In the Shit! – Work at the FS2BD starts to really get “down and dirty”
WORLD’S DIRTY JOBS – GHANA EDITION
After using a few thousand liters of rumen to inoculate our digesters back in November and December, we found it necessary to transfer the contents to the second train in order to shovel out the cellulosