLSjfCBM_L7ZV4Vm9fRm7d_Q/s1600/20120508_104200.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGoGmeYB9QeQNLI0D3qI3OG-DAfrr5KL7zUfr24bJZEAEmUBm2hzRjLEDsv-pjIWI-mL1e50PBdYW9tvQvPhqaORUjYzf8nL3fhFcZ8-05uq5RCM8ZAhTLSjfCBM_L7ZV4Vm9fRm7d_Q/s320/20120508_104200.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">There are also
"dead" batteries lying along the trails and in the trash heaps which
can still be used to run LED flashlights through the Joule Theif
circuit.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_50005466c922b2913618469">
<span class="text_exposed_show">If people still didn't want to cart the oxidized aluminum to a city recycling center it can be easily thrown back in the garbage pit without bulking it up, because it is now a powder, or it can be scattered on the ground (one has to see how much AlO2 the soil can handle if one places it in the garden, it can almost certainly be placed in areas where food is not being grown; there should be no worries of any toxicity due to the small quantities one would be creating in these areas (<a href="http://www.tradeindia.com/fp605916/Ammonium-Alum.html">alum is a component of many fertilizer treatments, </a>though not of direct use to plants, <a href="http://usalco.com/applications/phosphorous-removal/">sodium aluminate is actually used in wastewater treatment plants as an effective way to remove phosphorous</a>; excess aluminum ions can be rendered inert with the addition of lime and in any case aluminum is the most abundant element in soil;<a href="http://www.spectrumanalytic.com/support/library/ff/Soil_Aluminum_and_test_interpretation.htm"> issues with aluminum in excess come from free Al +++ ions which can be controlled with pH</a>).</span></div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_50005466c922b2913618469">
</div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_50005466c922b2913618469">
<span class="text_exposed_show"> The BTUs that reacting waste aluminum with wood-ash lye creates
are, in a sense, "free" BTUs". About 50% of the value comes from the
exothermic reaction which can reach up to 80 C while hydrogen is being generated </span><span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text"><span class="text_exposed_show">(although I have only observed 64 C in my experiments) </span></span><span class="text_exposed_show"> while </span><span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text"><span class="text_exposed_show">approximately</span></span><span class="text_exposed_show"> 50% is in the form of H2 bonds. </span></div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_50005466c922b2913618469">
</div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_50005466c922b2913618469">
<span class="text_exposed_show"> The hydrogen in my scenario
can be bubbled into the biodigestor to help feed the microbes in there
(the methanogens metabolize H2 and acetate at the end of the chain of
reactions that invovle many species of bacteria) while the heat can help
keep the temperature of the digester warm. </span></div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_50005466c922b2913618469">
</div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_50005466c922b2913618469">
<span class="text_exposed_show">Since the H2 production is
more or less instant (i.e. it occurs within 30 seconds or so of combining the reactants but can take up to a
half hour or more to finish the reaction and accumulate useful quantities of hydrogen; heat production rises within the first few minutes and falls off within a half hour or so) it is also a great emergency source of fuel
and heat in cold areas such as we find in Nepal. </span></div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_50005466c922b2913618469">
</div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_50005466c922b2913618469">
<span class="text_exposed_show">Once a biogas reactor has been comissioned it can take 3 weeks or longer to build up the right bacterial populations and densities to start turning waste into energy. Biogas production from food ground up food scraps then takes 24 hours. The key to keeping the biogas system working effectively in the high altitude area is maintaining the right temperature and the right feeding; aluminum-lye reactions can help here by turning two common waste materials found in every Sherpa or Rai home and trekking lodge (aluminum cans and wood ashes) and turning them easily into heat and hydrogen. Hydrogen is one of the principle feedstocks of the methanogenic bacteria in the biogas digester; they are the last species in the bacterial consortia to metabolize and they wait for the hydrolytic and acidogenic and acetogenic species to turn food waste or other organic material into the acetate and hydrogen which they feed on. It seems reasonable to assume that if hydrogen that bubbles out of the aluminum-lye reaction is fed to the digester it will improve its performance; any hydrogen not metabolized by the bacteria into methane (CH4), hydrogen sulfide (H2S) or water (H2O) would be collected in the gas collector with the methane and carbon dioxide and hydrogen normally present in biogas. </span></div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_50005466c922b2913618469">
</div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_50005466c922b2913618469">
<span class="text_exposed_show">Aluminum-lye
reactions are also useful for emergencies and for extreme cold weather conditions. Just as trekkers often bring chemical hand-warmers with them for emergencies <a href="http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2012-02/5-minute-project-hand-warmers">(usually made from calcium chloride</a> or sodium acetate), wood ash, water and aluminum can also be used for emergency heating. </span></div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_50005466c922b2913618469">
</div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_50005466c922b2913618469">
<span class="text_exposed_show">Because the raw materials are present in the region and are generally considered a nuisance, cost efficiency for these hydrogen and heat generating reactions isn't really an issue. In the communities where we are working we can think "what can I do with these ashes
that have been thrown out and this aluminum that has been thrown out,
and this dirty water that has been thrown away?" The answer can be "mix them
together in a plastic container and get heat and hydrogen!"</span></div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_50005466c922b2913618469">
<span class="text_exposed_show"> The net cost
is ZERO if one is willing to donate one's labor, and it may turn out to be easier at these altitudes to do the chemical reaction each time enough aluminum and ash accumulate rather than
expending the energy to haul it to the trash heap. </span><br />
</div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_50005466c922b2913618469">
</div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_50005466c922b2913618469">
<span class="text_exposed_show">A side benefit to collecting waste aluminum and cookstove ashes from the lodges in the area rather than throwing them in the trash heaps is that the same chemical reaction can be used to provide enough electric current for LED lights. Culhane discovered after the Khumbu trip of 2011 that a weak solution of lye (made from wood ashes over which hot water has been poured) can be combined with aluminum foil or tabs and hooked up to several parallel wired bright white LED lights through a Joule Thief circuit. Using stainless steel as the positive electrode and aluminum as the negative, the stripping of the oxidation layer from the aluminum by the lye enables it to recombine with oxygen from the air which liberates electrons. What you have is an "aluminum-air battery". This chemical reaction normally yields no more than .5 volts but the Joule Thief circuit, Culhane discovered, enables one to do useful things with this low voltage. </span><br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVlBZltqf75oZzWM6qLjcmYdSwEtPjQi3WK_9QbPmvVISKrEwfnMjB48B8Gf5unjPKqRTroSLjv9eFChbOjfTwrej3nJUOkYBwhpBQ0FjDQNQvd3Pyr_0ugNzA890yBlmQSo0HuSwQzg/s1600/20120510_092437.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVlBZltqf75oZzWM6qLjcmYdSwEtPjQi3WK_9QbPmvVISKrEwfnMjB48B8Gf5unjPKqRTroSLjv9eFChbOjfTwrej3nJUOkYBwhpBQ0FjDQNQvd3Pyr_0ugNzA890yBlmQSo0HuSwQzg/s320/20120510_092437.jpg" width="240" /></a><span class="text_exposed_show"> </span></div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_50005466c922b2913618469">
<span class="text_exposed_show"><br /></span></div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_50005466c922b2913618469">
<span class="text_exposed_show">Throughout Nepal's highlands Culhane used his "Solar CITIES aluminum tab torch" to light his tent and to navigate paths on dark nights. Culhane lit up 5 LEDs at a time and they provided enough light to read by in the tent if one held the book close and certainly enough to be a reliable night light. </span></div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_50005466c922b2913618469">
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<span class="text_exposed_show">Culhane demonstrated to his Sherpa colleagues how to create such a lighting solution using the local ashes and aluminum tabs and sees improvements to the technology playing an important role in offsetting the current uses of firewood for lighting in homes that do not have the money to purchase solar electric panels or wind generators. It is also surmised that the reaction can eventually be scaled up and improved through parallel and series configurations to provide lighting for fluorescent bulbs and electric current to charge mobile phones.</span></div>
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<span class="text_exposed_show">It is to be noted that if and when highland Nepal switches to biogas made from human, animal and food and agricultural wastes (including wilted flowers) and wood burning is the exception rather than the norm, the source of potassium hydroxide (lye) from wood ash will diminish and this will make it harder to maintain a "hydrogen from waste aluminum" solution if it ever gets started. Culhane is not concerned about this for several reasons.</span></div>
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<span class="text_exposed_show">The first is that it doesn't take very much ash to make the required amounts of KOH solution and for cultural reasons there will always be some wood burning done. Ritual burning of shrubs for incense, cremation and cooking fires created for flavor or aesthetic reasons should provide enough KOH to consume the available aluminum; principally the idea is to make use of aluminum that is simply becoming a garbage problem and exploit its potential for heat and hydrogen while rendering it into an easy to manage or recycle powder. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhurC7mKdTTY5Cu9LPjLKKuaS5zmDNolVeyvYNJK92p3JK4KjyIRc-FqQdQWBmXZuMTBzrOzspWo8jJFsbThwnoOZrMAlL0DxNxrkZAf2-S-q4gvF0ZGjaMZXDjR9O2rOHiaZAHGzBJeQ/s1600/20120508_174055.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhurC7mKdTTY5Cu9LPjLKKuaS5zmDNolVeyvYNJK92p3JK4KjyIRc-FqQdQWBmXZuMTBzrOzspWo8jJFsbThwnoOZrMAlL0DxNxrkZAf2-S-q4gvF0ZGjaMZXDjR9O2rOHiaZAHGzBJeQ/s320/20120508_174055.jpg" width="320" /></a><span class="text_exposed_show"> </span></div>
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<span class="text_exposed_show">The second is that once a biogas economy has been created it should be self sustaining. A portion of the biogas produced can be used to maintain temperatures in insulated tanks, particularly when compost heat is added to the equation.</span></div>
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<span class="text_exposed_show">Compost heat is already well known in the Khumbu where potato growing families have built above ground composting toilets next to the houses and lodges that use rhododendron leaves with the human fecal material to create high temperatures that turn both aerobically into high quality fertilizer. In some cases the heat is also exploited to heat animal sheds or the homes themselves. This practice is unknown to most people in the Hinku valley where potatoes are not grown and where toilets are generally pit latrines located far from the home (usually next to rivers, which creates the possibility of unsanitary conditions and ground water contamination). </span></div>
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<span class="text_exposed_show">Anrita Sherpa and Culhane spent time in Khote and Khare discussing the advantages of compost toilets and shared their experiences in the Khumbu and around the world with composting toilets. Since compost heat has already been demonstrated to be effective for biogas systems by the BSP in high altitude situations it is just a matter of integrating the various systems that are already found in the region into a best practice model that will replicate. </span></div>
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<span class="text_exposed_show">Once compost systems and cooking systems and greenhouses are all connected there should be plenty of heat for a robust biogas solution. Aluminum-lye reactions can still play a role but they will become less and less necessary. Ultimately the chief use for aluminum may be for low-grade lighting and peripheral electronics charging until it becomes profitable to take the aluminum to an actual recycling center.</span></div>
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<span class="text_exposed_show">Culhane has discovered that it is worth carrying small bottles of crystalized Sodium Hydroxide (NaOH) salts, purchased as drain cleaner, wherever he goes to power his "Solar CITIES tab torch" and suspects that once people catch on to how easy it is to get some light from aluminum, they will keep on hand bottles of NaOH crystals or liquid drain cleaning preparations, much as we do under most kitchen sinks in developed countries, or will prepare enough KOH so that they can get instant light when there are no batteries or instant heat and hydrogen when needed. Since both NaOH and KOH are used in soap making they are hardly rare or exotic chemicals, no matter what their origin, and most societies will have some around or know how to make them so that they can be used for other purposes like heat, light and electricity and hydrogen formation.</span></div>
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<span id="goog_963673730"></span><span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text"><span id="goog_963673731"></span> </span><br />
<br />
<b>Summing it up on the way to the summit</b><br />
<br />
Our trip to the Hinku valley, like the one to the Khumbu the year before, gives us great confidence that we can solve the energy and health and ecological problems currently plaguing the high altitude communities of Nepal.<br />
<br />
When I visited Prof. Dr. Tri Ratna Bajracharya at Tribhuvan University at the end of this expedition he was kind enough to give me the "Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Addressing Climate Change for Sustainable Development through Up-Scaling Renewable Energy Technologies" of which he was one of the editors.<br />
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This conference, held from October 12-14, 2011 in Kathmandu, covered the following topics:<br />
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Of relevance to our expedition are serveral articles in the proceedings. I have high-lighted in bold those most germane to our work:<br />
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5. Assessement of Current Energy Consumption Pattern and Green House Gaseous Emission Trend: A Case Study of Helambu VDC of Sinhupalchok, District Nepal<br />
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<b>6. Energy Conservation through Thermal Insulation Building for Minimizing the Greenhouse Gas Emission at Local Level</b><br />
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8. Information Dissemination on Effectivness of Alternative Energy Use and Biodiversity Conservation in Buffer Zones of Shuklaphanta Wildlife Reserve, Nepal<br />
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9. Perception on Climate Change and Its Impact and Adaptation Practices in Energy Resource in Chepang Community in Chitwan District, Nepal<br />
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10. Restocking Traditional Rural Energy Sources Through Rehabilitation of Dryland Ecosystem in Southern Pakistan<br />
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<b>21. Household Energy Generation and Consumption Pattern: A Case Study from Syafrubesi VDC, Rasuwa</b><br />
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22. Issues Relating to Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy in Bangladesh<br />
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24. Mini-grid: A Project for Empowering Rural Nepal<br />
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25. Prospect of Integration of Energy Resources for Reliable Rural Electrification in Nepal<br />
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<b>27. Bio-Hydrogen Production: Present Problems and Future Possibilities</b><br />
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28. Biomass Bamboo Knot Furnace for Replacement to Heavy Oil in Joss Paper Mill<br />
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<b>29. Bimethanantion of Organic Waste under Psychrophilic Conditions</b><br />
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30. Clustering Plan: Micro-scale CHP from biogamss (dn10kW) for Decentralized Steam Turbine Power System<br />
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31. Design and Fabrication of Stoves Using Jatropha curcas as the Cooking Fuel and its Prospects for Clean Development Mechanism<br />
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<b>32. Energy and Environmental Benefits of Liquid Biofuel Switching from the Traditional Solid Fuel in the Rural Community of Palpa District</b><br />
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<b>33. Innovation of Jeeban's Amrit-Irving Model Bio-Reactor for Organic Municipal Waste Management</b><br />
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34. Performance Assessment of Biomass Cookstoves in Rural Bhutan<br />
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<b>35. Performance Evaluation and Emission Characteristics of AIT Model Biomass Gasifier</b><br />
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<b>36. Role of Biogas in Easing Ecological Stress: A Case Study from Buffer Zone of Shuklaphanta Wildlife Reserve</b><br />
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<b>37. Study on the Temperature Variation Inside the Biodigester of Modified 2m3 GGC 2047 Biogas Plant</b><br />
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39. Fabrication of Dye-Densitized Solar Cells (DSSCs) with Zinc Oxide (ZnO) Nanorod Electrodes<br />
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<b>41: Off-grid Sustainable Small-scale Photovoltaic Project in High-Altitude Region of Nepal</b><br />
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<b>42. Performance Comparison of Funnel Type and Bernard Type Solar Cooker</b><br />
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43. Solar Thermal Power Plant in Thailand: Potential, Opportunity and Barriers<br />
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44. Thermosyphon Heat Exchanger for Cleaning System of Community Power Generation<br />
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46. Locally Manufactured Wind Turbine Blade Mold Pattern<br />
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47. Reliability Analysis of Hybrid PV/Wind Energy System at Remote Telecom Station<br />
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<b>49. Energy Recovery from Munipial Solid Waste as Refuse Derived Fuel</b><br />
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<b>50. The Spread of Rice Stoves in Nepal</b><br />
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53. A comparative analysis of the Solar Energy Programs for Rural Electrification: Experiences and Lessons from South Asia<br />
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Note that<br />
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<b>27. Bio-Hydrogen Production: Present Problems and Future Possibilities</b><br />
<br />
<b>and </b><br />
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<b>29. Bimethanantion of Organic Waste under Psychrophilic Conditions</b><br />
<b><br /></b><br />
support our summary of opportunities for the Hinku Valley.<br />
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Pradhan, Sharma et al. (27) say "Hydrogen is an important intermediate product in anaerobic digestion. Therefore, if the final step of methnogenesis were blocked by inhibiting methanogens, only acidogens would be left to produce hydrogen, carbon dioxide and volatile acids...(p. 143) Hawkes et. al (2007) has reported on two stage hydrogen-methane process and found most of the two stage process has a higher total efficiency in terms of waste retreatment and energy recovery than a traditional one stage process." While their work seeks to inhibit methane production to harvest the hydrogen, our proposal is to use hydrogen produced through ash-lye and scrap aluminum reactions to enhance methane production while liberating significant quantities of heat (<a href="http://draft.blogger.com/goog_1284514779"> </a><span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text"><a href="http://youtu.be/hykAr0Lhz04">31 kilojoules per gram of aluminum released as heat during the reaction</a>) </span><br />
<span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text"><br /></span><br />
<span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text">Jha, Bhattari and Liu (29) point out the potential for using bacteria acclimatized to psychrophilic conditions; in our expedition in 2011 to Mt. Everest Base Camp Culhane brought back active psychrophilic methanogens that were making methane under the ice in mud wallows and ponds along the Khumbu trail and, by feeding them organic waste, proved that they were capable of making good yields of biogas. These bacteria are available all over the high Himalaya regions. </span><br />
<span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text"><br /></span><br />
<span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text">They write, "Most of the psychrophilic studies relate to biomethanantion by low temperature acclimatized mesophiles (psychrotrophs; not true psychrophiles) (Kashyap et al. 2003). As a result the majority of remedies proposed in the literature to enchance biogas production are aimed at increasing the digestor temperature to mesophilc range such as the use of the gas produced for preparation of feed slurry, integration of a green house, construction of a system below buildings (heat transfer from the barn) and use of excess gas to heat up the digester to maintain higher digesester temperature (Sutter et al. 1987; Zeeman et al, 1988). However, these techniques suffer from techno-economical constraints (Kashyap et al. 2003). The energy required to heat the process makes it uneconomical in temperate climates".</span><br />
<span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text"><br /></span><br />
<span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text">Nonetheless, Culhane and Katey Walter Anthony, on the first Blackstone Ranch/National Geographic Innovation Challenge grants in 2010, demonstrated the effectiveness of biodigestors inoculated with true psychrophilic bacteria obtained from thermokarst lakes in Alaska. Their research further suggested that greater efficiencies could be obtained from a mix of true psychrophiles and psychrotrophic mesophiles, taking advantage of the fact that the water in the digester tends to settle into distinct thermoclines so that slurry between 10 and 20 C is found at the bottom of the digester while slurry between 20 and 40 C can be found at the top of the digestor. With proper design (the use of vertical surface in the tank for biofilm formation) psychrophiles can coexist with mesophiles. The psychrophiles inhabit the bottom regions of the tank and the mesophiles the upper regions. The data of Walter Anthony and her group showed greater production of biogas from a mixed tank kept in a room of ambient temperature 25 C than either population considered alone.</span><br />
<span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text"><br /></span><br />
<span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text">Jha, Bhattari and Liu corroborate these observations in their papaer stating "with the extension of retention time and diminishing loading rate psychrophilic anaerobic digesters can successfully degrade organic matter for reasonable biogas production (Lettings et al., 2000; Lettomaga et al, 2001; Sutter and Wellinger, 1985)... Yu and Gu (1996( reported that psychrophilic anaerobic digestion is stable and is as mesophilic or thermophilic digestion processes. A reduction in pathrogenic micro organisms by psychrophilic anaerobic digestion was also observed (cote et al, 2006)." </span><br />
<span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text"><br /></span><br />
<span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text">These data have fit nicely with the proposal Culhane has made for Hinku and Khumbu development, suggesting that psychrophilic bacteria be obtained from the Khumbu and Hinku Valley glacial lakes, combined in a modified digester with yak dung and human fecal material derived mesophiles and the system be used to degrade all organic wastes, from food scraps and toilets, to produce energy for heating water and space that can replace firewood and fossil fuels while creating a valuable fertilizer and reducing pathogens as the preferred solution for waste water treatment. With the addition of hydrogen thermal energy generation and hydrogen feeding of the digesters taking advantage of the aluminum and ash waste in the region, supplemented by compost and greenhouse and solar heat, </span><br />
<span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text">the challenge of stopping both indoor air pollution and deforestation as well as greenhouse gas emission should be solved.</span><br />
<span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text"><br /></span><br />
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<b>Miscellaneous photos from the trip:</b><br />
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<br />T.H. Culhanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02974539190597507374noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1334849659163883527.post-92215559694313809942012-07-11T09:31:00.002-07:002012-07-11T09:31:58.806-07:00"If only life WEREN'T that simple...!" Part 1: Bringing home the Bacon...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
(Note: This is part one of a multi-part series that evolves the more I learn just how simple life can be, and strive to share these simple truths with anybody who will listen. Alas, that seems to be the most complicated part!)<br />
<br />
As a kid growing up in the turbulent late 1960s and early 1970s,
with the war raging, polluted air and water everywhere and most
conspicuosly right in our own back yards, the population bomb ticking,
an oil crisis crippling the economy, inflation high, the possibility of
nuclear war with Russia and ecological collapse looming, the "what me
worry" attitude of MAD magazine's Alfred E. Neumann seemed appropriately
and particularly mad. There was everything to worry about and very
little to celebrate. Yes, I grew up worried.<br />
<br />
But
today, at 50 years of age, on a planet of 7 billion (double what it was
when I was a kid!), with true peak oil on the horizon and climate change
very much in evidence, the only things I'm worried about (and they are
big anxieties) are nuclear proliferation and species extinction. The
rest all seems so very... simple.<br />
<br />
And even those two big issues seem solvable.<br />
<br />
What
changed for me in the intervening decades is that I went out into the
world with worries about specific problems and to my astonishment found
specific and very simple solutions. <br />
<br />
So let me be specific, and maybe I can help you stop worrying too... !<br />
<br />
We will try to break up our simple story into the usual existential categories: Food, Shelter, Water, Energy and Waste Management, although not necessarily in that order since there is a lot of overlap.<br />
Let's start with...<br />
<br />
<b>1. FOOD</b><br />
<br />
<b>"Bringing Home the Bacon" or "How simple it is to grow your own food...</b><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
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Remember how we were all going to starve to death because agriculture is failing everywhere -- topsoil and nutrient loss, desertification, new plant diseases that would make the potato famine blight blush?<br />
<br />
Well agriculture is indeed failing but NO we won't starve.<br />
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At least I won't, and you don't have to either.<br />
<br />
Turns out we don't need agriculture.<br />
<br />
I know, I know...<br />
<br />
Look... let it GO.<br />
<br />
It was a bad experiment and it took us 10,000 years to realize it. It didn't make us any healthier, in fact Spencer Wells documents the toll it took on our bodies in his excellent book <a href="http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/pandoras_seed/">"Pandora's Seed: The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization".</a><br />
<br />
Fact is agriculture made a few people very very very very very very very rich for thousands of years and provided nutritionally iffy (and later downright crappy) starches and sugars that were easy to transport and store (even if it did require the creation of armies and city-states and a host of political problems) and were cheap enough, once economies of scale kicked in, to feed entire armies and hordes of slaves (so you could reserve the protein and fat for the rich) keeping them just high enough on the calories to go and die for you and build your pyramids.<br />
<br />
And the great thing about agriculture was that the species it relied on -- wheat, corn, rice, barley, oats, sorgum, sugar cane -- were weedy grasses that seemed to follow people around whenever we screwed up and scorched the earth, when we foolishly cut down our forests, or when climate changes expanded the deserts. Grasslands are generally successional from desert to forest and in certain conditions they will persist and evolve marvelously complex ecosystems with deep deep perennial root systems and associated microbes that can support vast assemblages of animals. Natural history has it that we evolved our marvelous ability to hunt in huge groups and develop sophisticated weapons in a savannah landscape peppered with patches of forest and swampland. But we didn't eat that much grass -- we left that to our prey species.<br />
<br />
Whenever there was a fire, however, or in riparian areas where flooding seasonally wiped out larger vegetation, certain annual grasses would sprout up in the aftermath of disaster and start to reclaim the land for more complex ecosystem dynamics to come. And at some point in our cultural evolution we decided to rely on these "disturbance ecology" species and use them to develop a system of profit and haves and have nots. The rest, as they say, is history.<br />
<br />
But we don't NEED grain agriculture or sugar -- just as any Eskimo (I mean "Inuit", but <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo">since Eskimo means "eaters of raw meat" </a>it is appropriately used here). And heck, you couldn't make your own daily bread without a lot of help, certainly not in a disaster, so put that electric bread maker away and tune in to a different reality...<br />
<b><br /></b><br />
<b>Of Meat and Men</b><br />
<br />
Turns out you CAN make your own meat.<br />
<br />
Yeah yeah, every backyard gardener thinks it is easier to grow plants. After all, they don't run around and poop on things, and they keep their metaphorical mouths shut, not a peep out of them when they are hungry and they don't whine (or scream!) when you chop them up to make salads. Sure, they'll signal their displeasure with a wilted or yellowed leaf from time to time, and they are prone to certain rots and insect infestations, but on the whole they seem very tractable.<br />
<br />
The problem is, unless you are going to grow soybean or Mayan breadnut trees, they aren't going to yield much protein, and often they are deficient in one or another essential amino acid, so to live "high on the hog" so to speak, you are going to have to grow alot of different kinds of plants and strive for "protein complementarity", adding foods together to get all the right amino acids. <br />
<br />
I was a vegetarian for a number of years, and a vegan for an additional 7 months and I enjoyed my shopping excursions (I felt like a hunter gatherer) and cooking experiments. But it was my visit to the Bedouins of Syria that turned me back into a facultative omnivore with carnivorous leanings.<br />
<br />
Facultative means here that what I eat depends on my environment; I'm still perfectly happy to eat vegan or vegetarian in places where there is botanical abundance. But when the sh!t hits the fan and starvation threatens I'm not convinced I have the skill or will have the land, or water, or nutrients or resources or time necessary to grow my own plant food and keep my family alive and healthy. The bedouins argued exactly that with me, and they should know since they had to adapt to the desert wastelands of Arabia when the first civilizations in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Mauritania, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Jordan and elsewhere collapsed, taking with them vast areas of once productive agricultural land, turned to desert through bad irrigation practices, soil exhaustion and overgrazing.<br />
<br />
The bedouins I visited in Syria said, "our sheep and goats and camels travel with us on their own legs and require very little water. They eat scrub vegetation that is thorny and unpalateable to human beings and turn it into life giving Haleeb (milk) from which we make our laban (yoghurt) and jibn (cheese) which are fermented and need no refrigeration. They give us fresh meat that also needs no cooler because they carry it with them on their bodies until it is time for sacrifice. We have this relationship, the animals and us. We shelter and protect them, and they also give us life... <br />
"The farm on which you are staying on the other hand... it destroys the land. It uses up the precious sweet water that is beneath the desert and sends it to the city in the form of bread or fruits and vegetables or tobacco. It leaves behind MilH (salt) that kills the land so even the desert plants can not grow. And it attracts pests and diseases that they then fight with chemicals that poison our water and land and food. So why do you think being a vegetarian is more friendly to our environment?"<br />
<br />
I had no good answer within that context and it was useless to argue about factory farming versus small scale horticulture, and about organic farms versus ones that use artificial fertlizers and herbicides and pesticides, and about grass fed beef versus cattle fed soybean grown at the expense of a Bolivian rainforest. These were Bedouins, and their reality was right in front of us -- a parched landscape that had lost its fertility thousands of years ago because of human desire to "make the desert bloom" for a profit.<br />
<br />
Their point to me hit me like thunder when I left their wedding party after eating the most delicious fresh sheep cheese and returned to the farm I was staying on, watching the fellahin (peasants) toiling in the hot sun, weeding, ploughing, spraying...<br />
<br />
<b>Keeping animals was easier, particularly when you could rely on them to feed themselves...</b><br />
<br />
As this is all about simplicity for us moderns though, my return to civilization made me rethink that. How would I feed my animals in the city, with no grazing land at all, whether pasture or scrub vegetation? So perhaps growing meat wasn't so simple afterall.<br />
<br />
Okay, I explored the other "micro-meat" options. At home in Los Angeles I had started trying to grow my own soybeans (I always wondered why vegetarians seemed content to grow corn and tomatoes and herbs but depended on the supermarket for their primary protein!) and things were going well until some garden snails destroyed my whole crop. Then it dawned on me that I could eat the snails, and when a little research showed that, in fact, these particular snails were the same species that the French call the delicacy "escargot" I had quite a great feast (the snails that everybody puts poison on their lawns to kill in California actually are escapees from a failed attempt to start a supply chain for French restaurants!).<br />
<br />
I also bred and ate crickets and grasshoppers (the grasshoppers you can actually get in Oaxacan restaurants in Los Angeles like <span class="st">the wonderful <a href="http://draft.blogger.com/goog_1098148791">Guelaguetza <em>Restaurant</em></a></span><a href="http://guelaguetzarestaurante.com/">,</a> fried with cheese, called "Chapulines con Queso"). And I ate lots of beetle larvae, which every science teacher knows how to breed in a tupperware container with some bran and apple cores. We call them mealworms and many a school child has tried them on "insect eating day" at the Natural History Museum.<br />
<br />
But my attempts to convince people about "man eating bug" (with excursions into silkworm eating, and ant salads, and waterbugs and live termites and even live jumiles (stinkbugs in the Hemiptera) in an indigenous Cuernavacan marketplace) didn't win me a lot of converts, particularly among prospective mates. I even lost one girlfriend after simply mentioning what I had tried on my last trip to Mexico.<br />
<br />
So while I'm quite convinced we can grow insects and snails, and even guinea pigs, which they eat in Peru, at home in the city, it doesn't do much for the majority of us who are expected to "bring home the bacon" so we can live "high on the hog". <br />
<br />
So to the question "where's the beef" I turn my attention to "there's always the pig".<br />
Real pigs, not guinea pigs. And yes... in the city.<br />
<br />
<b>Pigs in the forest</b><br />
<br />
When I was staying with a Dyak tribal group in Borneo in the mid-80s, deep in the primary rain forest, we went hunting and gathering for plant food (they weren't agriculturalists) but not for animal protein. The Dyaks, like the Batak I visited in northern Sumatra, ate "Babi Hutan", otherwise known as "forest pig". Romantic legends suggest that all forest people run around with spears and bows and arrows wondering where their next meal is going to come from. There is no denying the sport of hunting (I recently went pheasant hunting with my Uncle Mark in Wisconsin) but human beings rarely put their lives at the mercy of the unknown when they can help it. My former professor Susanna B. Hecht, who lived among native peoples in Amazonia, used to delight her UCLA classes by saying "it isn't that they didn't know about animal husbandry, of course they knew how to keep animals. It's just that they were smarter than that. Instead of going through the hassle of trying to corral an animal in a fenced enclosure and then taking up the burden of going and getting food for the animals and risking their animals developing diseases because of the unhealthy living conditions that an animal pen creates, they used their genius to influence the plants that grew around their village so that the animals were always around and were well fed. This botanical sophistication and knowledge of animal behavior made it simple to just go out and silently, with a blow pipe, harvest meat on the hoof. They reasoned "animals have legs - they should go and forage for their own food. Why should we waste our time feeding the animals. But if we grow what they like within easy walking distance, they won't go away, they'll stay near our homes".<br />
<br />
It was a kind of quasi-domestication that few post-Roman Empire Europeans understood (the Celts and Druids would have understood it very very well as they did the same thing!).<br />
<br />
In the case of the Dyak group I stayed with in the forest, they took it one step further -- they had an open door policy for the pigs, building their homes on stilts with the top floor being kitchen and bathroom and the bottom floor being a pig paradise. It had gathered brush strewn about in one area where the pigs could safely bear and raise their piglets and a wallow beneath the upstairs toilet hole. To ensure that the pigs would come around they would simply take a... er... go to the bathroom.<br />
<br />
Yes, pigs are sh!t eating creatures, as are dogs. We got first hand experience with the dogs when we were staying with friends in California who had two massive setters and our toddler did his business in the potty. It was our son's habit to play with his LEGO Star Wars figures while on the toilet and the lightsaber and helmet of one of them fell in the potty with the poop. He called out to us saying, "I dropped some LEGO in my poop!" and this attracted the attention of the dogs. One of the them came in and tried to lick the poop in the potty right from between our son's legs, causing him to scream out. We shooed the dog away and brought our son to the bathtub to wash and he said, "but who is going to save my LEGO?". At that moment the other dog came bounding past us and attacked the potty, devouring our son's bowel movement. When we were finally able to push the dog away all that was left was an empty potty with spotlessly clean LEGO pieces.<br />
<br />
That pigs and dogs gladly eat human feces is something that the Dyaks turned to their advantage, a rather sophisticated form of recycling that Westerner's may not be able to stomach, but which could save our lives in a disaster (if only my Irish ancestors had remembered these truths instead of being seduced into eating the low-value Potato starch and relying on the tuber agriculture introduced to Ireland by the British via the French we would have never suffered the losses of the great famine).<br />
<br />
In Sumatra we visited restaurants built over ponds with birdcages hanging over the pond. The birds weren't just for decoration, though they were lovely and gave the dinner a marvelous symphony (or cacophany, depending on your point of view). The bird cages were open on the bottom so their poop would fall in the pond where the carp and other fish that they served in the restaurant lived. Inspection of the human toilets showed that they also discharged into the fish pond from which we were eating. Yet to survive and survive well, one doesn't have to feed one's future food on the wastes of one's previous' meal, at least not a meal that passed through your own body.<br />
<br />
Of course pigs don't NEED to be fed on other's body wastes; this is just an extreme example that people need to know in order to get through hard times. Pigs are happy rooting around in the forest for truffles and grubs and whatnot, and the Batak man I travelled on a bus with through Sumatra and dined with at a roadside piggery was proud to say that hunting pig was as easy as it was fun; a day of sport followed by many days of feasting. Our conversation started on a bus filled with farmers and their chickens when he, with his tatoos and distended ear filled with heavy earrings and chains of pig tusks over his bare chest, poked me in mine and asked, "Christian or Muslim?". Not sure what was the politically intelligent thing to say, I naturally went with my expansive truth:<br />
"I am raised a Christian but I also have Christian and Muslim relatives, even Jewish ones... we are a very mixed family you see..." I thought I'd covered all my bases there and at most we could have an argument about obligations to love one's family regardless of creed or religion...<br />
He smiled to reveal sharpened teeth. <br />
"So you eat babi hutan?"<br />
"I have, yes, I have eaten forest pig".<br />
He slapped me on the shoulder in delight.<br />
"I am Christian. I eat Babi Hutan. This is why I am Christian. When the missionaries from your religions came to speak to our Batak people some wanted us to become Muslims like the farmers down there... (he gestured to the valley below as the bus strained to climb up the narrow winding road toward the still forested slopes that I was travelling to in order to visit orangutan researchers)... some wanted us to become Christians. When we found out that Muslims won't eat Babi Hutan, but Christians will, naturally we all decided to become Christians. Think about it -- what kind of a God would forbid a man to eat Babi Hutan? What kind of a God would force a family to work all day in the fields in the hot sun when there is food so delicious and easy to get in cool and shady forest? This is why I am Christian. Come, we will eat Babi Hutan together at the next rest stop. You will be my guest!"<br />
<br />
In a forest here in Germany we have gone wild pig and deer hunting with our friends, the Sayn-Wittgensteins, whose family castle sits atop hectares of land that look much as they might have in Medieval times when many Germans still lived from the bounty the forest could offer. Huge oak trees drop prodigious amounts of acorns on the forest floor, and the deer and pigs turn these bitter but abundant seeds into great pork and venison which we enjoyed by the roaring fire in the castle at night. At a trip to a restaurant near the Baldeneye Sea in our own city of Essen, a restaurant surrounded by big oaks, I collected enough acorns in 15 minutes from the porch to make my own meal that weekend at home (I leached the tannins out through boiling). But while I was preparing the acorns to make them edible, reflecting on the time and energy I was investing and knowing they wouldn't be a complete protein by themselves, I thought, "what if I had a pig to eat these acorns, wouldn't that be marvelous".<br />
<br />
Of course Germans are big pig eaters and are proud of their pork industry. We've visited pig farms in the region and spoken with the farmers. The question was, "how simple would it be to do in the city?"<br />
<br />
<b>Pigs in the City </b><br />
<br />
It was when working on my Ph.D. with the Zabaleen, Egypt's Coptic Christian Trash Recyclers, that I encountered the simplicity of urban survival in the face of poverty thanks to a symbiotic relationship with pigs. The Zabaleen have been migrating to the urban slums and informal areas of Cairo for nearly a century now, as productive land-holdings in the countryside are taken away from them, or become too expensive due to land speculation, or become mechanized, displacing labor, or fail because of ecological exhaustion, rising salinity and desertification.<br />
<br />
When they move to the city and build their dwellings, they tend to arrive with all of their animals, chief among them, their pigs. In the years before the tragic "swine flu slaughter" when the Egyptian army eradicated most of this living protein treasure, mistakenly equating the name "swine flu" with Egyptian pigs (by the time the strain of virus we called "swine flu" started traveling from the Americas to other parts of the world it had evolved into a human disease that had little to do with swine, whatever its zoonotic origin may have been), my friends and colleagues there were famous for their succulent pork, fed completely on the city's organic garbage. The pigs in many of my friends' apartment buildings generally lived on the ground floor but often had free range of the house; getting to the roof sometimes to work on our solar hot water systems we had to jump over a sow and her piglets who liked sleeping on a particular part of the staircase.<br />
As a graduate student living on very little money in the nearby Islamic slum of Darb Al Ahmar, it was my great pleasure to go into the Coptic informal area and get some relief from my usual diet of 'ful' (fava beans) and 'ta3miya' (falafel, also made from beans) and 'kushari' (a noodle dish with lentils and tomato sauce). I craved protein and my Zabaleen friends always had it to offer.<br />
<br />
These were people living on a dollar or two a day and they were inviting ME over for huge feasts of high quality roast pork, grown in their own homes. There was never any concern about "running low on food"; the delicious and savory meat, so generously offered, was often accompanied by fresh eggs, chicken, duck and goat meat and sheep cheese, all from the roof. Moussa's family even had a cow and a calf living in the upstairs bedroom, and this was familiar to me because my former student Alvaro in South Central L.A. had a bull in his backyard in the 1990s.<br />
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The thing is that it is possible to produce plenty of food in the city. The fact that we see this happening in the poorest parts of the world, and that people in such "slums" and "ghettoes" are actually often eating a better diet than the rest of us who are addicted to the "army and slave rations" that rural agriculture provides in the form of breads and cereals and tuber starches and sugars should give the rest of us great hope.<br />
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What could be simpler than keeping meat on the hoof in the home that is quite happy living on our kitchen and toilet wastes? Your cultural prejudices may make you find such a thing currently abhorrent, but with all due respect to my observant Jewish and Muslim friends, we may all want to re-visit and reform our attitudes toward what we consider 'kosher' or 'halal' or clean or un-clean in a world where population is set to reach 9 billion or more within our lifetimes and the carrying capacity of our environment is strained to the max. If modern medicine declares animal protein fed on waste material to be 'clean', i.e. pathogen free, then our religious and cultural attitudes need to be reformed to reflect this new understanding (remember that the founders of our religions didn't have any knowledge of the microbial world or tiny parasites and had to use blunt instruments of prohibition to try and keep us safe).<br />
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But the essential point here is that whether we are talking about pigs or fish or many other animals, there is a great circle of life and rather than just singing Karaoke versions of Elton John songs from the Lion King and thinking we are doing something to "save the planet" we might instead be adopting some of the simple practices of the people for whom necessity really is the mother of invention.<br />
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<b>But what about us vegetarians? </b><br />
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Now there will be those who will read about the simplicity of providing animal protein to a growing population who will take offense saying, "hold on there, you say it is simple, and I'll agree, pigs and carp you might get to grow in the city eating nothing but materials we now consider waste. And it may be "healthy". But there is nothing simple about slaughtering another living being, particularly one as intelligent and compassionate as a pig. You face considerable moral complexities when you take the knife or the gun to a sentient being, and it is proven that pigs are as intelligent as dogs if not more so."<br />
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I will concede that point. Killing isn't simple for me, and I've been lucky that my Dyak and Coptic friends did the slaughter and butchering for me. One time in Central Borneo I was treated to a meal of dog and pork at a roadside Dyak restaurant and I had to choose my own dog and my own pig for the meal. The dog choice was surprisingly easy, considering that the dogs on offer were mangy ugly mutts, all snarly and reminiscent of Stephen King's Cujo or the zombie dogs in Resident Evil. But the pigs were so cute and loving, and they all wanted to nuzzle my hand with their muzzles, grunting satisfaction that they had a visitor... I literally couldn't bring myself to point to any single individual and imperiously signal their slaughter. I had to have my Indonesian colleague, do it, he being a Muslim who didn't care for pork anyway and certainly wouldn't eat dog (though he was indulgent with me experiencing his country's different cultures).<br />
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And anyway, when I was training to be a clown in Ringling Bros and Barnum and Bailey Circus |<br />Clown College, the famous Lou Jacob's son was a clown who kept pet pigs and trained them for his act and prevailed upon me at the age of 13 that pigs not only are extremely bright but made marvelous home companions (he lived with his in his circus trailer). Years later the actor Luke Perry, who kept small pigs as pets, brought one from his litter to a birthday party my band was playing at for our friend John G. Avildsen (who directed Rocky and Karate Kid and Lean on Me and Power of One among other great films). We talked pig for a while, extolling their virtues and he offered to give me one, but I was traveling too much at the time to have pets and anyway didn't know at the time how easy they can be to feed. And no, I don't think I could have killed Luke Perry's ever so soft and cute pet pig.<br />
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So my point is, yes, being a carnivore does carry with it its own complications (though most vegetarians I know drawn the line with fish, some even considering them to not be categorically "animals"). Still, fish and clams and mussels and 'shellfish' can all be grown on "garbage" (i.e. recycled nutrients) and when it comes to pigs, there is no reason why we can't do as the Tuscans of Italy do, and create a swine dairy industry to get our protein without butchery. Ah, blessed are the cheesemakers!<br />
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<b><a href="http://irregulartimes.com/index.php/archives/2007/01/19/why-is-there-no-pig-cheese/">Pig cheese</a>?</b><br />
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Absolutely! Imagine if you could grow your milk and cheese at home with the only inputs being your kitchen and market scraps and, for those even more adventurous, toilet wastes too? Think its impossible? Then you've never tried <a href="http://www.lifeinitaly.com/food/raresttuscancheese.asp">"Porcorino: The Rarest Tuscan Cheese".</a><br />
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Turns out the Italians have been making cheese from pig milk for millenia. It is a delicacy with a flavor somewhere "between brie and peccorino". In fact let me quote from the website whose link I have provided above because it is so poetic:<br />
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"In a town nestled in a thickly wooded valley on a volcanic slope in
southern Tuscany you may be able to discover what is certainly Italy’s
most closely-guarded culinary secret, a rare cheese made from pig’s milk
called Porcorino (Porcherino in the local dialect).</blockquote>
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Italy’s most closely-guarded culinary secret, a rare cheese made from
pig’s milk called Porcorino (Porcherino in the local dialect).
Shaped into firm, exquisite rounds only an inch or two in diameter,
produced in small quantities almost exclusively for local use for
hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, some food scholars have speculated
that one of the objects on the table in Da Vinci’s famous fresco of The
Last Supper in Milan, is in fact a round of this tasty food...</blockquote>
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<a href="http://www.lifeinitaly.com/node/12720" title="Porcorino "><img alt="Porcorino " height="355" src="http://www.lifeinitaly.com/files/imagecache/medium/cheese.jpg" title="Porcorino " width="300" /></a></div>
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It has a consistency both firm and runny, somewhere between brie and
peccorino. The flavor clobbers the hard palate with a sensation nearly
indescribable in its complexity and overwhelming richness: a product of
the swine to make one swoon. Imagine a milky tiramisu that melts and
vibrates before exploding with overtones of porcini mushroom and a back
taste hint of chestnuts (perhaps a product of the pig’s diet). Imagine
damp woods, crisp autumn leaves crunching under foot, a dog barking in
the distance. Imagine wild strawberries and rotting logs.</blockquote>
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<a href="http://www.lifeinitaly.com/node/12721" title="Porcorino 2"><img alt="Porcorino 2" height="225" src="http://www.lifeinitaly.com/files/imagecache/medium/Porcorino.jpg" title="Porcorino 2" width="300" /></a></div>
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Challenges to Porcorino production are great. Although pig milk, at
eight and a half percent butterfat, is exceptionally rich and the
proportions of components like water and lactose are similar to those of
cow milk, pigs produce on average only thirteen pounds of milk a day,
far below that of a cow (at 65 pounds). For now production is limited to
a few thousand liters every year from a small herd of half-wild swine.<br />
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Milking a pig is extraordinarily difficult, to say the least. For one
thing, they have fourteen teats as opposed to a cow’s four, and when
stimulated to produce oxytocin, they eject the milk for only fifteen
seconds at a time (the ejection time of a cow, by contrast, is well over
ten minutes). Hence it requires enormous dexterity, skill and speed.
Only two or three members of one family carry on the tradition. They are
now quite elderly and the young are moving away to Rome or Florence. It
isn’t at all certain the tradition can be maintained."</blockquote>
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Okay, so milking a pig turns out to not so simple, but not unfeasible and maybe easier for some than killing a pig. The point is that it can be done and has been done and is being done and is anyway a whole lot simpler than dying of starvation. And I say this as a Culhane whose family had to flee Ireland, despite having no dearth of kitchen and toilet waste and market wastes, because some potatoes went bad and their neighbors were literally turning to eating grass -- not wheat and corn and rice and sugar cane -- but lawn grass and weeds.<br />
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Keeping pigs for whatever reason, is a whole lot simpler than starving, or even worrying about "where the next meal is going to come from".<br />
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And the marvelous pig's ability and willingness to live on the waste products we produce makes them our salvation if we want to maintain our dense civilizations and feed the hunger for animal protein that urbanization seems to bring with it. <br />
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And that leads to the second and perhaps more important revelation of how simple life is once we realize how valuable garbage is: where the energy is going to come from to get us past peak oil so that we can cook our pork?<br />
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The anthropologist Marvin Harris pointed out in his 1975 classic <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60653.Cows_Pigs_Wars_and_Witches">"Cows,Pigs, Wars and Witches: The Riddle of Culture"</a> that the origin of the Judeo-Islamic prohibition against pork probably derives from a need to protect people from the <span class="st"><em><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichinosis">Trichinosis parasite </a></em></span>that is known to infect pork and wild game. Proper cooking was the answer to that, but proper cooking requires reliable energy.<br />
<br />
So in our next meditation on how simple life is, we turn to how simple it is to get that reliable energy, not only for cooking but to cool and heat our homes, provide light and generate electricity.<br />
The answer of course, turns out to be the same as for raising pigs in the city. It lies in our kitchen and toilet wastes. I wish things could be more complicated, but they aren't. Life simply IS that simple.<br />
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But that, we will explain in greater detail, in the next essay. The following photos give you an idea of what I'm going to explore. For now, give up your worries of starvation and befriend a pig farmer or think of getting a pet pig. It might just save your life, with very little effort indeed! <br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxPzJFPc0c0gp9cyS_VX_fItDgnINIHpWeMVmhdwsKQxEwgHAdtD7l-pIStsfAR6fhr_V4fWLUA88KzaWjm8W80uMQZj45N5d2yGjdM5JaxCyAbNpd56C_RB3aDKM55wxouDTPNGmc_A/s400/20120711_115111.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">German bacon being cooked on our biogas stove. In this case, while civilization is intact and legal restrictions keep us from keeping pigs, we buy our meat from the local market; Germany is famous for its pork industry which it claims is one of the "greenest" in the world. But our cooking gas comes from what we would otherwise feed pigs if we had them: our kitchen scraps, put into an "Insinkerator" food waste grinder which was originally called "the Mechanical Hog" when it was invented in 1927 at a time when American families were giving up the pigs that used to be an essential part of every household. To replace the food grinding services that hogs provided, Insinkerator created a machine to make garbage disposal as convenient as it was when there were pigs to feed at home. Today we use that machine to turn our garbage into feedstock for our biodigestor which is like a "mechanical hog" that produces our cooking gas.</td></tr>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkydImNTWLem5Hcj3JBw-XvNYDcYnmRPMZagYldtNjDGh93m0NxXKXTHGfDBrckJlzTd-ddfQF9XXmEHzBst7l0hFvK2cDqCQMXXcy4hUT7AdNsOKjLkZMgI4mHeh3LJUlm7zKevlxHA/s1600/20120711_115438.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkydImNTWLem5Hcj3JBw-XvNYDcYnmRPMZagYldtNjDGh93m0NxXKXTHGfDBrckJlzTd-ddfQF9XXmEHzBst7l0hFvK2cDqCQMXXcy4hUT7AdNsOKjLkZMgI4mHeh3LJUlm7zKevlxHA/s400/20120711_115438.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our two "plastic pigs" on our porch in the rain. Come rain or shine they always produce reliable methane for our kitchen. The rainwater barrel inverted in teh center between the greenhouse and the black tank, above the solar collector, is filled with biogas at the start of the meal.</td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiziyvlWDeifATDyC1rlRe1mNlEBNQu4Sl1rJum4BzxK09T_8PMXxSFS7fduOzSrT2lezrTFP7IWU0_GNTbBJ4vJxmw4N9nk7aMOlypGvFLstmEIcvqmSBFcsSv9mPavp_dbYPJ9V-uNQ/s1600/20120711_115245.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiziyvlWDeifATDyC1rlRe1mNlEBNQu4Sl1rJum4BzxK09T_8PMXxSFS7fduOzSrT2lezrTFP7IWU0_GNTbBJ4vJxmw4N9nk7aMOlypGvFLstmEIcvqmSBFcsSv9mPavp_dbYPJ9V-uNQ/s400/20120711_115245.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> A little mozarella with the bacon gives it extra flavor; eventually we would like to try Porcorino Pig Cheese from Tuscany which we will try to get next time we drive down to Italy.</td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlw78H2PCLJkw78-WkLbsGrzzEcNSYqq-WzWDV-ARObWlQh2Zu9ICbC3thGIrz_yfTxTbOHggcx_22ZTGPV7FXeZKXNWHrrx2HwmGPBwF41gD5xy-z0K_Hovw0elqSbp3lTSZnc-PZkw/s1600/20120711_115537.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlw78H2PCLJkw78-WkLbsGrzzEcNSYqq-WzWDV-ARObWlQh2Zu9ICbC3thGIrz_yfTxTbOHggcx_22ZTGPV7FXeZKXNWHrrx2HwmGPBwF41gD5xy-z0K_Hovw0elqSbp3lTSZnc-PZkw/s320/20120711_115537.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tomatoes and herbs we do grow on our porch, taking advantage of our biogas fertilizer -- the effluent that remains after we turn our kitchen wastes into methane.</td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivvJ4lP4VUbrXW06pLPgSRbJdBzMbJecL-kQAMZ-7Q-0W8DeFp0kLIgWB7DLldetErVBTVefjXy6DMF3SXQSsUgQDs1lF4CWmDKvbcASQKjXoRxgDPpL9VAn_PA945qyOPiTQYSC5Rpw/s320/20120711_120016.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="240" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Finally we add eggs to the mix. We dont' grow our own eggs at home yet, but our Zabaleen friends in Cairo grow both pork and eggs in the city so we know we can do this when we need to.</td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivvJ4lP4VUbrXW06pLPgSRbJdBzMbJecL-kQAMZ-7Q-0W8DeFp0kLIgWB7DLldetErVBTVefjXy6DMF3SXQSsUgQDs1lF4CWmDKvbcASQKjXoRxgDPpL9VAn_PA945qyOPiTQYSC5Rpw/s1600/20120711_120016.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> </a><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx915ReYzbOWg8fzK5zfh_ucc_XWoFhCL3PXwngPP7J_mD1I3XoURbIGirl1CEYgTmyFiNlkiHTWvH5oZEhzpMm44IhyphenhyphenNjFA1slVtzQVA9-KynIn0WvzaI6GoCTfwABjsNbDZukYixhA/s1600/20120711_124854.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx915ReYzbOWg8fzK5zfh_ucc_XWoFhCL3PXwngPP7J_mD1I3XoURbIGirl1CEYgTmyFiNlkiHTWvH5oZEhzpMm44IhyphenhyphenNjFA1slVtzQVA9-KynIn0WvzaI6GoCTfwABjsNbDZukYixhA/s320/20120711_124854.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">After the meal we've only used up a small fraction of the stored cooking gas so we have plenty for dinner and for tomorrow. The nice thing is that biogas production is a perpetual process so we will never run out of fuel. That is the easy part.</td></tr>
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<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
</blockquote>T.H. Culhanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02974539190597507374noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1334849659163883527.post-61383875309581459772012-06-23T18:52:00.001-07:002012-06-23T18:52:03.301-07:00The Solar CITIES IBC Tank Biodigestor just got simpler! Actually it has been this simple for over a year now, but we just got around to learning enough Blender to make these 3D images.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfjKUuxD5apBevUZ9645k7AWsCziFWVo-7YH6JtM6FWogSl5s2LRzQDGfFiYFtXimPHvGAImDYiO-f8vwmzhAHOIgPDuZ81u7GrbFGybbkc5EbXDRli-aqPiFM3Hy_qDcQdi3F5-4Hpg/s1600/IBCdigestor1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfjKUuxD5apBevUZ9645k7AWsCziFWVo-7YH6JtM6FWogSl5s2LRzQDGfFiYFtXimPHvGAImDYiO-f8vwmzhAHOIgPDuZ81u7GrbFGybbkc5EbXDRli-aqPiFM3Hy_qDcQdi3F5-4Hpg/s320/IBCdigestor1.png" width="320" /></a></div>
Gosh it's easy to build a family scale biodigestor! All you have to do is buy a used IBC Tote Tank (those 1000 liter/275 gallon practically indestructible HDPE tanks that they ship liquids in all over the world; on Craig's List they can be had for about $125!) and put a 2 inch pipe (usually in two sections) running from about a half meter above the tank to about 15 cm above the bottom for introducing the feedstock (ground up food waste in our case), a 1 inch pipe running from the middle of the tank to a valved elbow for letting out the effluent/fertilizer, and a 1/2 tank fitting with elbowed valve to let out the biogas that results.<br />
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You don't have to alter the tank in any way; all the inputs and outputs can be made through the cover.<br />
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You may find it a bit difficult to find the bulkhead tank fittings/adaptors in some hardware shops, but check out aquarium, pool and boating shops, or look online and you should find them.<br />
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To get the gas and the effluent out you can use garden hoses or clear plastic tubing. No big deal there; this stuff isn't under much pressure at all.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBfnPUIOHhKjLcIGHVIyPMw7pMz0OhXMiZDZIxEKdhkoQOX73pDXkezy1-C1oo7eLGYDpl1j8lxl2X5xC_Lj1ivPavSejcpzzqT-bV3mWnQWHBpaRvLfTA_MPjmb1QxlXYs3eIg4zFIA/s1600/IBCdigestor4.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBfnPUIOHhKjLcIGHVIyPMw7pMz0OhXMiZDZIxEKdhkoQOX73pDXkezy1-C1oo7eLGYDpl1j8lxl2X5xC_Lj1ivPavSejcpzzqT-bV3mWnQWHBpaRvLfTA_MPjmb1QxlXYs3eIg4zFIA/s320/IBCdigestor4.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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The gas comes right out the top so you don't need any pipe there. The fertilizer comes out of the "dead zone" in the middle of the tank (fats and oils, which contain lots of energy, tend to float, and proteins and carbs tend to sink, so the top and bottom of the tank are biologically acive) so you want that one inch pipe going down to the halfway mark. The feeding pipe should reach to about 10 or 15 cm above the bottom of the tank to leave room for the rocks and active sludge without the food getting blocked on its way down and into the tank.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaGwoJlOzzYQIOIHR35L-m6C9xg1h3YIFTU9wl4_Wh_-jCQmDYgwxPvYJAV52tb5CEb0Q_Md5ury7a7FNoX-TuppzpeYoejOUvcKQFbP_GjuTy-IIh9dWnYUvZYwBxJD_hjxmPOOqFag/s1600/IBCdigestor5.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaGwoJlOzzYQIOIHR35L-m6C9xg1h3YIFTU9wl4_Wh_-jCQmDYgwxPvYJAV52tb5CEb0Q_Md5ury7a7FNoX-TuppzpeYoejOUvcKQFbP_GjuTy-IIh9dWnYUvZYwBxJD_hjxmPOOqFag/s320/IBCdigestor5.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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But that's about it. You'll want the feeding pipe up top to be about a half meter above the tank so that enough of a head can build up to force the gas out and so that you can pour all your food waste in without overflowing since the effluent outlet is half the diameter of the input pipe. As you add the ground up food waste slurry (we use an Insinkerator brand garbage disposal to make it) fertilizer fluid will be coming out of the 1 inch pipe, but it will come out slower. You could use a larger pipe, but sometimes they don't fit the lid easily. We've found with the proper feeding regime the dimensions depicted here work fine!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguXtYfvmrg37F9FDKhIpn7q4cz2w2SsarfljZzqUw5yZgY5CkpGpA5_xu62wT3_AwhmlSB9kNz12rIU40vKFqMVJ20FcGO5Ym2TzjVqPOP2y3XmFxqumaY5x71skgeCD5mHtUAgTBXoQ/s1600/IBCdigestor6.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguXtYfvmrg37F9FDKhIpn7q4cz2w2SsarfljZzqUw5yZgY5CkpGpA5_xu62wT3_AwhmlSB9kNz12rIU40vKFqMVJ20FcGO5Ym2TzjVqPOP2y3XmFxqumaY5x71skgeCD5mHtUAgTBXoQ/s320/IBCdigestor6.png" width="320" /></a></div>
Make sure the lid has an intact rubber O-ring gasket; one of ours didn't and while it eventually worked out using silcone, you can experience troublesome leaks. Some used IBC vendors sell you lids without the rubber ring inside; check and see just to be sure!<br />
Then just fill your tank with about 50 to 100 kg animal manure, top off with water, screw the lid on and wait for a couple of weeks. When you get your first flammable gas you are ready to start feeding ground up food scraps -- about a 25 liter buckt of mixed food waste and water each day!<br />
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<br />T.H. Culhanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02974539190597507374noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1334849659163883527.post-91291376679078610692012-06-23T04:49:00.003-07:002012-06-23T06:01:02.384-07:00What is Solar CITIES and how can you help?<div style="font-family: inherit;">
</div>
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<a href="http://euphratesinstitute.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/TH-Culhane.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://euphratesinstitute.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/TH-Culhane.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><b>About us: </b></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><b> </b>Founded in 2006, Solar Cities is a nonprofit organization that works on capacity building in developing countries through </span><span style="color: black; font-size: small;">an
industrial ecology approach to sustainable developlement. </span><span style="color: black; font-size: small;">Through green collar education, gender equity empowerment and poverty alleviation we help families develop sensibly scaled technologies for creating
affordable enivonmental solutions at the household level. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;">Solar
C</span><span style="color: black; font-size: small;">3</span><span style="font-size: small;">ITIES
e.V. is a not-for-profit organization based
in Germany. We work all over the world, particularly
Africa and the Middle East, developing home-scale
sustainable development solutions with,
by, and for families and communities.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Our current focus is on providing low-cost high-efficiency biogas systems and system integration training for "food-waste-to-fuel-and-fertilizer" biodigesters at the household and community level. We incorporate in-sink food waste grinders like the "Insinkerator" brand garbage disposal into our biogas systems as the "jaws and teeth" of our "artificial sacred cow" biodigester. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><b>Mission:</b> </span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;">To Provide low income families, both nationally and globally, with
safe, clean, climate friendly, hot water, sanitation, light and
microenterprise opportunities. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span style="color: black; font-size: small;">Who
are We:</span></b></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;">Founders;
Executive Director;Dr. T.H. Culhane, Dr. Sybille Culhane</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;">Ahmed
Khalifa: Secretary/Treasure, </span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;">Moustafa Hussein, Hanna Fathy, Heidi Fink, Hussein Farag, Joram Samoan, Mike Rimoin: Solar CITIES Innoventors and Practioners </span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><b>Current Projects: </b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><b>Soylent Green is People, but Food Scraps are Solar Energy!</b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><b></b>We build biodigestors because we see proper utilization of kitchen and toilet wastes as the best way to bring solar energy to the city!</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">It
is our contention that food wastes, whether in the form of high energy raw table scraps and plate scrapings, or processed through an animal gut, are the most cost effective and reliable
form of stored solar energy. Unlike fossil fuels, which are also stored
sunlight, food waste is climate neutral and, when turned into methane
and fertilizer through a biodigester, produces no harmful toxins or
pathogens and can no longer provide sustenance to mammal, bird or insect
vectors of disease. Unlike direct sunlight, or other forms of transformed solar energy like wind power and hydro power, food wastes are available come rain or come shine, night and day, 365 days a year. And since so much of the world's stored solar energy is accumulated in our cities as uneaten plant and animal parts, left-over and thrown out food scraps and human and animal manures, we believe that any true "Solar CITIES" will transform these substances, now considered liabilities dumped into landfills or discharged into rivers lakes and oceans, into the primary sources of fuel and fertilizer. A real solar city would exhaust all of its organic wastes first before turning to other forms of sunlight, and would save fossil fuels, which are ancient solar capital reserves useful for investing in big infrastructure projects, for last. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">It is for this reason that our top priority is helping everybody on earth first make use of their stored solar energy by teaching them how to grind food wastes and tranform them into clean burning biogas for cooking, heating, lighting, refrigeration and electricity generation and nutrient rich soil for growing healthy food and fighting desertification and deforestation.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-size: small;"> </span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><b>Philosophy:</b></span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">By
tapping into the spirit of community cooperation and
extending it to a global scale, experiments in more sustainable
living can be run on a huge scale at a very low
cost and in a way that invites community and stake-holder
participation. By using only off-the-shelf, locally
purchased or manufactured, recycled and ‘</span><span style="font-size: small;">found’
materials we strive to give everyone a chance to</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">take
control of their own destiny as they pursue a dignified
and comfortable path to fully sustainable</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">development.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;">The
low costs associated with the Solar CITIES project make it affordable
and scalable and appropriate for microfinancing opportunities. We
work in a modular „build as you go“ fashion. Each dollar spent
adds to the growing capacity of the systems and capacity building in
the communities.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;">For
example, when you support solar CITIES, every donation has an
important place in the ecology of development:</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><b>25
dollars</b> will pay for a local metal worker, welder or plumber to spend
a full day helping us build a renewable energy system.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><b>50
dollars </b>will purchase the glass for solar collectors for three
families</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><b>100
dollars</b> will purchase one of the two tanks needed for a family biogas
system</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><b>150
dollars</b> will purchase the copper pipes for a family solar hot water
system</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><b>200
dollars</b> will purchase the aluminum sheeting , paint, insulation and
plumbing fittings to build a two panel family solar hot water system</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><b>250
dollars</b> will purchase the materials an entire single family biogas
system that provides 1 to 2 hours of cooking gas a day</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><b>300
dollars</b> will purchase the materials to build a treadle pump so
families without electricity can provide themselves with water</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><b>350
dollars</b> will hire a local youth worker for a month to assist her
community in building renewable energy and waste management systems.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><b>400
dollars</b> will provide an airline ticket to bring a Solar CITIES
trained trainer to another African country to train more trainers</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><b>450
dollars</b> will purchase the materials for a family biogas system that
provides 3 to 4 hours of cooking gas a day (or can run a gas
refrigerator for 24 hours).</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><b>500
dollars</b> will purchase the materials to build and install a full solar
hot water system on a family's roof.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><b>750
dollars</b> will pay the salary of a Solar CITIES expert to spend a week
in a new location starting a project.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><b>1000
dollars</b> will purchase an airline ticket to send a Solar CITIES
trainer to a new location to start a project.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><b>There is a PAYPAL donate button to the right of this post at the top of the sidebar column. Go ahead and click and show your support today! </b></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEintbyV957FX-rFKZJMWdvenKay7YWr-SsKrl__ediHXn9rzQdANqhyphenhyphenmymSlmdQexbYOZ6G5YnKTsLsDW1LFu7fCxpZKThAI6eZkIUUNXCc6dm7bN7CZzVW8ObWsZKnzMwEG19eSRsPLmY/s400/DSC00765.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEintbyV957FX-rFKZJMWdvenKay7YWr-SsKrl__ediHXn9rzQdANqhyphenhyphenmymSlmdQexbYOZ6G5YnKTsLsDW1LFu7fCxpZKThAI6eZkIUUNXCc6dm7bN7CZzVW8ObWsZKnzMwEG19eSRsPLmY/s320/DSC00765.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;">Because
we TRAIN AS WE BUILD, every activity becomes an educational
opportunity. Thus ever donation is directly contributing to
re-education and capacity building. Beneficiaries pay for their
education through donating extra time and labor to the project by
sharing the expertise they acquired in their own home or community to
others. This way every dollar stretches beyond the borders of any
particular project site.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><b>Vision:</b>
To produce a sustaibable asset-based, low income approach to income
to poverty reduction through job training and hands on productionto
provide capacity building of all the stakeholders involved.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span style="color: black; font-size: small;">What
is the Problem:</span></b></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Most
of the energy and water consumption and waste
generation in a household or community occur</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">in
the kitchen and the bathroom.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">• </span><span style="font-size: small;">Kitchens
and bathrooms are traditionally female managed
domains so most health risks associated</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">with
energy, water and waste are incurred by ‘</span><span style="font-size: small;">voiceless’
women and children.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">• </span><span style="font-size: small;">The
technologies associated with energy production, water
supply and waste disposal are traditionally forprofit male
domains that occur outside the household without
consideration for the well being of women and
children in poor communities.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">• </span><span style="font-size: small;">Solar
CITIES brings these domains together by bringing
sensibly scaled technologies and design</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">information
for creating household level industrial ecology
solutions to families around the world.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span style="color: black; font-size: small;">Goals
and Objectives: </span></b>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;">• </span><span style="font-size: small;">Industrial
Ecology Approach toSustainable
Development</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">• </span><span style="font-size: small;">Asset-based
Approach to Poverty
Reduction</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">• </span><span style="font-size: small;">Stake-holder
Participation Approach
to Urban Planning</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">• “</span><span style="font-size: small;">Green
Collar” Job Training Approach
to Education</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">• </span><span style="font-size: small;">Gender
Equity Approach to Community
Empowerment</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">• </span><span style="font-size: small;">Collective
Intelligence Approach
to Problem Solving</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span style="color: black; font-size: small;">Honoring
Diversity and Lessons Learned</span></b></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Solar
CITIES works on small
infrastructure issues with
an expertise in</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">renewable
energy. Solar
CITIES is principally
involved with</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">‘</span><span style="font-size: small;">watergy’
issues that can be
solved using appropriate
technology.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Solar
CITIES trainscommunities
to build small
biogas, wind and solar
systems.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Solar
CITIES conducts outreach
and education workshops
using holistic learning,
multimedia and</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">edutainment.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Started
by a husband and wife team while they
were living in the slums of historic Cairo,
Solar CITIES was conceived as a way of
working with collective intelligence at the</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">household
level to solve the daily challenges of
securing basic amenities like clean water, hot
water, energy, food and hygienic waste management.
We take a neighborly ‘barnraising’ approach
to solving global issues and
making the world a better place</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The
Solar CITIES approach is to work at the
level of the family, building capacity</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">through
building relationships. At
Solar CITIES we turn the normal development equation
on its head. We choose to think locally -- i.e. we
think of how to solve problems in our own homes,</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">in
our own back yards, within our own communities -- with
the faith that by coming up with solutions that are good
for you, are affordable and can be created at home</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">using
available materials, the best ideas will by themselves
diffuse and spread through personal social</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">networks
until they have reached the entire world. The key
is to build a network of families and friends and acquaintances
that is blind to nations, cultures, races, religions,
and borders.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">With
todays social networking technologies, people now
share information without great effort and news travels
very fast. Solar CITIES takes advantage of this by
working only with people we have gotten to know, and
then expanding the network each time, so that we know
ever more and ever more different people. Many people
talk about the downsides of globalization and urbanization,
but Solar CITIES, cofounded by
a multicultural couple holding doctorates
and specializing in urban planning
and education, sees these two trends
as potential solution generators</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;"> Solar
Cities takes advantage of social networking to connect us with
likeminded people and people in need that makes our global network
expand each day.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Due
to the vast migrations of people around the planet, and
our interconnectedness through constant travel and telecommunications,
awareness of each others needs and
mutual problem solving can be vastly accelerated. Multiple
perspectives can brought to bear that vastly reduce
redundancy and wasted resources through needless
trial and error. Through site visits and multimedia
internet communications we have been able to
bring technologies and ideas from India to Egypt and</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">from
Egypt to California, from Alaska to East Africa and
from Central America to South East Asia.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span style="color: black; font-size: small;">Solar
CITIES at work around the World</span></b></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/hs323.ash2/60368_427877029754_560474754_5020411_2469875_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/hs323.ash2/60368_427877029754_560474754_5020411_2469875_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span style="color: black; font-size: small;">Quotes
from Solar CITIES stakeholders</span></b></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;">Mother
in the slums of Cairo: „ It used to take me up to 7 hours to bathe
my 6 children because of the time it took to fetch and heat the
water. We had to boil 20 liters at a time on an open flame and it
was dangerous work. Many children in our community get third degree
burns and some die each year because of scalds, and houses have
burned down, to say nothing of the air pollution using kerosene
stoves generated. Now, because I was able to build my own solar hot
water system on my roof with Solar CITIES, I have 200 liters of safe,
clean hot bath water every day at the turn of a tap. Because the sun
never stops shining here, we know we will never run out of hot water,
and everybody can bathe whenever they like. The burden is off of me
and I can devote more time to studying and learning a trade.“</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;">Young
man in the garbage area of Cairo: „Garbage is my life, because I
am a recycler. But garbage can be very dangerous – my baby niece
was killed by rats that were attracted by the kitchen waste and ended
up in her crib instead. Now that we build biogas systems next to our
homes and on our roofs, the organic waste all goes into the sealed
tank and has no smell. For this reason no rats, dogs, cats, flies or
other disease causing or dangerous animals come around anymore. We
simply don't have smelly garbage near our house or in our streets
anymore. Instead we get all of our cooking gas from our kitchen
scraps. So we've turned a terrible problem into a promising solution
to clean up our city and improve our health and lives.“</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><b>GET
INVOLVED!</b></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;">YOUR
HELP OR DONATION CAN PROVIDE A
FAMILY WITH SAFE AND CLEAN, CLIMATEFRIENDLY AND
INFLATION-RESISTANT COOKING
FUEL, HOT WATER, LIGHT,</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;">SANITATION
AND MICROECONOMIC OPPORTUNITIES.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><b>There is a PAYPAL donate button to the
right of this post at the top of the sidebar column. Go ahead and click
and show your support today! </b></span><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>T.H. Culhanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02974539190597507374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1334849659163883527.post-66863523545438194162012-06-17T13:28:00.001-07:002012-06-17T13:28:17.170-07:00"Keep off the Grass": A Diet for Emerging Explorers<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8ZnL5YS6yhttl_seSzXSYOWSrZLXCCC9UrjOJGeCWkiV5r4Cr5xYyouxSsDe6AHqyKPRptonFlRxe4e_SGOvjhkdDkXowYRK5HEUpdO1uIQlYSoiaXRxYRt9xowKlc5YMhazjZTFOwQ/s1600/jamaica8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8ZnL5YS6yhttl_seSzXSYOWSrZLXCCC9UrjOJGeCWkiV5r4Cr5xYyouxSsDe6AHqyKPRptonFlRxe4e_SGOvjhkdDkXowYRK5HEUpdO1uIQlYSoiaXRxYRt9xowKlc5YMhazjZTFOwQ/s320/jamaica8.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://pers-www.wlv.ac.uk/%7Ele1810/4GK005-2.htm">Slaves on a sugar cane plantation in Jamaica "cutting the grass"...</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
<br />
My commitment to "keep of the grass" was clinched during a conversation I had last week at Base Camp with National Geographic "Explorer of the Year" Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner -- the first woman to summit all 14 of the earth's highest mountain peaks without supplementary oxygen.<br />
<br />
The conversation included her husband <span class="st"> and frequent climbing partner Ralf Dujmovits as well as John Francis,<em> </em></span><span class="st"><em></em> vice president for research, conservation, and exploration at the <em></em>National Geographic Society. And it revolved around the question "what is the best diet for explorers who routinely go into extreme conditions?". </span><br />
<br />
<span class="st">Don't get me wrong -- the conversation didn't take place in extreme conditions, it took place at the National Geographic Headquarters "Base Camp" in Washington DC, a far more comfortable location for discussion than the base camps Gerlinde usually hangs out in for weeks in the Himalayas or other daunting mountain ranges. But it included discussion of my own visit to Everest Base Camp last spring and my recent trip to the base of Mera Peak in Nepal, and the difference I felt this year when I decided to eliminate sugar and starch from my diet, and last year when I trudged up the Khumbu valley toward Mount Everest trying to rely on the daily and generous provision of Mars bars, Snickers and Bounty bars offered to help us get that "quick boost" of energy that sugar is supposed to supply.</span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span><br />
<span class="st">My observation was that without the carbs this year the trek up to 5500 meters was immeasurably easier than last year, even though the route in the Hinku valley, with steeper daily ascents and descents, and nights in cold snow bedecked tents instead of the the relative shelter and warmth of the tea lodges in the Khumbu, was technically more difficult. </span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span><br />
<span class="st">Gerlinde and Ralf and John confirmed this observation. Gerlinde said "when you are climbing the highest mountains in the world, pushing your body to the limit, blood sugar swings become your enemy. You quickly face exhaustion. Starches, sugars, carbohydrates, they are the worst thing. When we climb we focus on eating protein. The body turns it into the necessary glucose for the brain and body to work most efficiently but it also keeps muscle from being lost."</span><br />
<br />
<span class="st">Ralf chimed in, "We train and train before we climb and we would go onto the expedition with very strong, big muscles, but we noticed that when we returned we were always thin as a rail, having lost a lot of muscle mass. This is because your body digests itself when you are undergoing intense exercise and it consumes muscle protein before turning to your fat reserves. But by increasing the protein in our diets and eliminating the starches and sugars we find we can keep our muscles."</span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span><br />
<span class="st">Gerlinde said, "we start the treks with a diet high in protein and fat and very low in carbohydrates, but we noticed that at high altitude Ralf was getting bad headaches. It turned out that fat requires a lot of oxygen to burn and above 3000 meters the oxygen gets thinner and thinner. By 8000 meters there is almost no oxygen at all and fat in the diet becomes a problem. So while we normally will not worry about the fat content of our diet, we have to eliminate it for the high points of the expedition. But in general the secret is getting rid of as much carbohydrate as possible, and that means no breads and potatoes, and certainly no sugared drinks or candy bars..."</span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span><br />
<span class="st">Ah.... candy bars. In years past I packed my backpack with choclate bars -- Bounty bars, with their coconut filling, are among my favorite. I rationalized it by parroting the same lousy advice I had gotten from my Gym teachers in high school, "when you are doing strenuous sports, you need the jolt of energy they provide and it is okay, because you are working out so hard you'll burn it all up anyway..." </span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span><br />
<span class="st">Wrong.</span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span><br />
<span class="st">Explorers as well as athletes are beginning to understand, through accumulated experience, that the less sugar they dump in their bloodstream, the more steady their energy feels. </span><br />
<br />
<span class="st"><b>Taking it to the Ends of the Earth </b></span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span><br />
<span class="st">This year, from day 1, I gritted my teeth and politely refused the bowl of candybars offered each morning. At the end of the day, after a hard, breathless, bone aching, muscle burning climb, when I lay in my tent, illuminated by my Solar CITIES aluminum tab torch, I would often discover a Snickers bar sitting in the side pocket, surreptitiously popped in there by a caring guide wanting to ensure that I didn't wake up with hunger pangs when the exhaustion let up. Or was it one of my colleagues, trying to test my resolve and lead me into temptation? I would hold the ever more delicious seeming chocolate before me in the dim glow of my aluminum can flashlight and read the label, dreaming of how good it would taste. Sugar, cornsyrup, modified cornstarch, dextrose, sugar, sugar... and though I knew that nobody would ever know or care if I ate it or not, I would put it back in the pack and tell myself "you can do this, if you just hang on, the cravings will surely go away."</span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span><br />
<span class="st">Of course I had a precedent. At Harvard in early 1980s, as a Biological Anthropology undergraduate, I had won a prize with a paper I wrote called "Of Man and Meat: Nutritional Imperialism and its effects on aboriginal cultures". Reading classics like Weston Price's "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration" and William Dufty's "Sugar Blues" I had decided, since I wanted to spend my year after college at the Harvard Research site at Gunung Palung mountain in Borneo, that I would go on what I called a "hunter-gatherer diet". I vowed at the beginning of my junior year that I would eliminate all "non-nutritional cash crops" from my diet, including not just alcohol, tobacco, coffee, tea, and sugar, but all refined and processed carbohydrates and oils. I did continue to eat grains, but only "whole grains". </span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span><br />
<span class="st">The experiment lasted for 2 years, right through graduation, until I left for the jungle, and I felt better than I ever had in my life. I also invited a girlfriend on the diet who had been plagued by weight problems. At 5 foot 2 inches she dropped from 150 chunky pounds to a svelt 112 while I maintained the 150 pounds appropriate for my 5 foot 9 inch mesomorphic frame. It was 1985 and I had proven to myself the value of what people now call the "Paleolithic Diet". </span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span><br />
<span class="st">John Francis confirmed for me that his experience on the Paleo Diet had given him similarly good results, despite the fact that he was on it for a much shorter period of time.</span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span><br />
<span class="st">Still, when I was doing that experiment, I was a mere 21 years of age. When everybody else was suddenly getting old enough to drink I was eliminating the excess calories but I was still young enough that it was hard to say whether the unflaggable energy that got me through Harvard and into the deepest rainforests of Indonesia came from this extreme diet or mere youthful vigor.</span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span><br />
<span class="st">During the lead up to my last Nepal expedition I had somehow turned 50, and, apart from 2 years as a vegetarian and 7 months as a Vegan, had spent the intervening years eating all manner of junk food (for more than a decade, while working as a teacher in the ghettos of L.A. and as a grad student at UCLA, I practically lived on the Mcdonald's dollar value meals!). I had gone from my college weight of 150 to a hamster cheeked, pot bellied 180. It was getting to be discouraging to look at my reflection--- I kept checking each day to see if the man in the mirror was really me and if he might be induced to change his ways. I needed to find out if the hunter-gatherer diet would really work for those of us on the near side of the midpoint to the century mark.</span><br />
<b><span class="st"><br /></span></b><br />
<span class="st"><b>Summiting the peaks and valleys of the diet roller coaster</b></span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span><br />
<span class="st">Three things encouraged my decision to go radical again.</span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span><br />
<span class="st">The first was the announcement that I would be having a baby girl in October. I started thinking about my desire to see her graduate from college, realizing I will be at least 72 when that happens. Another was my fathers ailing health as a man dependent on glucophage pills and a cocktail of medicines to deal with his type 2 diabetes -- I wanted to be able to act as a role model and ally to encourage him to give up the sugar that is killing him so he can live to see my 4 year old son and my new daughter at the very least grow old enough to appreciate his genius, his kindness, and his treasure trove of fun and exciting information about film and circus history -- particularly Disney lore -- which are his fields of expertise. The third was the desire to prove something I had started in Guatemala in the year 2000 when I lived for almost a month on nothing but Maya breadnuts, avocados and lemons from our rainforest research site. I wanted to show that we can live happily and successfully without the agriculture that is currently destroying our planet's complex ecologies.</span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span><br />
<span class="st">I had a precedent that gave me courage: my UCLA colleague Angel Orozco, a Guatemalan friend with whom I had formed an NGO to promote agroforestry at the end of the 1990s and with whom I had lived at the Los Angeles Eco-village, had embarked on the hunter gatherer diet during the years I was overseas and hadn't seen him. I remembered him as a heavy, round faced, large framed man; he was always my "big friend Angel". When I finally got together with him to deliver a speech about my work with biogas as one solution to deforestation, I had to be reintroduced to him. He sat smiling at me through my entire speech while I wondered, "why isn't my friend Angel here at my talk? He said he would be..."</span><br />
<span class="st">At the end of my talk this tall, thin, muscular, thin faced and handsome man who had been smiling shook my hand and said, "I am Angel. I'm so glad you didn't recognize me". The transformation was astonishing. He said, "I didn't go on any weight loss program or take any pills, I just did what we had discussed years ago in the rain forests of my homeland -- I adopted a strict hunter gatherer diet. But to do so, I abandoned all vestiges of food from agricultural economies -- no sugar, no corn, no wheat, no rice, no oats, no barley.. "</span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span><br />
<span class="st">"Sounds like you're avoiding all the grasses" I told him, impressed.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="st"><b>The problem with the Poaceae </b></span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span><br />
<span class="st">On our long bus rides from Mexico City to the Peten Rainforests of his homeland, Angel and I used to discuss archeologist Dennis Puleston's idea that the Maya couldn't have based their lowland civilization on corn because of its destructive impact the grass we call "maize" has on tropical soils. We used to reflect that in general the planting of agricultural grasses is among the most destructive practices we humans have been engaged in for the past millenia. My Master's Thesis focused on "tree cereals" that, through agroforestry, could replace the "weed cereals" that society depends on.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="st">Working in horticulture at the Los Angeles Zoo for 4 years I had come to regard human reliance on the family Graminae/Poaceae as one of the biggest mistakes our species ever made.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="st">Think about it -- there are approximately 463 plant families on the face of the earth (experts estimates vary slightly but all are close to this number). But the lion's share of the plants upon which civilization has come to depend belong to only one of them: the grass family. This includes sugar cane, wheat, rice, corn (maize), oats, barley, sorghum, and millet. When you look at our supermarket shelves almost every product is a product of the top 4 -- wheat, rice, corn and sugar. Corn syrup and sugar make up the bulk of the beverage section. And vast areas of the landscape are being transformed to a monocrop monocot factory to feed our hunger for these few members of this one family. The devastation grass family cultivation and processing has on entire cultures was recently brought home to me while working with Maasai leader Kakenya Nataiya in Kenya, where the entire Maasai way of life is threatened by the transformation of the traditional grazing lands into sugar cane plantations. Where once there were thousands of species interacting with the Maasai and their cattle, what some people naively called a "grassland savannah" is now become a true grassland -- home ot only one species of plant, the grass called </span><span class="st">Saccharum officinarum in the Poaceae.</span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/mP7SrXI9YAU?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="st"><span style="font-size: x-small;">(The video above shows the headmistress of Kakenya Ntaiya's Center for Excellence Dream School for Maasai Girls describing the impact the sugar cane industry is having on her culture and the future of the children)</span></span></div>
<span class="st"><br /></span><br />
<span class="st">It would be as if the Rockefellers or the Kennedy's made up 3/4 of the world's population. When one family comes to dominate culture and commerce in an age of diminishing biodiversity, the prospects for maintaining a healthy ecosystem become nil to nothing.</span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span><br />
<span class="st">So the quest to maintain a healthy body suddenly became linked to the more vital quest to maintain a healthy planet for our children and grand-children.</span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span><br />
<span class="st">As a National Geographic Emerging Explorer, dedicated to preserving our environment, and reasonably expected to walk our talk the decision became natural. I decided to adopt a new and very rigorous diet to complement the one I was on back at Harvard before my first Borneo expedition. It would be a diet I would maintain not just when out exploring, but every day, at home and in the field. It would be a diet that, through its complete dismissal of our "daily bread", would complement my desire to eschew the "non-nutritional cash crops" that destroy health and local economies. It would be a diet that I will continue for the rest of my life to model for my son and daughter as they grow to appreciate their role in this marvelous and fragile blue planet three rocks from the sun. It is a diet that served me very very well on my last expedition with Alton Byers and Chris Rainier and Anrita Sherpa to explore "last mile technology" in some of the remotest places on earth. It is a diet I have decided to bring home, out of the cold and into my own kitchen. I have decided from now on that I will...</span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span><br />
<span class="st">KEEP OFF THE GRASS.</span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span><br />
<span class="st">As with most explorations, we'll have to wait and see what we discover...</span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span><br />
<span class="st">Stay tuned!</span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span>T.H. Culhanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02974539190597507374noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1334849659163883527.post-2620663381973765682012-06-14T11:19:00.003-07:002012-06-14T11:49:26.179-07:00Looking Toward Zootopia<style>
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Looking Toward Zootopia</div>
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By T.H. Culhane, Ph.D. </div>
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Walking with a throng of students toward the engineering
department at the University of Colorado in Boulder in the morning, as we pass
a construction site, we are confronted
by two imposingly large buck deer with impressive antlers who have decided
to nonchalantly cross the street with
us. It is hard to say where they came
from, or where they are going – the city is ringed by mountains but we are
nowhere near a so-called “natural” area;
still the residents of this campus environment don’t seem alarmed. They
take it in stride, as if it is a perfectly natural occurrence to share the road
with large wild mammals on the way to class.
During the evening, as we drop a
local friend off in her residential area,
mere minutes from the city center,
we pass an entire family of deer methodically walking along the
sidewalk in search of tasty flower plantings
lining people’s driveways. Our friend,
noting our surprise, comments, “we’re so
used to such urban wildlife here that we have almost stopped noticing. A lot of people figure, “it used to belong to
them anyway, before our subdivisions
encroached on their territory, so we
might as well learn to live together.”</div>
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In a progressive area like Boulder, where people come from
all over the world to study environmental
science, it would almost seem as
though a “zootopia” where humans and wildlife coexist peacefully within an
urban landscape is possible. Our
friend’s son tells us they routinely host raccoons, possums, skunks and other ostensibly wild
critters in their backyards – occasionally they will even see a puma mountain lion or even a bear
pass through. The animals don’t seem to mind
the presence of human beings when they aren’t harassed and if anything they
seem to find the gardens and garbage cans of human residents an easy and
reliable food supply, perhaps even more convenient than foraging in the
wild. And many creatures seem to
appreciate our built environment for the
easy shelter it provides against temperature
extremes and inclement weather,
to say nothing of the prodigious amounts of heat our buildings pump
out. </div>
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This is not only true for the native wildlife that
urbanization is normally displacing.
Exotics also seem to find immigration to the city appealing. In the city of Chicago, when I was a child in the 1960s, a flock of
tropical green parrots escaped from captivity
near lake Michigan and started breeding in the trees near my apartment
in Hyde Park Boulevard . Taking
advantage of the famous “heat island
effect” of cities, the parrots survived the harsh winters by nesting in large
ducts releasing waste heat from the
subway system. In the spring they
ventured back out to the trees in the parks by the lake. During a recent summer I went back to one of
the parks I used to see them in as a child and sure enough they and their
descendents were there, screeching and
squawking from their nests as though they were
in a tropical rainforest. </div>
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That non-human animals would find cities habitable should
come as no surprise; regardless of how well adapted they are to whatever piece of
“nature” surrounds them , most organisms prefer to be sheltered from
weather extremes and from the
elements and prefer to have food,
water and nesting materials around them
in abundance. Human beings have pooled
these resources in our own urban and suburban habitats, and other animals and
plants recognize this. If there is a
compatibility problem between cities and
wildlife, it is usually because we humans resent the presence of non-humans and
deliberately try to exclude or exterminate
them. But we have to rethink this
strategy in the 21<sup>st</sup> century. </div>
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The rapid rate of biodiversity loss is arguably the most
pressing issue facing humanity today.
While we can probably engineer our way out of most of our resource
bottlenecks and health crises given time and political will, Wilson and
McArthur’s theories of island geography and our understanding of genetic drift
and inbreeding depression suggest that many of the earth’s animal and plant
species are at such critically low population densities that they can almost be
considered “living fossils”. The mantra
“extinction is forever” has a haunting finality to it and while the history of
planet Earth shows that even without
human pressure on natural ecosystems, climate change and habitat
modification over time will make species extinctions inevitable, what differs today from previous “natural”
extinction events is the rate of species disappearance, with gene loss and ecosystem degradation
occurring at such a rapid pace that co-evolutionary systems can no longer
operate adaptively. It isn’t just
specifics groups of organisms following the dinosaurs into oblivion, it is the
unraveling of entire ecologies. The
result is what Harvard professor E.O. Wilson has called our entry into the
“Eremozoic Era” – the great “age of loneliness”. </div>
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Although most of the habitat destruction leading to
extinctions can be credited to the agriculture and forestry industries, the
built environment itself, due to the exponential expansion of
urbanization, is often considered a
major antagonist to the preservation of biodiverse ecologies. There is no question that urban demand for
resources has always been a primary driver of
the landscape transformations threatening natural ecologies (the
city-countryside relationship, with rising urban populations requiring a substantial “ecological footprint” to
maintain themselves, is well understood)
but in recent years urban sprawl itself has a emerged as a major force in
habitat loss.</div>
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Yet while the city as currently conceived poses a threat to wildlife we are also seeing
the emergence of a new paradigm in urban form as wildlife itself seeks to
reclaim its place in landscapes that we modify.
If anything, the agricultural lands and mining lands that feed the city
their resources may be the most hostile places for wild and animals and plants
to try to coexist. Thousands of hectares
of herbicide and pesticide laden monocropping are completely hostile to robust
food-chains and complex ecologies, and are for the most part devoid of trees
which are among the few organisms in terrestrial ecosystems that can provide
the multidimensionality that permits overlapping and non-competitive niche spaces conducive to biodiversity. But, as a Mayan friend pointed out when
flying from his rainforest research station in Guatemala to Los Angeles, “I
looked out the window of the airplane as I crossed the United States, and all I
could see was the yellow and brown of farmlands until we flew over your cities.
Then I noticed the green. Besides the
few patches of wilderness parks and forest plantations, your cities are some of
the last places where there is a lot of visible tree cover. “ From a migratory bird’s perspective, cities and their suburbs are havens not only
of diverse vegetation, woody and
herbaceous, but water features as well. They appear as islands in a sea of cropland
uniformity and barren-ness. </div>
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Some animals have taken well to the presence of resources
and shelter in the cities. Richard Hoath
at the American University of Cairo noted that the Egyptian weasel, Mustela subpalmata, which used to occupy a much larger part of
the Nile Valley, was in serious decline
in agricultural areas, but that in Egypt’s major city of 20 million
people, this normally nocturnal species
“can be seen in the day” though it is “most frequently encountered at night
dashing across streets and disappearing beneath a parked car.” The idea that the ubiquitous presence of
parked cars might be seen by some animals as a defense shelter against
predation may strike one as odd, but
most animals don’t have an automatic aversion to “artificial” environments and
look at the world through fairly utilitarian rather than symbolic eyes.</div>
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This does not imply that human beings can simply build
anthropocentric habitats and hope that other species will adapt; our structures
and plantings can have a profound effect on “natural” and “artificial”
selection processes. A case in point is
the current displacement in England of native red squirrels by “invasive” North
American Grey Squirrels. The former, now
on the IUCN red list, is susceptible to
a parapox virus that the latter carries but doesn’t get, and is also dependent on pine forests and
pine cones which are also in decline in urban areas. Red squirrels also can’t
easily digest acorns. The grey, on the other hand, does well in oak dominated areas and on the
kind of broad-leafed trees that dominate many residential and parkland plantings. So it is no wonder that one is ubiquitous and
the other rare. </div>
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One way to ensure a more favorable mix of squirrel species
(and other wildlife) is simply for
planners, architects and gardeners to use the landscape palette to attract and
retain specific wildlife rather than merely conform to popular horticultural
trends. In fact, the National Wildlife
Federation’s “Backyard Wildlife Program” encourages urban and suburban
residents to “Turn Your Yard Into a Haven for Wildlife!” They give certificates to people who do
exactly that, saying, “By providing
food, water, cover and places for wildlife to raise their young, your garden
can join the nearly 150,000 Certified Wildlife Habitat™ sites across the
country.”</div>
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We might consider that if much of our planet’s wildlife is
doing poorly in human habitat it may simply be because of paucity in the
predominant palette of vegetation,
which tends to be so very poor in
diversity that it favors only a very small number of organisms, particularly
those few that co-evolved with the
particular plants our unimaginative
gardens over-emphasize. Landscape
architects, lacking training in ecological sciences, tend to view plants as mere ornamental
decorations, forgetting that ecologies depend on intricate symbiotic and
commensal relationships that took
millions of years to develop. </div>
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When much of the smaller wildlife disappears from human
modified habitats it usually has much less to do with these non-human’s fear of
human “encroachment” or even direct conflict with people, but more with a
drastic reduction in the supporting vegetation and associated food chains. </div>
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As in the adage “for want of a nail the shoe was lost, for
want of a shoe the horse was lost, for want of a horse the battle was lost” a
cascade of unfortunate ecological events can occur when a single type of
vegetation is removed that once hosted a wide range of interdependent
microbes, fungi, insects, arthropods and vertebrates . In subtropical and tropical areas, urban
plantings tend to favor the “Mediterranean Zone 5” vegetation, and thus these degraded habitats select for
those organisms that co-evolved in that region, often with devastating
consequences on native wildlife. Some
studies have shown that vacant lots, left to grow over with weeds, contain a
much higher biodiversity than urban parks where manicured trees and lawns are
unable to support more than a very few species of wildlife. From this
perspective we should be “naturalizing” our parks with a wide range of habitat
types (such as Prospect Park in Brooklyn is seeking to do) to attract and
maintain as many different animal/plant assemblages as possible. Right now our parks are the furthest thing
from being modern arks.</div>
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There is a lot of concern about the introduction of
“non-native” and “invasive” species into wild habitats; we often neglect to
consider that our urban plantings are almost all made up of an “easy to grow
and maintain” assemblage of trees, shrubs, ferns, flowers and grasses that were
selected from around the world based purely on their market and aesthetic
values. They usually require heavy
maintenance and inordinate inputs of
fertilizers and pesticides and herbicides to stay alive. There has also been severe landscape
modification to establish fast growing timber and firewood producing mono-crops
of trees which now make up the major species over vast areas; the preponderance
of Eucalyptus trees all over the world,
trees which originally come from Australia, but which are now are the dominant life form
in parks and highway, street and residential plantings in regions as diverse as
Iraq, California, Rwanda and Spain, offer very little in the way of food or
shelter to non-Australian wildlife.
Curiously, nobody has taken seriously our proposals to allow Koalas,
which are endangered in Australia, and exclusively eat Eucalyptus leaves, to freely breed in city parks outside
Australia (even the Los Angeles Zoo, which is filled with and surrounded by
Eucalyptus forests, still gives their few Koala’s contraceptives to keep them from breeding and employs human laborers to cut Eucalyptus
branches to feed the rare marsupials).
Similarly, despite Panda Bears, which eat only bamboo and are on the
verge of extinction in China where their bamboo forests are being cut down for
agriculture and urbanization , we don’t see initiatives to give them a chance
to breed in other regions of the world where bamboo serves as one of the chief
ornamental plantings. We decry their
disappearance in the “wild” without considering that the plants they depend on
for survival actually exist all over the world thanks to urbanization.</div>
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Usually when there are struggles between humans and non-humans in the built
environment they involve society’s
intolerance of these larger animals
rather than their intolerance of us.
Creatures such as mice and rats, squirrels and sparrows, ducks and ubiquitous pigeons, even raccoons , skunks, badgers and coyotes
have found ways to co-exist and even thrive in our cities. But so-called “charismatic megafauna” – the
pandas and koalas that serve as the poster children of the conservation
movement, the “lions and tigers and
bears – oh my!” sung about on the yellow brick road to the Wizard’s paradise of Oz, the elephants which populate Paris in the
children’s book “Babar”, the chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas which end up
taking over the world in “Planet of the Apes” and all the civilized , well-dressed talking animals of the Disney
cartoons – these are the creatures most endangered through our rampant urbanization of planet
Earth. </div>
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In fantasy we hold out to our children the elusive hope of
living in harmony with some of the animals whose size approaches or exceeds ours, but our
general fear of possibly dangerous or conflictual encounters with most of the
“undomesticated” creatures of the Earth keeps most of them out of designated
“human habitat”. </div>
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Frequent trips that I
make to pet stores around the world reveal
a growing affection for smaller “exotic” or “un-domesticated animals” as
part of the accepted species assemblage
living with us in urban settings (I owned two iguanas, several quail, rabbits
and hares, guinea pigs, cockatiels and parakeets when I lived in Los
Angeles), but only rarely do I meet
people, like Birute Galdikas, who lives with scores of orangutans and gibbons
in her home in Indonesia, or Daphne Sheldrick, who runs and orphanage for
elephants near Nairobi, or the couple
that kept two wolves as watch-dogs in the avant garde video store they owned in the Los
Feliz neighborhood, or the nature-show television host in the
Hollywood hills who showed me the large alligator he kept in his swimming pool,
or legendary Hollywood Musical Producer George Sidney who told me about keeping
an elephant for years in his back yard in Beverly Hills. People who are pushing the envelope of cohabitation by substituting llamas and
yearlings and ostriches and emus for the usual house trained dog,and cat, or backyard cow or chicken, are fare too rare
at this time of incipient mass extinctions.</div>
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The recent police slaughter of a menagerie of 49 “exotic animals” (among them endangered
Bengal Tigers) set free in a suburban neighborhood by a private owner in Ohio,
killed because law enforcement personnel were too afraid of them to think
rationally or didn’t know how to dart,
net and re-capture animals that
were doubtless more frightened than they, shows that society doesn’t consider
large animals worthy of caring attention when they transgress certain
boundaries. It seems we’d rather let them follow the dinosaurs into oblivion
that rethink the human-nature relationship.</div>
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Yet almost every city boasts a rather large collection of
charismatic megafauna, and has for hundreds of years. A well run Zoo is considered one of the
hallmarks of a great city. Most city planners, in fact, consider a city
incomplete if it doesn’t have a zoological park (sometimes several) where
families can introduce their children to the other animals with which we
co-evolved. The larger and least domesticated creatures are the biggest draw. </div>
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And where cities couldn’t afford to house these animals,
circuses filled the gap, and served and still serve the vital function of
carting big charismatic megafauna from town to town so humans detached from
“nature” could contemplate their relationship with these other large residents of our common
spaceship earth. Both institutions also
offer the chance for co-evolutionary relationships to continue to occur,
challenging both humans and non-humans to reconceive their relationships. </div>
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But Zoos and Circuses both evolved from Judeo-Christian and
Islamic traditions affirming man’s “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over
the fowl of the air, and over the cattle,
and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon
the earth”. And they owe their physical and psychological profiles to ideas
based on “Bentham’s Panopticon”:
factories, schools, hospitals, insane asylums and poor houses. Wild animals have been forced to stand-in for
“criminals”, the insane”, “the feared feminine” and “the despised other” and
for forces that fill people with anxiety and confusion. So neither of these institutions has been
able to solve the conundrum of how we can evolve a society that permits the harmonious
coexistence of “all creatures great and
small”.</div>
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There are models for successful coexistence of large <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">domestic</i> animals in the urban
context. Every time I go to visit my friends in the informal
“garbage recycling” community of Cairo’s Zabaleen people I marvel at the
presence of pigs living on the ground floor of apartment buildings, cows
residing in second floor bedrooms, goats, sheep and donkeys walking up and down
the staircases, and ducks, chickens and rabbits populating the roof, each
providing a vital urban ecology function and helping these poorest of the poor
eke a living out of the refuse of the rest of the city. The urban pigs transform the organic waste of
Cairo’s millions into valuable meat, hide, bone and fertilizer (and in some
cases biogas) while the urban goats and sheep and cows transform marginal
vegetation along the roadside and
railroad tracks into milk and cheese.
We see this pattern in many
marginalized communities around the world – I’ve even been to the homes of
Mexican immigrants in American cities who kept livestock in homes and grew
nopal cactus, corn, chayote and other
agricultural plants instead of front lawns because they felt the grass
and other ornamental plants that dominate our cities were a “waste of space”;
one student of mine even kept a bull in the back yard in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Urban Eco-Village where I lived for three years tended their
permaculture garden with a “chicken tractor”. </div>
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Meanwhile, in Indian and Indonesian cities we’ve
marveled as not only “sacred cows” walk the streets, but
domesticated elephants, whose large size, intelligence and strong trunks enable
them to do a lot of important
construction work. We’ve seen sacred
Hanuman monkeys (Grey langurs) and other primates leap from urban porches to telephone poles
and tightrope walk the high tension wires to the next apartment complex where
people put out offerings of food to these furry relatives of ours, treating
them little different than we treat squirrels in the West (with the caveat that they do protect their homes with barred
windows to prevent these curious cousins from stealing or breaking
things.) By understanding the needs and
specific behavioral ecologies of many
“not-quite domesticated” animals humans find they can develop fairly
close relationships with them, relationships that could one day lead to
co-evolutionary relationships that can border on symbiosis rather than
predation or parasitism. </div>
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In fact, in the late 1800’s, the Australian
Acclimatization society championed the
idea that all animals and plants should be brought into “domestication” so that
they and their human partners could
enjoy the mutual benefits each might confer on the other. At that time there was a sense among many that
dogs and cats and farm animals were merely “early adopters” in an world where
animals “chose domestication” as much as we chose them to be domesticated, and where , as humans fulfill their biblical
command to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth”, we get closer and
closer to fulfilling the biblical prophecy in Isaiah: 6 where “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and
the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and
the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.”</div>
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Nowadays, in permacultural and “industrial ecology” and
“urban ecology” circles, we are beginning to popularize a similar idea of
harmony among humans and non-humans, learning to see the mutualistic functional
relationships we can create if we start valuing the “ecosystem services” and
“environmental services” that non-humans contribute to our urban well
being. From “Effective Microbe” Bukashi
compost, biogas, and fermented foodstuff techniques, that honor the role of
“probiotic” micro-organisms in maintaining our
health and that of our soils, to the use of Zebra mussels, snails and a
“schmutzdecke” assemblage of aquatic organisms to create living machines to
purify our water, to cities employing
ungulates to keep highway and power line strips free from weeds and putting
endangered manatees to work clearing
navigable waterways from water
hyacinth and other river and canal choking aquatic plants, we see more and more places recognizing the
contribution animals can make to make cities more livable for both us and them.</div>
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The city isn’t the problem, our mentality is. From a bird’s eye view, and from that of many
other animals and plants, the city hasn’t really taken any land away from
nature, in fact it has merely raised it up, and in so doing it has created even more dimensions for niche space and
livable habitat. The Caixa Forum Museum
in Madrid, for example, sports a 24 meter high vertical garden
along its south facing wall that hosts a prodigious number of insects,
amphibians, reptiles and birds, fed by a gravity led stream of rain water. </div>
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Where the pre-urban landscape in Madrid once offered only
the ecological footprint defined by the two dimensional area of what is now the
roof of this building, now it offers many times the surface area in three
dimensions for living beings. And this
would be true of all our buildings, if only we would learn to see them that
way, and invite our non-human relatives to work with us instead of fighting so
hard against them. </div>
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Because of the complex surfaces it provides, the myriad
opportunities for shelter and the pooling of water and food and resources and
energy that characterize the urban environment, the city may very well turn out
to be the best place to build our arks to save what is left of biodiversity. </div>
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If we learn to see the environments we have built and occupy through the eyes of
other organisms that don’t divide the world into facile categories like
“Civilization” and “Nature” we might be able to help the non-human passengers
with whom we share planet Earth to survive. And we might be able to call this
kind of new urban form “Zootopia”. I,
for one, am looking forward to it.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVxDcIffdiARQMhaR0zlWQhgBih76Ev1Fc39qKDOOEI2heeafhiXpAKFrmRktc4KpXbS5At9jP5dZmbpAvEVu5WBBLa_EUZLseYh_dZnx3cltlTYZcEfN3Qp1zOxEemhXY0LrgVByMog/s1600/theco-village.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVxDcIffdiARQMhaR0zlWQhgBih76Ev1Fc39qKDOOEI2heeafhiXpAKFrmRktc4KpXbS5At9jP5dZmbpAvEVu5WBBLa_EUZLseYh_dZnx3cltlTYZcEfN3Qp1zOxEemhXY0LrgVByMog/s320/theco-village.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dr. T.H. Culhane lived at the<a href="http://laecovillage.wordpress.com/"> Los Angeles Eco-Village </a>while attending graduate school at UCLA and worked with colleagues there to create one of the first urban permaculture experiments in a dense built environment in a low income neighborhood. Culhane's entire apartment was off the grid for 3 years, had its own home built composting toilet and recycled much of its greywater. The eco-village itself had nutritious gardens instead of lawns and kept earthworms, rabbits and chickens, using a chicken tractor for weeding and pest control. It was frequently visited by opposums and racoons and many species of birds, lizards and amphibians. The buildings themselves sit along what was once a riparian streambed that Chumash Indians used as prime hunting ground. Currently the Eco-Village is working with the <a href="http://www.bresee.org/">Bresee Center</a> which has partially restored the stream. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>T.H. Culhanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02974539190597507374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1334849659163883527.post-82391118330539009902012-06-13T14:05:00.002-07:002012-06-14T11:50:59.637-07:00Taking up the Energy Challenge in Maasai Mara<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Arial Bold'; font-size: 11px; line-height: 12px;">A proposal by National
Geographic Emerging Explorers Dr. T.H. Culhane and Dr. Kakenya Ntaiya</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="JA" style="font-family: 'Arial Bold'; font-size: 8pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuvQeRFlYyWrBHZb3gQDnvszA1J2xxlrIVFLdngeFvGg9pCUpyS1J4R2nvxaqEeyUjpy6BX5iQ6dONfLd4HIxvdtAML4S5cc6q3LEw-Zr6xobk6eXz85IkO4C7VTjl4s93vNY_zRMJuw/s1600/Energychallenge1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuvQeRFlYyWrBHZb3gQDnvszA1J2xxlrIVFLdngeFvGg9pCUpyS1J4R2nvxaqEeyUjpy6BX5iQ6dONfLd4HIxvdtAML4S5cc6q3LEw-Zr6xobk6eXz85IkO4C7VTjl4s93vNY_zRMJuw/s320/Energychallenge1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
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<span lang="JA" style="font-size: 8pt; line-height: 115%;">"Fool on the hill" or "Fuel on the
Hill"? As our Maasai colleagues at</span><span lang="JA"><a href="http://www.facebook.com/kakenyasdream"><span style="color: black; font-size: 8pt; line-height: 115%; text-decoration: none;"> </span></a><a href="http://www.facebook.com/kakenyasdream"><span style="color: #00008a; font-size: 8pt; line-height: 115%;">Kakenya</span></a><a href="http://www.facebook.com/kakenyasdream"><span style="color: #00008a; font-size: 8pt; line-height: 115%;">'</span></a><a href="http://www.facebook.com/kakenyasdream"><span style="color: #00008a; font-size: 8pt; line-height: 115%;">s</span></a><a href="http://www.facebook.com/kakenyasdream"><span style="color: #00008a; font-size: 8pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></a><a href="http://www.facebook.com/kakenyasdream"><span style="color: #00008a; font-size: 8pt; line-height: 115%;">Dream</span></a><a href="http://www.facebook.com/kakenyasdream"><span style="color: #00008a; font-size: 8pt; line-height: 115%;"> - </span></a><a href="http://www.facebook.com/kakenyasdream"><span style="color: #00008a; font-size: 8pt; line-height: 115%;">the</span></a><a href="http://www.facebook.com/kakenyasdream"><span style="color: #00008a; font-size: 8pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></a><a href="http://www.facebook.com/kakenyasdream"><span style="color: #00008a; font-size: 8pt; line-height: 115%;">Academy</span></a><a href="http://www.facebook.com/kakenyasdream"><span style="color: #00008a; font-size: 8pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></a><a href="http://www.facebook.com/kakenyasdream"><span style="color: #00008a; font-size: 8pt; line-height: 115%;">for</span></a><a href="http://www.facebook.com/kakenyasdream"><span style="color: #00008a; font-size: 8pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></a><a href="http://www.facebook.com/kakenyasdream"><span style="color: #00008a; font-size: 8pt; line-height: 115%;">Girls</span></a></span><span lang="JA" style="font-size: 8pt; line-height: 115%;">
load the region's first food waste to cooking fuel biodigestor with cow dung
for the bacterial starter culture, a 3000 TCD sugar cane processing factory is
rapidly being built on the hill. The million dollar question:"can we turn
the factory into a positive thing -- an infinite source of clean free fuel for
a biogas future -- or will it become a source of polluting wastes?" Proper
investment and capacity building will be the deciding factor. Stay tuned...<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">An ominous threat looms on the hill
overlooking the Kakenya Center for Excellence in Maasai Mara. It towers over
this hope inspiring school where nearly
100 Maasai girls are learning as fast as they can how to integrate into the
modern world without losing their Independence and cultural heritage. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">The threat to a sustainable future for these
girls, who are going in one generation from a millenia old tradition of nomadic
cow herding to finding their place in a post-modern sedentary agricultural and
service economy, comes in the form of a massive sugar processing factory, one
of the first of its kind to be built in this remote area. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">Started in the fall of 2010, the factory,
which now operates night and day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, was
completed and operational by the fall of 2011. Now the pressure is on -- the hungry crushers and boilers of the
massive industry demand constant and continual input of sugar cane feedstock, driving the
Maasai inexorably from self-sufficiency to full participation in the cash crop economy and
putting an incredible strain on their environment. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">Already, huge and expensive colorful banners
patterned after the Kenyan national flag with big photographs of sugar cane
fields grace every roadside intersection and declare in several languages “Grow
more cane, get more cash!” enticing the people to give up cow herding and
grazing and even give up growing subsistence crops and nutritional cash crops
like Maize and beans and rice and Sukumawiki (a type of kale containing vital
nutrients) in order to participate in what is being touted as a “development
boon” for the Maasai Mara, one of the last strongholds of wildlife and
traditional nomadic people. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">The Masai community is worried, in fact, that the growing of
the cane will lead to greater deforestation and soil exhaustion and loss of
biodiversity. And at the other end, at full capacity the use of the cane by the factory is
expected to generate 40 tons of solid waste every hour of every day, with possible impacts on the river flowing by the plant, while the burning of fuel
to drive the machinery and steam boilers is can create air pollution
problems. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">So is everything rotten in the state of Maasai
Mara?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">Not necessarily!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">Solar CITIES co-founder and National
Geographic Emerging Explorer Dr. T.H. Culhane,
with relatives of fellow National Geographic Emerging Explorer Dr. Kakenya
Ntaiya and the village chief of Enosaeen,
spent several hours over a two day period touring the factory and
meeting with factory owner Mr. Shah and his chief engineer Rajesh Kumar. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">The Solar CITIES team told Mr. Shah that they
were on a Blackstone Innovation Challenge Grant to build the first ARTI India
style food waste fueled biogas digestor at Kakenya’s Dream School, using an
Insinkerator given as a gift from Emerson Electronics to grind up the school’s
kitchen waste and turn it into a clean and inexhaustible fuel and source of
fertilizer, not only to help stop deforestation and lung disease, but to create
chances for reforestation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">Shah, who is originally from India, said
without hesitation “in fact, not only am I very familiar with the promise of
biogas, but I know Dr. Anand Karve, who invented the ARTI system, very well. I
would love to help support this initiative as I would like my sugar cane
factory to be a driver of sustainability for the region, not a problem for the
community. In fact, I can commit to you
now that if you can get your biogas initiative going, I will supply any family
or farm or school or business that is doing biogas with all the bagasse
feedstock they want for free, bailed and ready for pick up in 200 kg to 500 kg
bundles. Bagasse, as you know, as a
sugar cane processing residue, is one of the best sources of biogas in the
world. But because there are currently
no biogas facilities in the area it is a waste product for us. But we can make this a win-win.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">Shah told us that he conceived of the sugar
project in Maasai land in 2006 and invested 30 million dollars in it, hoping to
make it a center for social and economic growth in Africa along the Indian
model. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">“When I started this project there were no
roads here. I wanted to make something, remarkable, incredible, a factory that
would change the local community for the better. I will have 400 to 450 direct employees and
indirectly 50,000 families will be taken care of. Between 15 and 25,000 small scale farmers
will be producing for the factory and within 5 years they will have good
money. I am trying to be a strong pillar
for good growth. I have sponsored 20
windows in the local girl’s school, put roofing sheets on another school,
donated 5,000 bricks to the Kilgoris Girls school, and given 3500 liter water
tanks, footballs, trophies and even 3 sewing machines to the Orphan School
Widows."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">“ I am happy now to give the bagasse fuel for
biogas,” he told us, “ -- you can tell all the schools; and I will make my
factory workshop, tools and staff available free of charge for building and
assembly of the biogas digestors. And we
can purchase the materials at bulk factory prices. What you have to do is get the local community
trained and committed to a biogas future and raise the money for the materials
themselves and for the labor. And you have to organize and coordinate the
creation of this village scale biogas initiative -- I am not in the biogas
business and will be far too busy running the sugar factory. But I see a way
for us all to meet our goals here. I want to cooperate.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">We discussed the issue of cash crop production
causing infertility of the land and the cycle of farmers becoming ever more
dependent on artificial fertilizers and pesticides. Mr. Shah said, “of course all the nutrients
that sugar cane takes out of the land can all be returned to the land once the
sugar is processed, and this is where your biogas initiative comes in. We already plan to give the molasses fraction
back to the farmers as animal feed to put many of the nutrients back, but a lot
of what the cane takes out is in the bagasse residue. The farmers know they have to let the land
lie fallow every three years or so to regain fertility; certainly if you have a
biogas initiative going and we give the farmers the bagasse and they ferment it
for gas, the fertilizer that they get from it will be the perfect way to get
the nutrients back to the land. Biogas fertilizer
is better than compost and easier to manage and distribute. It is in liquid
form and readily soluble for uptake by plant roots without causing field
souring and without blocking sunlight like solid compost. It is formed rapidly and loses no nitrogen. It creates a closed cycle.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">Shah smiled, saying “So biogas could really be the missing piece in making the
factory sustainable for the community, returning what it takes from the land
back to the farmers in a cost effective way with minimal labor. In addition your biogas systems will take
pressure off of the forests that maintain the fertility and prevent erosion of
the hillsides by stopping people from cutting down trees for firewood and
charcoal. So it would have benefits long
into the future. I have already
committed, as a social entrepreneur, to planting one million trees around the
community -- I’ve started already around the factory and Kakenya’s school --
trees which I will not harvest for 20 years.
We should be eligible for carbon credit. With biogas protecting the
trees from cutting and providing fertilizer for reforestation we should be in
very good shape.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">I asked Engineer Kumar about the air pollution
and water pollution from the factory. He
said, “First of all, our factory will be almost entirely powered by the burning
of the bagasse, so we are using a biofuel with no net carbon pollution. To keep
smoke and particulates down we will be installing a series of electrostatic air
filters. But in effect the plant will be
non-polluting; it certainly won’t put out any greenhouse gases. We won’t need any fossil fuels at all. But the best thing is that if we can get the
proper investment funding and government incentives we can move on to phase II
of our planning. In this phase we can
become a net clean energy producer -- you see we will have a 3000 TCD Sugar
Factory that is capable of producing sugar, alcohol fuel and power through
co-generation in addition to supplying the bagasse for a domestic biogas
program. We can eventually provide
liquid fuels for transportation like Brazil does, and electricity, just from
our wastes. Our boilers will be
producing steam that, through the co-generation turbines, could produce 20
MegaWatts of Power. The factory, running at full capacity, only needs between 3
and 6 MegaWatts, giving us a surplus of 14 MW of clean green power to sell. We
could thus supply stable and clean electric power 24/7 to the entire region,
not just the village of Enosaeen. And as you know, electricity is a big problem
here. We’ve talked to the MP, Gideon
Konchella, and he likes the idea, but we do need to get more investment and
help to get to that level. Coupled with a good biogas program there is no
reason this factory couldn’t provide a model for Industrial Ecology, making the
Maasai one of the first people to create a sustainable business and development
model for rural Africa.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">With this vision in mind, it is clear that
there is great potential here. The fear
of the Maasai leaders and teachers though, is that the technical expertise is
not yet in place and the investment commitments are not there. They fear that the factory will be driven by
economic necessity and a shortage of skilled labor to import non-Maasai workers
from the urban areas to fill the technical jobs, bringing all sorts of social
disruptions and diseases. They fear that in the years before funding comes in
for phase II their area will be polluted and the soil will be exhausted and
their lives as some of Africa’s last independent peoples will be transformed
until they become mere wage slaves on cash crop plantations. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">Solar CITIES and the Kakenya’s Dream School
leadership also met with the MP and all agreed that for the transformations
that the sugar factory is bringing to their community to bend toward the
positive rather than towards disaster, we all need to coordinate and move fast
to build skill and knowledge capacity and to get waste-to-energy through
domestic and farm biogas solutions in place even as the factory begins
production. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">When I arrived in the village, the chief
shared with me a copy of “The Organic Farmer in Kenya” , a magazine that talked
about the need for biogas to solve Africa’s energy and waste problems. “We have been thinking about this for some
time now, but we need support” he told us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">When we had finished the region’s first small
biogas system at Kakenya’s school, connected it to the Insinkerator in the
school cafeteria and demonstrated it’s potential to the chief and the MP and the village
council, there was an air of excitement and hope lifting our spirits. The MP and the Chief looked up from the
biogas system we had built together to the sugar cane factory being built on
the hill. “We now have a plan.” said the
chief with a smile. "There will be no more worries about waste or
pollution or loss of fertility or soil erosion or deforestation if we can get
this biogas initiative going. We truly
can make the first Maasai industrial ecology system, and it will be our way to
show the world how our people, who have been independent for centuries, can now
teach others how to develop without losing their culture, their health or
dignity.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">In this spirit, we ask that those of you
reading this can help support this most urgent, and yet promising, of Great
Energy Challenges!<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="JA"><br /></span><br />
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<span lang="JA" style="font-size: 9pt; line-height: 13px;">Culhane demonstrates the use of the Insinkerator, one of 10 donated to the project around the world by Emerson Electronics, to prepare food wastes for biogas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA"><b>Proposal Details:</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA" style="font-family: 'Arial Bold';"><b>1. Provide project background;</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">Solar CITIES e.V., established in Germany as a
registered NGO and operating on home scale renewable energy projects since
2007, primarily in the slums and informal areas of Cairo Egypt, has been building modified ARTI India style
food-waste-to-clean-fuel biogas systems since January of 2009. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">Now we are in full cooperation with fellow
National Geographic Emerging Explorer Dr. Kakenya Ntaiya, and are devoting our
attention to solving the energy and waste and health problems in the Maasai
Mara region because of the urgency of the problem.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA"> We have
currently built more than 50 household and community scale biogas systems,
ranging from 1 cubic meter to 8 cubic meters,
in the following countries: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">Urban areas of Cairo Egypt: 8 systems; Rural
areas of Egypt: 6 systems; Suburban Germany: 5 Systems; With NG Explorer Dereck Joubert and Great
Plains Conservation Eco-Lodge at Ol UrDonyo Waas conservation region with
Maasai: 5 systems; Town of Kigoma,
Tanzania and village of MKalinzi near Gombe Chimpanzee reserve with NG Emerging
Explorer Grace Gobbo and Jane Goodall Institute: 4 systems. AbeokutaWildlif, Nigeria with Naijatomo
Holistic Waste Management and former President Obasanjo’s Green Economy team: 4 systems; with Jouberts and Great Plains
conservation Eco-Lodges Selinda, Zarafa and Base Camp, Botswana: 4
systems. Mukuru Slum School Nairobi and
Kakenya’s Dream School, Maasai Mara: 2 systems.
Palestinian Wildlife Society, Al Najah University and East Jerusalem
High School: 3 Systems; Arava Institute of the Environment, Israel in
Cooperation with NG Emerging Explorer Beverly Goodman: 2 systems; South Central
Los Angeles, Latino community, Santa Rosa California Latino Community: 2
systems. Seattle Washington Green Initiative:
1 system; Cordova High School, Alaska on 1st Blackstone Challenge Grant with NG
Emerging Explorer Katey Walter: 7 systems.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">We specialize in capacity building and
construction of biogas systems that utilize low cost readily available local
materials and knowledge. Our work also includes instruction in construction of
local solar hot water systems and human powered treadle pump systems; these
systems also help improve the amount of gas and energy savings that the biogas
systems produce (the bacteria need to be kept at mammalian body temperature for
best results and the water has to be pumped in many cases).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">Biogas is an energy rich byproduct of the
anaerobic decomposition of organic matter by bacteria. Sharing many
characteristics with natural gas, it can be burned to produce heat, light, and
electrical energy. It’s composed of 60% methane and 40% CO2. Biogas is a clean,
renewable, and carbon neutral form of energy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">Producing Biogas is a fairly straightforward
process: Organic waste is collected in the community, loaded into an
Insinkerator unit installed in a kitchen (or other area), and then ground into
liquid form. This raw material is piped (using gravity) from the sink into a
sealed tank called a digester (or bioreactor) where it is broken down by
naturally occurring anaerobic bacteria. In the absence of oxygen these bacteria
consume the organic matter to multiply and produce biogas and rich fertilizer
as a by-product. The biogas rises and collects in the upper section of the
digester. It is then piped directly back into the homes to be burned as fuel.
Simultaneously, the digester produces a nutrient rich liquid fertilizer which
is used to replenish the earth that the sugar cane and other plants are grown
in.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">Organic waste of any type can be fed to the
digester to produce biogas and fertilizer: bagasse from the factory, manure,
human excreta, fruit and vegetable waste, etc.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA" style="font-family: 'Arial Bold';"><b>2. Include basic diagrams or any visual documents that
supplement understanding of the project (if needed);</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA" style="font-size: 9pt; line-height: 115%;">Henry Okeyo, a plumber and teacher at the Mukuru Arts
and Crafts school in Nairobi’s Mukuru slum, created this schematic for the
biogas systems we are building at both Kakenya’s school in Maasai Mara and in
the urban slum as a joint effort to help end the deforestation and health and
environmental problems associated with firewood and charcoal and to provide
cost-free clean energy to all of Africa. What is not shown in the diagram is
the connectiion to the Insinkerator food grinding solution that dramatically
reduces labor and increases productivity and social acceptance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxrQ15J7ZMqNYLASm0APKeBVugTR_TOt-821PsfQl3fPJWfDF9rZMUzvlanEnwcig4a6gkkxN3ETP0E3FOK8k9bjzOBkCKUsUdmkLoe5WzMMOOJAUkUq3O06-r1RwqLkgBPibaGeCkkQ/s1600/EnergyChallenge3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxrQ15J7ZMqNYLASm0APKeBVugTR_TOt-821PsfQl3fPJWfDF9rZMUzvlanEnwcig4a6gkkxN3ETP0E3FOK8k9bjzOBkCKUsUdmkLoe5WzMMOOJAUkUq3O06-r1RwqLkgBPibaGeCkkQ/s320/EnergyChallenge3.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
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<span lang="JA" style="font-size: 9pt; line-height: 115%;">These primitive sketches and notes show the concept we
used for the two-phase 7300 liter food waste biogas system currently operating
at Kakenya’s Center for Excellence, made out of local materials (a 5000 liter
polytank as primary digestor and a 2300 liter polytank with an inverted 1800
liter tank as gas holder, connected via 40 and 50 mm pipes to an Evolution 200
Insinkerator donated by Emerson Electronics.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx4AqKh_1bPA5mcxliwvycZllEydwrnimaBFVB9PNzGbSyhoszIh5ThcS5aOOANzuTQsXiK5v5bJ2JhiHLx3uOsdt-HVLQyMrizeJ21JWefFDZONbMIM07hEZ9SjHTmpeVEnFMoT8v-A/s1600/EnergyChallenge5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx4AqKh_1bPA5mcxliwvycZllEydwrnimaBFVB9PNzGbSyhoszIh5ThcS5aOOANzuTQsXiK5v5bJ2JhiHLx3uOsdt-HVLQyMrizeJ21JWefFDZONbMIM07hEZ9SjHTmpeVEnFMoT8v-A/s1600/EnergyChallenge5.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
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<span lang="JA" style="font-size: 9pt; line-height: 115%;">The Kakenya Center For Excellence and Solar CITIES
biogas team pose in front of the completed biogas system next to the school
kitchen below the sugar cane factory.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA" style="font-family: 'Arial Bold';"><b>3. Discuss project benefactors;</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">The project benefactors will be an ever
widening circle of family, friends and community members growing around the 150 immediate people who were
beneficiaries from our pilot project - the students and staff of Kakenya’s
Center for Excellence in the Maasai village of Enosaeen, Kenya. This visionary school acts as the epicenter
of our initiative.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">With proper funding we would start by
conducting training workshops and building digestors in every school, church
and social center in the community (there are more than 20 in the immediate
area) including the chief’s compound and the local vegetable market and
carpentry center where currently organic wastes are burned, creating a major
health hazard to the community. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">Once we have built about 20 smaller digestors
to accomodate all the organic wastes from the immediate community and have
built enough expertise, the next phase would be to employ the community to
build a large scale digestor on property near to the sugar cane factory to
accomodate the bagasse and processing wastes of the factory. The gas from this larger digestor would be cleaned
and compressed for use throughout the village and for generating electricity
and co-generating hot water, following the German model. The fertilizer would
be used for reforestation and soil amendment. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA" style="font-family: 'Arial Bold';"><b>4. Provide a description and significance of the results
expected, including--relevant quantitative details, such as output;</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">Within the first phase of the project, during
which 20 small scale digestors will be built in the schools, churches, family
farms and local markets, a culture of waste-to-biogas expertise would be
created that would build confidence and interest in the technology and foster
local expertise. The initial phase would
take approximately 2 months, with a new digestor being commissioned every two
to three days (with accelerating returns as expertise is gained, simultaneous
training and building is possible, as trainees become trainers of trainers; the
timeline could end up much shorter).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">The second phase of the project would involve
coordination with the local sugar cane factory and would result in the building
of a much larger pilot community digestor for use with the sugar cane factory
wastes. This phase would involve capacity building of the local Maasai
community in greater technical skills such as project design, sheet metal work,
riveting, industrial plumbing and ergonomic loading and unloading. As a result
of this training and the construction of the larger scale community digestor (approximately
30 cubic meters) the local Maasai would come away with more of the skills
needed to fully participate in a green economy and industrial ecology future
for their homeland so that there is a lessened need for external skilled labor
and so that they can plan their own future.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjdZY9SK7JhWzxQFEvfSx951M8BqxvyK1zwI5MJsNy0NmhmUbGXMWeyY-uy3HGADHCn3rrtt_4W32wWpjCuL3ji7C2xrrDbsbl3CN1_sF6xCxaRIiw7U8TpKNfLCA6cBEU3H4lQS_SQg/s1600/puxinneck.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjdZY9SK7JhWzxQFEvfSx951M8BqxvyK1zwI5MJsNy0NmhmUbGXMWeyY-uy3HGADHCn3rrtt_4W32wWpjCuL3ji7C2xrrDbsbl3CN1_sF6xCxaRIiw7U8TpKNfLCA6cBEU3H4lQS_SQg/s320/puxinneck.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span lang="JA">The specific type of biogas digestor which
will be used is the Puxin digestor. This
particular digestor will be highly efficacous as it it simple to construct, consisting
of molds in which concrete is poured, forming the different parts of the
digestor. The level of expertise
required to construct this system will be an effective bridge between phases
one and three; it will introduce the Maasai to the construction techniques and
ideas behind a more complicated biogas generation system, while building upon
the basic skills and knowledge gained in phase one. Furthermore, the digestor itself is easy to
maintain, and has a long service life (on the order of 30 years). This will allow the Maasai to maintain the
system themselves, enhancing sustainability, and continuing to increase their
familiarity with sustainable energy sources.
The Massai’s ability to use this digestor to effectively convert the
waste from the sugar cane factory (bagasse) in to an energy source (biogas)
will quickly create ties and foster a cooperative relationship between them and
the sugar cane plant. These ties will be
increasingly important as the Massai begin to enter the third phase of the
project.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBzoOvLvIm-UGnorlLtj_lqeICkL7ECFYdZWQ3uEmIp-x3hAyDwcKKhR9Pvw8LsvrVc770StkWgtwAlByjTUqyMK9wtbtz6yactEw2zWVFBq3e0LU0To7jdYYsLcZc3CSldjDRPLAqVw/s1600/20120306_095058.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBzoOvLvIm-UGnorlLtj_lqeICkL7ECFYdZWQ3uEmIp-x3hAyDwcKKhR9Pvw8LsvrVc770StkWgtwAlByjTUqyMK9wtbtz6yactEw2zWVFBq3e0LU0To7jdYYsLcZc3CSldjDRPLAqVw/s320/20120306_095058.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">These are the Puxin molds for the 6 and 10 m3 biogas systems that cost between 5,000 and 6,000 dollars (shipping costs about $1500) .</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm7iMxwtLxAineGuR7bYcqncM1YXi0tywbXOMyy31xZ-z2JpkZuoBenmP7fAdKbxEwm3WEtt8-r-rnMO3mgt2u8GNot6f7CTLQsrhHZVHzXUVmXkDGpp0S1rwH6a0f_QObixjTWZaZzw/s1600/20120307_120249.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm7iMxwtLxAineGuR7bYcqncM1YXi0tywbXOMyy31xZ-z2JpkZuoBenmP7fAdKbxEwm3WEtt8-r-rnMO3mgt2u8GNot6f7CTLQsrhHZVHzXUVmXkDGpp0S1rwH6a0f_QObixjTWZaZzw/s320/20120307_120249.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;">In this photograph Culhane builds a 10 cubic meter Puxin digestor at a jungle village school on Palawan Island in the Philippines in spring of 2012. The materials were purchased through a generous grant from Novartis Pharmaceuticals. We will build the same system in Kakenya's village at the market place and on family farms.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkfOJXZ3mgEk5TtzKedK4t7fDAWpdFmXhBMZcxFXa-FKnbi7MJWkHiRLWF7NgGqkGokBLj01LvtC0UAjLqtWBZLbgQLnA2XE-eh2DIINSDp5W0NJhxUbrHu883EpZA9QWIrVDXjlRHNQ/s1600/20120307_120440.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkfOJXZ3mgEk5TtzKedK4t7fDAWpdFmXhBMZcxFXa-FKnbi7MJWkHiRLWF7NgGqkGokBLj01LvtC0UAjLqtWBZLbgQLnA2XE-eh2DIINSDp5W0NJhxUbrHu883EpZA9QWIrVDXjlRHNQ/s320/20120307_120440.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9cScQU0vXoljXYu-ao3pgBgIOWMhIObYnry4apuSgaUNHUNUEaXz4_T79lWFW2AH6zpY7q8o0rvG38m6e59encYSTL6m0VZzDzGtZ8tpVvqJ0MbBPY0DXvqCXCpo16FaHyb6LoguSvQ/s1600/20120307_111743.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9cScQU0vXoljXYu-ao3pgBgIOWMhIObYnry4apuSgaUNHUNUEaXz4_T79lWFW2AH6zpY7q8o0rvG38m6e59encYSTL6m0VZzDzGtZ8tpVvqJ0MbBPY0DXvqCXCpo16FaHyb6LoguSvQ/s320/20120307_111743.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr>
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<span lang="JA">In the third phase of the project, the
experiences gained from phases one and two will be leveraged to help the sugar
cane factory and other relevant industries become clean electricity and biofuel
co-generators so that the region could develop a clean tech model of economic
importance. Full stake holder participation in this more ambitious phase is the
outcome of starting at the household, farm and local market scale, then moving
up to the community scale before connecting the local community to the larger
industrial and international efforts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWInIQSCPgDZX0hYboji63E0XapmLacimRRS5DS3PnUUZCRJJBu0nkAERBv7bqSP4kezxEvvD7v70bF2bcXojW9Q09th25HicI3IbBFtcze1RFuKwXfus9hmkBD0In7q0v-lnZ1pq9mw/s1600/Steel_mould_for_100m3_PUXIN_biogas_plant.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWInIQSCPgDZX0hYboji63E0XapmLacimRRS5DS3PnUUZCRJJBu0nkAERBv7bqSP4kezxEvvD7v70bF2bcXojW9Q09th25HicI3IbBFtcze1RFuKwXfus9hmkBD0In7q0v-lnZ1pq9mw/s320/Steel_mould_for_100m3_PUXIN_biogas_plant.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An image of the 100m3 Puxin digestor molds that we will build at the Sugar Cane factory to handle all of its waste and keep it from polluting the watershed and air in the village.</td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVmeOXjRWoZhaqQySuTqSYdT3T_O6y7QtUuLbWqeX6ssv0q5onpjBZcBfkCLfLmFVQzYXwDnT-ZBoGfUJ32nYrRGldAAsSmJ9ERhwtMKPATbDNw8rIHSJpmEwrJX2MOLoIetd283kHOQ/s1600/puxinschematic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVmeOXjRWoZhaqQySuTqSYdT3T_O6y7QtUuLbWqeX6ssv0q5onpjBZcBfkCLfLmFVQzYXwDnT-ZBoGfUJ32nYrRGldAAsSmJ9ERhwtMKPATbDNw8rIHSJpmEwrJX2MOLoIetd283kHOQ/s320/puxinschematic.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A schematic from Puxin showing how the system is set up. </td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI31S8nn1QYqwErlTzpAm_YOvU6UFIA-bTKBTr38tbiTRrfj4InEIYvk-Q-_6JaQ9YEz_emTZuYgip-yPjhoc04Uw-DAvU-LLpArnOU8CBjlnTW00MjhZjxzwsViGPxPbYHK2vq3JCdw/s1600/20120307_143441.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI31S8nn1QYqwErlTzpAm_YOvU6UFIA-bTKBTr38tbiTRrfj4InEIYvk-Q-_6JaQ9YEz_emTZuYgip-yPjhoc04Uw-DAvU-LLpArnOU8CBjlnTW00MjhZjxzwsViGPxPbYHK2vq3JCdw/s320/20120307_143441.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtngbYo0OZ1lm-ophXZ2ZiLBty040gsK5g0t7TlbhStRwZbt4rerLwnOzkZo08VucBmB0A_85mfBk9tyG44zU79NnKhETwUletinHJ2KVVqGQIZzaSZlK-NKXi5OYR951LbFFUUKSIRg/s1600/20120307_160759.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtngbYo0OZ1lm-ophXZ2ZiLBty040gsK5g0t7TlbhStRwZbt4rerLwnOzkZo08VucBmB0A_85mfBk9tyG44zU79NnKhETwUletinHJ2KVVqGQIZzaSZlK-NKXi5OYR951LbFFUUKSIRg/s320/20120307_160759.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Puxin 2.5 cubic meter portable "family system" made of fiberglass with a blue plastic bag gas holder which we built at the Allouette foundation lodge on Palawan island in the Philippines. This system produces about 4 hours per day of cooking gas from the previous day's kitchen waste and costs about $1500 plus shipping. We will install at least one of these in Kakenya's village so people can experience a range of systems and thus become experts in small scale biogas production. </td></tr>
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<span lang="JA" style="font-family: 'Arial Bold';"><b>5. Include a general budget, which lists funding needed and
funding received. </b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">So far we have put $1400 dollars into the
building of the first demonstration biogas system at Kakenya’s Center for
Excellence. The cost of the 3 tanks
(5000 liters, 2300 liters and 1800 liters) to accomodate the schools food
wastes was 75,000 shillings (approximately 750 Euro), while plumbing supplies,
tractor rental for cow dung, labor and
material transport costs consumed another 25,000 shillings (about 250 Euros).
Additional systems of similar size would be in the range of 1000 to 1200
dollars each (reduced from 1400 because of the ability to buy in bulk at
wholesale and rent tractors and trucks only once to move the supplies for many
systems). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">The Insinkerator Evolution 200 feedstock
grinding units , valued at $420 dollars for a 220 volt unit (such as we have
installed in two locations in Cairo, 2
in Nigeria, two in Botswana, 2 in Kenya and 1 in Nepal, were donations to the
biogas effort from Emerson Electronics.
Even with a wholesale reduction that Emerson has suggested they would
help us with, with customs and shipping for this project we estimate a cost of
about $500 per unit, making the cost of each biogas installation about $1500. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA" style="font-family: 'Arial Bold';"><b>Materials:</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">It is thus estimated that the construction of
20 small systems would consume about 34,000
dollars.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">A community system of 100 cubic meters would
cost approximately 50,000 dollars in materials and labor.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA" style="font-family: 'Arial Bold';"><b>Supervisors/Trainers</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">Airfare and per diem compensation for the Solar CITIES coordinator/trainer husband and
wife team for a period of 4 months (2 months for the initial small systems and
2 months for the large community system) would come to approximately 4000
dollars for airfare (two trips for two people
at 1000 dollars per ticket, with a break in between), and 250 dollars
for the couple per work day x 20 days per month x 4 months = 20,000 dollars for
compensation, plus 1000 dollars over the four months budgeted for food and
lodging in the village and incidentals (visas,
medicine, phone and internet expenses) = approximately 25,000 dollars.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">Compensation for 8 local community craftspeople/engineers
working on the project would add another 10,000 dollars to the budget.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="JA">Thus the whole project could be run for
approximately 115,000 dollars. For just
the initial capacity building phase, a budget of 60,000 dollars would be
feasible. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 17px;"><br /></span></span>T.H. Culhanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02974539190597507374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1334849659163883527.post-26116499693286640552012-06-03T14:23:00.000-07:002012-06-03T14:23:57.622-07:00Analysis of Renewable Energy in the Hinku Valley, Part 1<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHgEVlHwnNDabvm4WvIrEA9HcmlKQrquS41N3l84HFhgHmF3lIyKfwk6ckLY_fAVntxOrua77SAfk4i7xqoiFPw5Pu0NSPzALjYI5QlLAZQkXWIvhGqutAh4nVnYXHQU268fKNA8gA6A/s1600/20120504_101926.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHgEVlHwnNDabvm4WvIrEA9HcmlKQrquS41N3l84HFhgHmF3lIyKfwk6ckLY_fAVntxOrua77SAfk4i7xqoiFPw5Pu0NSPzALjYI5QlLAZQkXWIvhGqutAh4nVnYXHQU268fKNA8gA6A/s320/20120504_101926.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Celebrating solar power with Rai expedition guide JB in front of the Exodus Solar cooker at North Face Lodge in Lukla</td></tr>
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For Phase II of our National Geographic/Blackstone Ranch Foundation/Mountain Institute high altitude environment conservation project we trekked from Lukla through the Hinku valley
up to the base of Mera Peak in the village of Khare.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The route took us to the following locations: Chuthanga
(3175m) to Zatrawala Pass (4,610m) to Zatrabok-4,704m, to Kothe (3800m) to
Thangnak (4600m) to Khare (5000m).</div>
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One of our goals was to evaluate awareness of and assess the
potential for alternative energy systems that can offset and reduce the use of
firewood and kerosene (the two major fuels used since the juniper shrub
conservation effort began). What we found was consistent with what we had
observed in the Khumbu valley the previous year: almost universal use of small
photovoltaics systems for lighting (averaging 25 watts per household or lodge)
but almost no substitutes for the wood and fossil fuels. The exception to this
were the presence of 4 solar cookers, two in Thangnak and two in Khare. In each
village one of the solar cookers was a commercial model provided by Exodus
Travel (<a href="http://www.exodus.co.uk/responsible-travel/our-projects/nepal-projects/solar-cooker-project">http://www.exodus.co.uk/responsible-travel/our-projects/nepal-projects/solar-cooker-project</a>)
identical to the ones we found throughout the Khumbu from Lukla to Everest Base
camp (the picture above shows one in the garden of the North Face Lodge in Lukla where we began and ended our trip.)</div>
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Exodus, which is a trekking company originally out of the UK,
manufactures their solar cookers in Kathmandu and installs them during the
off-season in as many of the lodges as they can.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In their first phase<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>they installed “30 in the Everest Region and 1 in the Annapurna base camp”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The two we saw in the Hinku
valley are part of their effort to reach more remote areas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The other solar cooker in each
village was another type of locally built “home-made” model whose stainless
steel reflector strips were cut in Kathmandu and then carried in for
assembly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Exodus model has a
larger and more robust parabola surrounded by fiberglass and has a unique
handle for easily rotating the cooker on two axes to face the sun. The
“home-made” model isn’t as easy to turn with the sun.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0WvVvsq3hoSAD9Jsz0TlpPRuiZxHrXdIGywpBd046YCCRA4-9kfRuD9PdfcHiLjUYeAAh_uRWjpQJBIUm51x-bnXtlGTxJo8qYRv9yYYLWw2koptq-Su6p1n5PExZWaPVp-CmzZkMDQ/s1600/20120504_123000.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0WvVvsq3hoSAD9Jsz0TlpPRuiZxHrXdIGywpBd046YCCRA4-9kfRuD9PdfcHiLjUYeAAh_uRWjpQJBIUm51x-bnXtlGTxJo8qYRv9yYYLWw2koptq-Su6p1n5PExZWaPVp-CmzZkMDQ/s320/20120504_123000.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">First solar panel encountered on the trail from Lukla to Khare on private residence just outside of Lukla across from the micro-hydro pipeline. It appears to be a 20 watt module which is typical for most households for lighting three light bulbs and charging phones and running radios.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB1nH-2xDPPLqM-igb3iBaE3vd0q0iPYGV771xtpY69W5OeM7jH9hOe-ZwJdz3EVd8pefZzuupSZh2_hfTHOAiTSRDI3u1LWq0OskFPvvkNsxvY0dUxlS2OegAU6PR6fWxg7kz5wnOOg/s1600/20120504_124029.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB1nH-2xDPPLqM-igb3iBaE3vd0q0iPYGV771xtpY69W5OeM7jH9hOe-ZwJdz3EVd8pefZzuupSZh2_hfTHOAiTSRDI3u1LWq0OskFPvvkNsxvY0dUxlS2OegAU6PR6fWxg7kz5wnOOg/s320/20120504_124029.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Second solar panel encountered on private residence outside of Lukla on trail to Khare. Appears to be 10 to 15 Watts, typical for running a kitchen light.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVk_FLPALtturmgN9zai07-81lVMwjIqI4kNMXwRdoWwPZuA8W63_lv1yrh1Cv4Q1hU1SlBGCFiCYHR0QGJ2eQMoeVQLMRPKT50fgpzZAWC84iG4zdNHFgkKYs_qryoc-1wb6EQbxqhA/s1600/20120504_125954.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVk_FLPALtturmgN9zai07-81lVMwjIqI4kNMXwRdoWwPZuA8W63_lv1yrh1Cv4Q1hU1SlBGCFiCYHR0QGJ2eQMoeVQLMRPKT50fgpzZAWC84iG4zdNHFgkKYs_qryoc-1wb6EQbxqhA/s320/20120504_125954.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yaks grazing on the trail from Lukla to Khare; in general the Hinku Valley does not have large Yak populations</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYLY5gFWWC1SYuH6F6yOS2TAyWmn-Cg08M2IKAVlpJhY7PszlPJ8H7htj-ujkHF6sbe0vJPWeCCT_yLJv2jSt14VocwQ3QpCCQit2Ne_Cy6useGZMSm-68s1QXuy82Bn_KhClLa1kmSw/s1600/20120504_143127.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYLY5gFWWC1SYuH6F6yOS2TAyWmn-Cg08M2IKAVlpJhY7PszlPJ8H7htj-ujkHF6sbe0vJPWeCCT_yLJv2jSt14VocwQ3QpCCQit2Ne_Cy6useGZMSm-68s1QXuy82Bn_KhClLa1kmSw/s320/20120504_143127.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Tea Shop at Thukding, 3000 meters elevation</td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdLD2hYGOASAWVDJmHR6OiXX1UmI7wTQeURt4Ll1HJ3mey7ZKmDup2PZK3hlsQnMEipvDLGly13nVN6H_XnMvbvyNcnD47-9E9kW9MuVqodbnz1hyphenhyphen2BJ8O-1l4to3gm0V6-g1tG_o4aA/s1600/20120504_143148.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdLD2hYGOASAWVDJmHR6OiXX1UmI7wTQeURt4Ll1HJ3mey7ZKmDup2PZK3hlsQnMEipvDLGly13nVN6H_XnMvbvyNcnD47-9E9kW9MuVqodbnz1hyphenhyphen2BJ8O-1l4to3gm0V6-g1tG_o4aA/s320/20120504_143148.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
At Thukding one begins to see evidence of deforestation in the hillsides surrounding the dwellings. There are no solar cookers on the Hinku Valley trail until one gets up to Thangnak and Khare and there are no solar hot water systems at all. This is in contrast to the Khumbu Valley trail where every tea house from Lukla up to Naamche has solar cookers and solar hot water systems and there are a considerable number of them all the way up to Everest Base camp thereafter. There are also no active backboiler stoves (stoves that have heat exchangers for heating water while cooking; there is only one that exists, in Khote, but the water heating system additions to it -- the pipes and hot water storage tank -- have not been installed yet.) We also noted the presence of only two improved cookstoves with solar/battery powered 9V fans to increase burn efficiency so as to produce less smoke and use less firewood (one in Khote and one in Khare). For this reason there is considerable pressure on wood supplies.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCLomPoNni0J-s-BM_JU3T7oaqmETfT7JpEGWFUFNYCjQD2aqtkh8QfpTiRl_AAaU3mfXDQ7qUAthJ_PvP8pSc5Y66rR_Oir2t3tFY697uHizcPnrF2-2bJreDtzpQkRGqiT_REuzaYQ/s1600/20120504_143252.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCLomPoNni0J-s-BM_JU3T7oaqmETfT7JpEGWFUFNYCjQD2aqtkh8QfpTiRl_AAaU3mfXDQ7qUAthJ_PvP8pSc5Y66rR_Oir2t3tFY697uHizcPnrF2-2bJreDtzpQkRGqiT_REuzaYQ/s320/20120504_143252.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A look inside a dedicated wood shed.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu66lr0uekaAEt5rcPZ4WAuwEy-7mDOO3GjCQvqWKLnCLsCiR9lQW5-Z7jy-qLqxbaqqwSTSMEfYjMWMlTjAx19L7DnITo1c1x8yhT_rSpnEuiZGx7cvC2dmG7HnVqIUx_iYYlcoJwQQ/s1600/20120504_143259.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu66lr0uekaAEt5rcPZ4WAuwEy-7mDOO3GjCQvqWKLnCLsCiR9lQW5-Z7jy-qLqxbaqqwSTSMEfYjMWMlTjAx19L7DnITo1c1x8yhT_rSpnEuiZGx7cvC2dmG7HnVqIUx_iYYlcoJwQQ/s320/20120504_143259.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The denuded hillside at Thukding</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLcCjtl0D7YWfIgO3H-tVylNmQsxtnIybNId061BXJeMHw50fwPoJ14BRpq6TsisOh0n7gKr06bAc3MknbUaF5txTi14QTA5Y8dL2j3h4U9_a-DLUSKIjPY5aIB6Zt9ZdrzoLjE7sOPA/s1600/20120504_143354.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLcCjtl0D7YWfIgO3H-tVylNmQsxtnIybNId061BXJeMHw50fwPoJ14BRpq6TsisOh0n7gKr06bAc3MknbUaF5txTi14QTA5Y8dL2j3h4U9_a-DLUSKIjPY5aIB6Zt9ZdrzoLjE7sOPA/s320/20120504_143354.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Another view of the woodshed with the denuded hillside in the background.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigwq_2BEWbi7xdTFjxV_vQq87XD6bAMR9FrjhCDtWuoeBdhEjiTzfgWfHjeMfgj_q97NHZM6Y8iol3BQMf_nCqJH7F1eTesp5qy9xisM4Be5vAahsYUyM7secvoEhTeqgz5Mt_a8oEaA/s1600/20120504_143406.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigwq_2BEWbi7xdTFjxV_vQq87XD6bAMR9FrjhCDtWuoeBdhEjiTzfgWfHjeMfgj_q97NHZM6Y8iol3BQMf_nCqJH7F1eTesp5qy9xisM4Be5vAahsYUyM7secvoEhTeqgz5Mt_a8oEaA/s320/20120504_143406.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yet another view of the wood shed.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlmUv6_XMr8enirCo4V9ddVQDIhV35FxnliHmLmuV_iqdx_H4d4owHMlJ6FN67sCdQwnPRWeAxa6IVVfs8NL3jYn7WJ8Z4Zu_WHJWwC24kVQ3UBNNJ245cSB7-uHvdXh6SK2BbWXh2zg/s1600/20120504_144103.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlmUv6_XMr8enirCo4V9ddVQDIhV35FxnliHmLmuV_iqdx_H4d4owHMlJ6FN67sCdQwnPRWeAxa6IVVfs8NL3jYn7WJ8Z4Zu_WHJWwC24kVQ3UBNNJ245cSB7-uHvdXh6SK2BbWXh2zg/s320/20120504_144103.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The trail takes us through the area of deforestation</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioWXU8HI46AipRo8nGFf6NZc054Q3lM4t0qD6FFD1qKsAhPzUYxd5sL-m3MMj6Qe0QuiHqnyCeJCKks-ZWxlh4QiiGPO0EWNxzPmaDzXdTeOGvN_2ZtkM-KH1EdAnsN2nYrukpj6pQYw/s1600/20120504_144137.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioWXU8HI46AipRo8nGFf6NZc054Q3lM4t0qD6FFD1qKsAhPzUYxd5sL-m3MMj6Qe0QuiHqnyCeJCKks-ZWxlh4QiiGPO0EWNxzPmaDzXdTeOGvN_2ZtkM-KH1EdAnsN2nYrukpj6pQYw/s320/20120504_144137.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">As we continue our climb we see evidence of erosion exacerbated by deforestation</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIQJlQWVlTDaH8iHDrL0WdbFVnA2Bk_PMVnGPlGLwRnVdVFG4osihgNQSZRovBQsLgHFeAbWR0N6sWP7yjnhdF5gFFjOwwVgzNzMIHCcW7IA0Jq1tfGIo0MeMCVfKWUija2ixoGMKfhg/s1600/20120504_144340.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIQJlQWVlTDaH8iHDrL0WdbFVnA2Bk_PMVnGPlGLwRnVdVFG4osihgNQSZRovBQsLgHFeAbWR0N6sWP7yjnhdF5gFFjOwwVgzNzMIHCcW7IA0Jq1tfGIo0MeMCVfKWUija2ixoGMKfhg/s320/20120504_144340.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Most of the bigger trees along the trail have been cut down for fuelwood.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQ3uZFRE2qpPPgT9A2TL-iX5duX4aQh09ZPrCKglM9xDsKLrcZxJP7xNVZIck4CfkTMdwFXKmpTwkCPSWyky0dz_P6vpJ_dqftUDXLrBoZHVXqTjpSXUzkoNCEdSXEAiYVorzyjAf3GA/s1600/20120504_144657.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQ3uZFRE2qpPPgT9A2TL-iX5duX4aQh09ZPrCKglM9xDsKLrcZxJP7xNVZIck4CfkTMdwFXKmpTwkCPSWyky0dz_P6vpJ_dqftUDXLrBoZHVXqTjpSXUzkoNCEdSXEAiYVorzyjAf3GA/s320/20120504_144657.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">In these climates and altitudes trees grow rather slowly...</td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio6bXdEX8QVds6PGk6INOAY7rsnYoYqfEV58nXnKZPCOW3m1gEEy7t1h8ZBMzqvU7wCymzxgg-DHeFwqg3YR7wOn4uGvbFKXVF96n_ayakYOVwX6EszT-FAyXxQ5zzYkLI3oMs_jbENg/s1600/20120504_150145.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio6bXdEX8QVds6PGk6INOAY7rsnYoYqfEV58nXnKZPCOW3m1gEEy7t1h8ZBMzqvU7wCymzxgg-DHeFwqg3YR7wOn4uGvbFKXVF96n_ayakYOVwX6EszT-FAyXxQ5zzYkLI3oMs_jbENg/s320/20120504_150145.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq-qCTaZjFdI_k3Y1dt5UHvRDE07OujBnuz1afeshvVhDpkhFMHQiSTmUN19Jf6tRtiDv3ZeUwjeNhPxV3_K5zY1Ogu8YCuc8CJ7CmEK4S0KyQ5EaXAKjIktGnmNJqYH8bgIvNbxiOHw/s1600/20120504_151624.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq-qCTaZjFdI_k3Y1dt5UHvRDE07OujBnuz1afeshvVhDpkhFMHQiSTmUN19Jf6tRtiDv3ZeUwjeNhPxV3_K5zY1Ogu8YCuc8CJ7CmEK4S0KyQ5EaXAKjIktGnmNJqYH8bgIvNbxiOHw/s320/20120504_151624.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chhutanga Tea House 3245 meters</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwU1g37w7gQKHZpUNyzgrNLWXwnRYqcjD6cnwfECXcojonxf8oa0cYwOZEvHqAlNdYE7lpZvye9nhGZPbxOa9G0XGMqXNu3AqbrAcVeRCZoWOLMZtDHEwLqDt2e1TjPH_AZ7baMRm_KA/s1600/20120504_153639.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwU1g37w7gQKHZpUNyzgrNLWXwnRYqcjD6cnwfECXcojonxf8oa0cYwOZEvHqAlNdYE7lpZvye9nhGZPbxOa9G0XGMqXNu3AqbrAcVeRCZoWOLMZtDHEwLqDt2e1TjPH_AZ7baMRm_KA/s320/20120504_153639.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">We set up our tents in Chhutanga for the evening. It got cold enough that it snowed all night, forcing us indoors. The only heating available came from a stone wood-burning chulo with no fume hood or chimney. The indoor smoke pollution was extreme.</td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD4hBiencF0yq-Hxwaus08igNsQeJSYB4KYaqGkimMosN_60aFLY2U7V5L3132zrEGOh8zRWE5A5MQ2zJwLc1J1SSygIFAj3hXc3_96jAFgW2hpWj8bLXnxOAqAHbdMg0ntLDOyTNcRQ/s1600/20120504_153644.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD4hBiencF0yq-Hxwaus08igNsQeJSYB4KYaqGkimMosN_60aFLY2U7V5L3132zrEGOh8zRWE5A5MQ2zJwLc1J1SSygIFAj3hXc3_96jAFgW2hpWj8bLXnxOAqAHbdMg0ntLDOyTNcRQ/s320/20120504_153644.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYw0OHATCV4LRVF1MYxPWPbTzya8hOGuW0mEfa3i_J7vuP_n7mipuMTHC_oiOAHwJRbwUDHIsI9qe7FU-XgvLkfnPPdXewdOpzuXfX4608ANjK2HNEvmqjTNWZX_nNp2pxTqFachJ91w/s1600/20120504_153809.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYw0OHATCV4LRVF1MYxPWPbTzya8hOGuW0mEfa3i_J7vuP_n7mipuMTHC_oiOAHwJRbwUDHIsI9qe7FU-XgvLkfnPPdXewdOpzuXfX4608ANjK2HNEvmqjTNWZX_nNp2pxTqFachJ91w/s320/20120504_153809.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">In Chhutunga one of the dwellings below us had the typical 20 Watt solar panel</td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvsY726j-K2vPrDfdw2LOjSouDwLUTo1mNT7wq8PnanF3HXBDPuCM5kwshIvMEz-7czRYjUlfcHlDBTJHi2y9Q0LNfItNm3nI8yit54zqppzsa9hDa4YCJdnZaEmXE3xMmii2Xk5GjVg/s1600/20120504_153819.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvsY726j-K2vPrDfdw2LOjSouDwLUTo1mNT7wq8PnanF3HXBDPuCM5kwshIvMEz-7czRYjUlfcHlDBTJHi2y9Q0LNfItNm3nI8yit54zqppzsa9hDa4YCJdnZaEmXE3xMmii2Xk5GjVg/s320/20120504_153819.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0cNEKVbnsa586tsMXfXHD4HEHBUotqFMI6M7U-kCDYpcGVMJOSeUMzPjuzTYXVNJvLQWSbQQMKw3RsaMJico2M2CjifjlwipnGCERzIbFzekTgg54jG5-pMi0hdIPEvt8dbDxACeJMA/s1600/20120504_153826.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0cNEKVbnsa586tsMXfXHD4HEHBUotqFMI6M7U-kCDYpcGVMJOSeUMzPjuzTYXVNJvLQWSbQQMKw3RsaMJico2M2CjifjlwipnGCERzIbFzekTgg54jG5-pMi0hdIPEvt8dbDxACeJMA/s320/20120504_153826.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The dining room we ate in had no photovoltaics. ONe can see one the wood pile sunder the blue tarp on the the left.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinMBq2COkd9OzmYYAmm6XgfZIRPUpWb7gy0PxYVH_lpvhNH7U_SJaAGI_uOwdIkluf2OQu22ipXNNmJ0x6yloNoqrtiHBz5Sa2RGaH3kEQ9-WX_z1TUqjxhLV7On4u0u-0JiUknR5dng/s1600/20120504_154621.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinMBq2COkd9OzmYYAmm6XgfZIRPUpWb7gy0PxYVH_lpvhNH7U_SJaAGI_uOwdIkluf2OQu22ipXNNmJ0x6yloNoqrtiHBz5Sa2RGaH3kEQ9-WX_z1TUqjxhLV7On4u0u-0JiUknR5dng/s320/20120504_154621.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The smoke wafting from spaces in the roof of the chimneyless dining hall gives an indication of the indoor air pollution problem. Inside it was hard to breathe.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje5vlZyy0l7LlJkqJY8zVezxOh5Mo1dxsNPDqXLiilXfht2tc-6mwzusqS3baZMkhmLUcVVsN8c0bWnZXKCcwP2-NIyY6FawgAdDbLKyKaEC8-wDKdVhCor7s8xwVqfNQ0cvIft2xDjQ/s1600/20120504_164717.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje5vlZyy0l7LlJkqJY8zVezxOh5Mo1dxsNPDqXLiilXfht2tc-6mwzusqS3baZMkhmLUcVVsN8c0bWnZXKCcwP2-NIyY6FawgAdDbLKyKaEC8-wDKdVhCor7s8xwVqfNQ0cvIft2xDjQ/s320/20120504_164717.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The tent is colder than staying inside of course but at least the air is fresh and breathable. In some areas one has the option of sleeping indoors where it is warmer but the air quality makes breathing painful, or staying out in the fresh air in a tent. This situation changes in lodges that have chimneys but even there the indoor and outdoor air pollution are of great concern.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0KC7kM-tEJBJqlL3N5sKLggP10myqG-6JMLsmg6hwEjpy2ZPEj9SqRV0rTgMELJ2sUhFLmCyzGn5Y_DNQmGI2TLmr71IzZKGH0fhjG6Y52WvqPC7UZKz2utSFdjImBzczPUpQaCarUg/s1600/20120505_062910.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0KC7kM-tEJBJqlL3N5sKLggP10myqG-6JMLsmg6hwEjpy2ZPEj9SqRV0rTgMELJ2sUhFLmCyzGn5Y_DNQmGI2TLmr71IzZKGH0fhjG6Y52WvqPC7UZKz2utSFdjImBzczPUpQaCarUg/s320/20120505_062910.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Inside my tent I create a "night light" each evening using my Solar CITIES "tab torch" which uses a joule thief circuit to run 4 LEDs off of a single aluminum tab from a beverage can for several nights.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQsdNEgVrBXgBWhUPiePMc4fsW-OFehb4MtjpYEt4UU4Ht6S6hV7CEZDpduORBIcqDD5s0CNpyayaTFJ2rCvl5drhoRXDzp65o29BNa1sB43KgO8KBkSQdORn6_Sbur-wBF0kJ_oomXQ/s1600/20120505_062920.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQsdNEgVrBXgBWhUPiePMc4fsW-OFehb4MtjpYEt4UU4Ht6S6hV7CEZDpduORBIcqDD5s0CNpyayaTFJ2rCvl5drhoRXDzp65o29BNa1sB43KgO8KBkSQdORn6_Sbur-wBF0kJ_oomXQ/s320/20120505_062920.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Solar CITIES tab torch, while not all that bright, provides enough light to take out my contact lenses and to read a book and see where things are. Since it only uses potash and aluminum can tabs as its consumables it provides an infinite source of low level electricity for lighting.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXe4Ou7u_-FKgKhWcaPlSQW7qv77-4Lspb8FmrVzsg2NnHVj0GIDfbKPDM9ezhliyWR27z2EuFH4S7rxaI90OpP_0f8JSsQyfvNcZM_InAtZj58TTLIUrqUSswVHbytJlgl6ZJhxLrQQ/s1600/20120505_084404.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXe4Ou7u_-FKgKhWcaPlSQW7qv77-4Lspb8FmrVzsg2NnHVj0GIDfbKPDM9ezhliyWR27z2EuFH4S7rxaI90OpP_0f8JSsQyfvNcZM_InAtZj58TTLIUrqUSswVHbytJlgl6ZJhxLrQQ/s320/20120505_084404.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">By the morning the entire valley was covered in snow, even though we were 700 meters below the official snow line.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCIO5jaW2VjuIvycwc7M3JkszprrDlz8Wandg9xLnQZRqLi1mul91k5ZZnJe2eRQL7R8bnO5vk8pEYObtOXs5KhwgkQ-BrGMLqbBYp3wDpkc3iI6h1GqplnYjUt-3o2c-k_ZBCJKDbRg/s1600/20120505_111617.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCIO5jaW2VjuIvycwc7M3JkszprrDlz8Wandg9xLnQZRqLi1mul91k5ZZnJe2eRQL7R8bnO5vk8pEYObtOXs5KhwgkQ-BrGMLqbBYp3wDpkc3iI6h1GqplnYjUt-3o2c-k_ZBCJKDbRg/s320/20120505_111617.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The snow continued as we climbed 3985 meters to Kharkateng, which is the official snow line. </td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1KRriaQWvNyqN119pUcWFkUtlmFqGJB6n9I5au25cSp7F1xf-sDMZ8WowMqGj74GFsfVmdlAXfKy6kOIx8J41zrRlxTQomSi6AkCioDnvRjyMjmsDoCUGYNSCHmXs9hksLKHZhhdvSw/s1600/20120505_111700.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1KRriaQWvNyqN119pUcWFkUtlmFqGJB6n9I5au25cSp7F1xf-sDMZ8WowMqGj74GFsfVmdlAXfKy6kOIx8J41zrRlxTQomSi6AkCioDnvRjyMjmsDoCUGYNSCHmXs9hksLKHZhhdvSw/s320/20120505_111700.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">At Kharkateng, at the snow line, there were no more trees and the cost of getting firewood goes up because the wood must be hauled up the very steep slopes. Here 5 liter kerosene pump stoves were used for all the cooking.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNEKs61Ihz24NRrgc1jEwoBAq2C-DIuMzTtT7gklndH-OawplBAD4jrVjffldQDLe7Y2QNv1s205mnWoRY9HF1nf4BqAGw4MFGXvv_bZh59vfLnT-Ma1T4eatUvnivh2Ljt7DKnYTSUg/s1600/20120505_111706.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNEKs61Ihz24NRrgc1jEwoBAq2C-DIuMzTtT7gklndH-OawplBAD4jrVjffldQDLe7Y2QNv1s205mnWoRY9HF1nf4BqAGw4MFGXvv_bZh59vfLnT-Ma1T4eatUvnivh2Ljt7DKnYTSUg/s320/20120505_111706.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Many kitchens have more than one kerosene pump stove and most trekking expeditions bring their own.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv9AYhpg6PZk_0X6BplAt5h15th5pPLkOhNhOcMGlX-OoDeJIuYqfdJDH6MbshP0qI1npf8CMmA13xkdhUBhlJj2IVIcQUVWY4RcZsFxUyjBHGWcatASPFA1FRn2iSH8N33yBey5vGBQ/s1600/20120505_134058.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv9AYhpg6PZk_0X6BplAt5h15th5pPLkOhNhOcMGlX-OoDeJIuYqfdJDH6MbshP0qI1npf8CMmA13xkdhUBhlJj2IVIcQUVWY4RcZsFxUyjBHGWcatASPFA1FRn2iSH8N33yBey5vGBQ/s320/20120505_134058.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Outside my tent in Kharkateng I set up the 200 Watt triple junction thin film panel <span style="font-size: x-small;">(<span style="font-family: Times;">3 X 68 W Unisolar panels assembled into a Tactical Solar Panel by Energy Technologies
Inc; Energy Technologies lent us the panel for the expedition through David Grober of Motion Picture Marine who joined us on the expedition).<span></span></span></span></td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd4A3mwvHyyPdbIh7eLPNUREruHyuXBeXIhjENb3Ms3QFEKg_7CnNg8WphV3y3r4uEbcLdwkmQmXsgcD5bZCawWL0mltsPAvI1xARHVYY-Y6T-D8sWBMXFRoBeNNkABnL1BcPMDLUucw/s1600/20120505_134105.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd4A3mwvHyyPdbIh7eLPNUREruHyuXBeXIhjENb3Ms3QFEKg_7CnNg8WphV3y3r4uEbcLdwkmQmXsgcD5bZCawWL0mltsPAvI1xARHVYY-Y6T-D8sWBMXFRoBeNNkABnL1BcPMDLUucw/s320/20120505_134105.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS0vIOXDmE4CUsSkbPTpHuIiBdwKdWud1D7lh5e_xDu2qbeo5xia0SXY5WAHh8sci6QTzZov6Km0-Mxt3_7v4KIC3-QAHmuwuwx2Tl9sO-D6E3rybiMiJRWrkqxmzhcfQOJi1oVNZoQQ/s1600/20120505_134548.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS0vIOXDmE4CUsSkbPTpHuIiBdwKdWud1D7lh5e_xDu2qbeo5xia0SXY5WAHh8sci6QTzZov6Km0-Mxt3_7v4KIC3-QAHmuwuwx2Tl9sO-D6E3rybiMiJRWrkqxmzhcfQOJi1oVNZoQQ/s320/20120505_134548.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">We started charging the batteries using a morningstar charge controller on the nearby rock, but when it started to rain and snow I moved them into my tent.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiGMnsTXVO7rX5I258RdWqe_X0l4HzyxUy0jua7yyD1FM7hKaJNlpTVwaUy3P0fVKlXi4LUVAzU3nBXBXdP1zHBuAx5_dOLFvq87ZSH12s_KLY9w2UdRVtU8Hroi4NvcEsZc8g2rjYeA/s1600/20120505_144607.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiGMnsTXVO7rX5I258RdWqe_X0l4HzyxUy0jua7yyD1FM7hKaJNlpTVwaUy3P0fVKlXi4LUVAzU3nBXBXdP1zHBuAx5_dOLFvq87ZSH12s_KLY9w2UdRVtU8Hroi4NvcEsZc8g2rjYeA/s320/20120505_144607.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The set-up was used to charge two 7 AH PbSO4 batteries wired in parallel going through a 300 watt inverter.</td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhouwN6xX0NGd9t-0eDph_RehRq9ha28Fa516gbBq-30vWOGZbHXlAukHLGDprOdI94iIup8ZbvLCquQTKnxI4QOG7A7cIOH7gppK6B2FGwMF8a-83CfLcJ7ONCNZ9Ay-j_kl0i6a65fA/s1600/20120505_184331.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhouwN6xX0NGd9t-0eDph_RehRq9ha28Fa516gbBq-30vWOGZbHXlAukHLGDprOdI94iIup8ZbvLCquQTKnxI4QOG7A7cIOH7gppK6B2FGwMF8a-83CfLcJ7ONCNZ9Ay-j_kl0i6a65fA/s320/20120505_184331.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPJH4y31kd1_8OdTZ9AEGKZnVitdRUTHNA45l0ZgRXD1qM_ZydNN29Ga1qY-qtqdmQof5qOvCkXt2wMo4huJjItRUSisfu9zbroWgzkvBtovOEgP_gc-LIi2f4XuR68LuIgXJnaihMOg/s1600/20120505_190251.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPJH4y31kd1_8OdTZ9AEGKZnVitdRUTHNA45l0ZgRXD1qM_ZydNN29Ga1qY-qtqdmQof5qOvCkXt2wMo4huJjItRUSisfu9zbroWgzkvBtovOEgP_gc-LIi2f4XuR68LuIgXJnaihMOg/s320/20120505_190251.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">We found that even in cloudy conditions like this we were getting up to 30% of the rated output of the panel (i.e. we could get about 60 watts under heavy cloudy conditions from the 200 watt panel. Under bright cloud we would get as much as 100 watts. We believe this is because triple junction thin film panels are more sensitive to UV light than traditional crystalline PV panels.).</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_Qo-VTpzGEcTXLr_NaT0FCQsMnB6u0rx3YnMAnXtFpJAcrL8gZ3MtbETGRsOXd-E6yUX0WZwGXkS1ddAoHBrMYUY79F1UC6QMeOpH1s2ONXUp2sCljW002tgSp_7QyIFUHFexRqkKeA/s1600/20120505_191604.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_Qo-VTpzGEcTXLr_NaT0FCQsMnB6u0rx3YnMAnXtFpJAcrL8gZ3MtbETGRsOXd-E6yUX0WZwGXkS1ddAoHBrMYUY79F1UC6QMeOpH1s2ONXUp2sCljW002tgSp_7QyIFUHFexRqkKeA/s320/20120505_191604.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Solar CITIES tab torch proved itself a valuable companion...</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0po71aZsQiW5UY4NBtBYCwaq_7Qcp0dJLWDYWHzmqS5JMRxg8PTbOLSl5ep835p_Rok4c2nQooCLtFP-CEouVw5Vd6wM-MIJHFKP3syeYfsEiEMZY04CPx-sAVxuQAzy3dEIibNtDaw/s1600/20120505_192235.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0po71aZsQiW5UY4NBtBYCwaq_7Qcp0dJLWDYWHzmqS5JMRxg8PTbOLSl5ep835p_Rok4c2nQooCLtFP-CEouVw5Vd6wM-MIJHFKP3syeYfsEiEMZY04CPx-sAVxuQAzy3dEIibNtDaw/s320/20120505_192235.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">On a moonless night I could use the tab torch to find my tent in the darkness...</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsJjG-dZIag2zh-oysbRwo5abDpCTHwtSXSNo85vhQ3yHfaQhTpF53wGPo27omNLO5UMXEt4ZnUOTl2ZwV9YZdoL9ujSwLr6J30RJveLlaUVEPuQ0OMgrKdWEO-ziEo7ncNDLh8Mum5g/s1600/20120506_071646.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsJjG-dZIag2zh-oysbRwo5abDpCTHwtSXSNo85vhQ3yHfaQhTpF53wGPo27omNLO5UMXEt4ZnUOTl2ZwV9YZdoL9ujSwLr6J30RJveLlaUVEPuQ0OMgrKdWEO-ziEo7ncNDLh8Mum5g/s320/20120506_071646.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The view from my tent in the morning...</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg45jF9E5ks6SYmSYsfb7c4avRwx37KCwTPOLv4yTi03hql1hHlYlAfYing-hIjI_h4W6nEiHODzw4F0eR2WxbEl8LWdcOrzD7l-BoPE4kAtCyMYEYfzsjGycx0TyJXUUYfc3d1PEUQQ/s1600/20120506_101801.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg45jF9E5ks6SYmSYsfb7c4avRwx37KCwTPOLv4yTi03hql1hHlYlAfYing-hIjI_h4W6nEiHODzw4F0eR2WxbEl8LWdcOrzD7l-BoPE4kAtCyMYEYfzsjGycx0TyJXUUYfc3d1PEUQQ/s320/20120506_101801.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of the reasons given for the lack of solar hot water systems and biogas systems in these areas is the difficulty of transporting goods. At this particular point one must use ropes to get up to the top of the pass. </td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYG0jijeoBmMu6SxiT0jO30QuAlEfwYleY8PvloU0gPTUrVyozUr0Gfrc83fmsOzI7-XRxa7ayn9ciogqzzYf-72KR_ExzPEJEKuoqt-jaYYtIfLRFg03LWe1qCrka6lNDVE0NP68IQg/s1600/20120506_103019.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYG0jijeoBmMu6SxiT0jO30QuAlEfwYleY8PvloU0gPTUrVyozUr0Gfrc83fmsOzI7-XRxa7ayn9ciogqzzYf-72KR_ExzPEJEKuoqt-jaYYtIfLRFg03LWe1qCrka6lNDVE0NP68IQg/s320/20120506_103019.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Watching the Sherpas carry 20 liter jugs of kerosene and baskets of fuelwood and an electric generator and other goods I'm not convinced that the difficulty of carrying things is necessarily a major barrier to renewable energy. Last year we brought a vacuum tube solar hot water system to Dingboche and found transporting the 150 liter tank to be not too much of a burden. The glass vacuum tube solar panels can also be successfully carried if they are well packed with plenty of bubble wrap and no more than 7 or 8 are carried by each porter.</td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFYxwAaAruT43RydmnjxIBRzL1_MDIU5m_6qxRVRoG4dSmMg-PQhlllf6GN3eKGFFav6qp_9wqR1jjMrfGbUlKFSTuOOkEpZNNV9c_NvdgWfUCDIiZyVcmHCbMeELq-ciE6AhsASiYhQ/s1600/20120506_130409.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFYxwAaAruT43RydmnjxIBRzL1_MDIU5m_6qxRVRoG4dSmMg-PQhlllf6GN3eKGFFav6qp_9wqR1jjMrfGbUlKFSTuOOkEpZNNV9c_NvdgWfUCDIiZyVcmHCbMeELq-ciE6AhsASiYhQ/s320/20120506_130409.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZThhZa6sZ85briFy4bRCaUlGXrID6KLGDP8os7t7muFN6YT5aziamgpts55I3dV-XjKyPhyphenhyphenYRdXLex9muQQ5BaeENltpOqTie3I6d77_WqyNN9-mNaqAA4OjO09BU-kFS6wW4Tu1VuA/s1600/20120506_203526.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZThhZa6sZ85briFy4bRCaUlGXrID6KLGDP8os7t7muFN6YT5aziamgpts55I3dV-XjKyPhyphenhyphenYRdXLex9muQQ5BaeENltpOqTie3I6d77_WqyNN9-mNaqAA4OjO09BU-kFS6wW4Tu1VuA/s320/20120506_203526.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The tab torch put the test again... with the lights on...</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAsul54MA05egVJbUUg2Y53gmv8c2wJwlEsceOBxhJcTTFmrvpAmvuSz6aNYUb2p1APNkn9vQqzf49rxCD3SuxGXyypJfu5CiPQrBOpemGbRlvSSQAV4tmNabKuCiJK1lTrPgiAikWYg/s1600/20120506_203540.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAsul54MA05egVJbUUg2Y53gmv8c2wJwlEsceOBxhJcTTFmrvpAmvuSz6aNYUb2p1APNkn9vQqzf49rxCD3SuxGXyypJfu5CiPQrBOpemGbRlvSSQAV4tmNabKuCiJK1lTrPgiAikWYg/s320/20120506_203540.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">And with the lights out.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht7F9R41nLR-zfwylqDBmxZbBB8aGQq4kuV4i0eoTOZSu8c3vnTSnqesHJS_SWPtpJx8AOZ_WNMqUhelpBikMFNtf_dAfyX_lEnQVxjyylnfmg0XosA7vEgdMtLHTmPmF3LM0dDq_P0w/s1600/20120507_065703.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht7F9R41nLR-zfwylqDBmxZbBB8aGQq4kuV4i0eoTOZSu8c3vnTSnqesHJS_SWPtpJx8AOZ_WNMqUhelpBikMFNtf_dAfyX_lEnQVxjyylnfmg0XosA7vEgdMtLHTmPmF3LM0dDq_P0w/s320/20120507_065703.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This lodge had two batteries, one for each of their PV panels.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg68SARKKvL6mrGMmMFPiOkVISRqZ6rWw9IUVnFC0H2GUzNleZJqIv5N5ttZym2Qy8Ix5gBueE5iRrv7p7g9JxnbqsBpyIqPzYOYFCRJVjUdhydPC5MDwIbDYS-sLfaw1_u0I6ky6Cgwg/s1600/20120507_065723.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg68SARKKvL6mrGMmMFPiOkVISRqZ6rWw9IUVnFC0H2GUzNleZJqIv5N5ttZym2Qy8Ix5gBueE5iRrv7p7g9JxnbqsBpyIqPzYOYFCRJVjUdhydPC5MDwIbDYS-sLfaw1_u0I6ky6Cgwg/s320/20120507_065723.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The 40 Watt panel was connected to a 120 AH Volta; on the right was a smaller 60 AH battery connected to their 20 watt panel. In these regions people will often have separate PV systems; one for the kitchen and one for room lighting. This larger battery was also used by the lodge owners to power a large stereo system on which they entertained us with songs by Paul Anka.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrRdpzXTh3vBJcziUS76ZiFMgJ-x_oFTIpS-PCGWKo9_M2MqOUzKAuqv4ePuFCPbVw7nmbAlKguiuoC_X_nHZ3cn3yAXnXN2pCP7a4YvqzfjysL65ltnPGOyc41ARuD1rY38U7OQSb1Q/s1600/20120507_065827.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrRdpzXTh3vBJcziUS76ZiFMgJ-x_oFTIpS-PCGWKo9_M2MqOUzKAuqv4ePuFCPbVw7nmbAlKguiuoC_X_nHZ3cn3yAXnXN2pCP7a4YvqzfjysL65ltnPGOyc41ARuD1rY38U7OQSb1Q/s320/20120507_065827.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The lodge had a wire going from the dining hall where the batteries were to the kitchen on the lower left to provide light. Because of the smoke problem, whether burning wood or kerosene, kitchens are usually kept separate, well away from the dining hall.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiwzwQm6RI8XXeEEBN32tfzYSnt1X3r_EbdoVIk8BfHt2ZQB-dBKMNqv6fWQv8lL-WicRbuWQZaA3OgJ2tyjd5Qkd9Epf4OSX3Wh9MAQmRUgJU2cV5RgAEMYXSr9vvbDHGsN3FHDkfjg/s1600/20120507_082851.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiwzwQm6RI8XXeEEBN32tfzYSnt1X3r_EbdoVIk8BfHt2ZQB-dBKMNqv6fWQv8lL-WicRbuWQZaA3OgJ2tyjd5Qkd9Epf4OSX3Wh9MAQmRUgJU2cV5RgAEMYXSr9vvbDHGsN3FHDkfjg/s320/20120507_082851.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Another example of a narrow and slippery pass that makes transporting kerosene, wood and other goods a daily challenge, often fraught with danger. The building of permanent solar heating and biogas facilities would lessen the danger and burden, despite the initial one time difficulty of getting the materials in.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg7VW5iGu1VCJ13DhVqRYsgwjLMrml63RGhwsCCWa1JEDj058-0L9E0VTUlbjS3pzn2oDleT2v26uIgDTwAxK_L1kdMYba9HFNrGu5ZNqpKNfR_mcjDNpiyDZ8Ujn0-NeYpYG_v24TAw/s1600/20120507_103820.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg7VW5iGu1VCJ13DhVqRYsgwjLMrml63RGhwsCCWa1JEDj058-0L9E0VTUlbjS3pzn2oDleT2v26uIgDTwAxK_L1kdMYba9HFNrGu5ZNqpKNfR_mcjDNpiyDZ8Ujn0-NeYpYG_v24TAw/s320/20120507_103820.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The mylar reflective insides of discarded chips bags along the trail and in the garbage pits of the lodges suggest the possibility of creating reflective surfaces for both hand made solar cookers (such as we built in Cairo) and reflective surfaces for walls in the lodges to help keep the heat in. Many people are familiar with the shiny emergency blankets that are used to keep people from freezing; unfortunately this principle of heat reflection is not used in the lodges, so a lot of firewood is burned and a lot of pollution created trying to keep the lodge warm. One of the first recommendations we have to stop deforestation and indoor air pollution is to provide funding and training to insulate the lodges and use reflective surfaces to help keep the heat in. Anrita Sherpa informed lodge owners on this trip that his brother in Naamche has successfully insulated his lodge by putting discarded water bottles in the walls between the stone and the plywood. He suggested that others adopting this strategy of using waste materials to keep the lodges warm and save on fuel.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI84erE4l_TcKvavnRYfL7MSeFfE2jzCZ8kcmlXXlZZXA193Y6s6z69oqWX-0xyzETCWdFefciPKEc5daTXHkJOGR0_xy8cTSXVdXarEf2xWis7Jq2dwMUYSQbWOcTaxCPXahNUBxB0Q/s1600/20120507_110825.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI84erE4l_TcKvavnRYfL7MSeFfE2jzCZ8kcmlXXlZZXA193Y6s6z69oqWX-0xyzETCWdFefciPKEc5daTXHkJOGR0_xy8cTSXVdXarEf2xWis7Jq2dwMUYSQbWOcTaxCPXahNUBxB0Q/s320/20120507_110825.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj__5okGFCgMqVRUGBXGLopFRyvG8sajXs-3taFtyW6u6LMJuEfu9BB4setVWB7JCqz83VemARKF1BGDOvXlWjljzMWex3ohhAs1kboblg1lIs9NYnTUr0grrKi7w5RGMoq6ucXksdEnQ/s1600/20120507_110922.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj__5okGFCgMqVRUGBXGLopFRyvG8sajXs-3taFtyW6u6LMJuEfu9BB4setVWB7JCqz83VemARKF1BGDOvXlWjljzMWex3ohhAs1kboblg1lIs9NYnTUr0grrKi7w5RGMoq6ucXksdEnQ/s320/20120507_110922.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMEeFEn8nRH4ATrugyMs5OV5bAsvDMwsN-nECmg7yUxBeiBf6IBU_9WF9Bj0J5RoxAsvq8iSqgWdo4ADkb50ova5T5F7L0-vqgq29ZjqahFgVzaCYJ_Rb95QeoalxZMC9dsVJxefoZrg/s1600/20120507_110948.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMEeFEn8nRH4ATrugyMs5OV5bAsvDMwsN-nECmg7yUxBeiBf6IBU_9WF9Bj0J5RoxAsvq8iSqgWdo4ADkb50ova5T5F7L0-vqgq29ZjqahFgVzaCYJ_Rb95QeoalxZMC9dsVJxefoZrg/s320/20120507_110948.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Tashi Dale Restaurant in Thaktor takes advantage of its sunny location to provide lighting and charging with its 30 Watt panel.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaBGaodhaal_ZFAto1BXZyPJQ6G1fPEk-mttj6ehtNHsO9pwcKSL0s0oQyIEdIBAcWazIRdyI8x4Vv4T4J_cy2LiTJB7wPDuxFJKYVZDNHyAX_aA-SPKdtFUJrY5rCi_WfAUkrVWeVFQ/s1600/20120507_122816.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaBGaodhaal_ZFAto1BXZyPJQ6G1fPEk-mttj6ehtNHsO9pwcKSL0s0oQyIEdIBAcWazIRdyI8x4Vv4T4J_cy2LiTJB7wPDuxFJKYVZDNHyAX_aA-SPKdtFUJrY5rCi_WfAUkrVWeVFQ/s320/20120507_122816.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Doma Lodge is also equipped with a small solar panel...</td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhllH1EIqRm59Ec7xkYPY_Eqn3U3m7SwJuXLyWvcCnhRk8xQUbIJrDpE0ZFr-E9YWUVF30IS_3W4-3xh3zuMG9v2maedbMIbXtQYzYeqgkTaPDL1Qgt6ePJETREk9MG43WcBiAYZoPnFw/s1600/20120507_122828.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhllH1EIqRm59Ec7xkYPY_Eqn3U3m7SwJuXLyWvcCnhRk8xQUbIJrDpE0ZFr-E9YWUVF30IS_3W4-3xh3zuMG9v2maedbMIbXtQYzYeqgkTaPDL1Qgt6ePJETREk9MG43WcBiAYZoPnFw/s320/20120507_122828.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A wire from the main building supplies the electricity to the kitchen and dining area.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ5LKgV1EStjXWUDbwIwRN1IXAOc8T7dq86TdUTp3hIRSFCWgMbpeWAUJF2rPBOD8Mer01amBHtu7YXxx4m53zQJ1ZSgSiLnmPuACOLXEMpjEmT4LJiAOPU79jTL2vikAvsZeaZ1dc9A/s1600/20120507_132359.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ5LKgV1EStjXWUDbwIwRN1IXAOc8T7dq86TdUTp3hIRSFCWgMbpeWAUJF2rPBOD8Mer01amBHtu7YXxx4m53zQJ1ZSgSiLnmPuACOLXEMpjEmT4LJiAOPU79jTL2vikAvsZeaZ1dc9A/s320/20120507_132359.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">In some locations, like this small tea shop in the forest, a solar panel is brought out during the day and set in the sunniest location. This shows us that one can not necessarily judge the amount of PV in an area simply by looking at rooftops. We found the same situation in Dingboche last year; there Sonam had some PV on his roof but also had a large panel of about 100 Watts that he would put out in the courtyard each day. This also makes sense if one is worried about theft of the larger more expensive panels. </td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrlGg0bOPF5t2jSLd_Lac_tVOkFvJefp7EzjwXaM6OQ4D8s8L3V1mrsf0Qj95lChQWh6CVV_wLyyHtGr68jB3m1tpfQExuP-8NHHh_XVSyA3dR1PAx9Dj9ZizK2ZLfUxXcKDx6k4XZLQ/s1600/20120507_135138.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrlGg0bOPF5t2jSLd_Lac_tVOkFvJefp7EzjwXaM6OQ4D8s8L3V1mrsf0Qj95lChQWh6CVV_wLyyHtGr68jB3m1tpfQExuP-8NHHh_XVSyA3dR1PAx9Dj9ZizK2ZLfUxXcKDx6k4XZLQ/s320/20120507_135138.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b></b><b>Khote</b><br />
<br />
The rest of the pictures in this post are of the village of Khote where we spent a couple of days. It is at the entrance to the National Park and is the first big staging ground for trekkers heading up to Mera Peak. As such it has many lodges which need to use a lot of wood and kerosene to provide heat and cooking fuel to trekkers staying there.<br />
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<b>Khote has 5 lodges:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Mera Lodge, Lama Lodge, Namaste Lodge, Himalayan Lodge and Barunstse
Lodge</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">. </span><b>The village has
approximately 465 Watts of installed PV power.</b><span style="font-weight: normal;"></span></div>
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Khote energy survey Tuesday May 8<sup>th</sup> 2012, 9:50
AM.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Village has sufficient water
pressure for solar hot water but there is none installed. </div>
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1)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span>Namaste Lodge (beneath which we camped). Chimney and
Chulo;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>offers “battery charge
available” and “hot shower” (which is a 20 liter plastic bucket with a spigot
elevated in the stone and wood shower room). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They have 3 PV panels, two 30 Watt panels and 1 15 Watt
panel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They also have a greenhouse
down by the river that gets very warm on sunny days, well over 40 C; too hot to
stay in for long.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They also have
pit latrine by river; no concept of compost toilet operation.</div>
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2)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span>Lama Lodge: Back boiler. 1 30 Watt moncrystalline panel, pole
mounted, 1 20 Watt think film panel, horizontal on the main stove
building.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Offers STD/ISD Local
call service and mobile charger point available. An additional<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>30 Watt Monocrystaline PV on room and
another 30 W panel on dining hall across the stream.</div>
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3)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span>Mera Lodge: Chula , 2 30 Watt PV, one on each side of the
building on a pole mount</div>
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4)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span>Noname: Chula</div>
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5)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span>Himalayan View:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Chimney, Chula, 1 15 Watt monocrystaline on office, 1 30 W PV monocrystalline
on left side of building top, 1 50 W PV panel mounted horizontal on the center
top of the roof.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>1 30 W
monocrystalline panel on Mera Pins Conservation group bulding by the river</div>
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6)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span>Varunje: Chimney and Chulo; 1 20 W monocrystalline PV</div>
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7)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span>Kulung: Chimney and Chulo, offers camera and mobile battery
charging<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>for 200 Rs per hour. Has
2 15 W monocrystalline PV panels</div>
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8)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span>Wholesale shop: Chulo</div>
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9)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span>Makalu Shop: Chimney and Chulo, has 1 15 W monocrystalline
panel</div>
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10)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span>Ramila Hotel and Lodge: Chulo; 1 15 W monocrystalline panel</div>
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11)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span>Mingma: Chulo; 1 15 W monocrystalline panel</div>
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Hotel Sumana has no PV</div>
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At Lama Lodge we meet<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Yang Ji, Ang Babu Sherpa and Duma Sherpa who run the lodge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We also meet their brother, Kami
Sherpa, who runs the Climber’s World Lodge in Khare.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He tells us “there are no trees up in Khare like there are
here so we only use wood for space heating.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They cook with kerosene.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He has a Solar Cooker though, so that helps!”</div>
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Lama lodge is the only lodge in the Hinku Valley with a
“backboiler” (“Pani Ta Taung ne Yantra”)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>which has a heat exchanger pipe that enables it to heat a tank of water
while cooking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They paid 17,000 Rs
($ 212.50) for it with transport.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It would cost 10,000 Rs. In Kathmandu where it is manufactured ($125.00)
so the transport costs for this heavy steel item are not trivial but comprise
almost half the installed cost.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
is made in Jaulakel we are told, but there are many factories.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They have not hooked it up yet; pipes
would cost an additional 3000 Rs ($37.50), with a 200 liter water tank costing
another 3000 Rs (a 100 liter tank would be about 2000 Rs or $25).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They intend to hook it up when they
have more money however.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Still,
according to tk from Practical Action<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“backboilers aren’t always that effective in extreme highlands.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What happens is that the cold water
going through the pipes in the heat exchanger at the top of the stove can keep
the air going into the chimney from heating up sufficiently for the afterburn
so they can have incomplete combustion. This can lead to a more smokey
burn.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Better engineering needs to
be explored to make these have the efficiency of an improved cookstove although
it might be argued that the savings in fuel from both cooking and heating water
offsets these inefficiencies. The addition of a fan, which the Lama Lodge back
boiler has, can help with this situation by creating the proper updraft which
the cold water pipes slow down. </div>
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In terms of Kerosene use we learn that each tank uses 5
liters of Kerosene, and is sufficient for cooking for 10-12 people. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With a guest load of 40 people They need
about 15 liters a day (5 liters times 3).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>With us they brought 6 20 liters kerosene jugs. They brought 4 from
Lukla and 2 were purchased from Khote.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>So we had 120 liters weighing about 120 kg, requiring 4 porters at 30 kg
per porter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lama Lodge tells us
that they consume about 20 loads of wood per season.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They listed their priorities as:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
1)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span>Improve firewood use</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
2)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span>More electricity for lighting and charging electronics</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
3)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span>Insulation.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They said they were familiar with the concept of biogas but
believed that without animals they couldn’t do it. The Hinku Valley doesn’t as
much of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a Yak culture as the
Khumbu (though we photographed a Yak all the way up in Khare). There was no awareness
of food-scrap based biogas. They were also unfamiliar with the concept of
Greenhouse heating or compost heating, though there was a warm greenhouse
belonging to another lodge down by the river.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Also, unlike Sherpa’s on the Khumbu trails, who grow
potatoes and use fertilizer they create with their own composting toilets,
there was no awareness of compost toilet technology and the toilets were pit
latrines always located down by the river.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Lama Lodge had 1 65 AH and 1 70 AH Trojan battery. They had
a 30 Watt Monocrystalline panel and 1 think film panel. They had a small charge
controller and a light string to the kitchen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>said wood
was their first fuel with Kerosene a second priority.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By 14:43 PM in mist and cloud we were at 0.66 Amps or 12
Watts, but when phone is added to load it bounces up to 0.73 and then to .86
and up to 1.01 Amp at 16:53, showing that loads can determine how much current
a PV panel puts out.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With our 200 Watt solar panel (3 X 68 W Energy Technologies
Inc. Tactical Solar Panel by Uni Solar)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>charging in full sun our demand was 6.5 amps. When cloud covered the sun
the reading dropped to 4.5 amps.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In bright cloud we are still getting 5.56 amps. It seems we can get 50%
of the rated capacity of this thin film triple junction panel in cloudy
conditions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At 4:36 we are getting
1.16 amps which is about 25 watts, so a bit more than 10%. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Marcel’s 75 Watt foldable crystal panel puts out 4.4 amps in
bright sun and 1.2 amps in cloud; 25% of ourput. 0.9 amp in thick cloud so
about 18W or 20%.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
May 7:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We
demonstrate hydrogen production from Aluminum tab set up with urine using wood
ash as alakali.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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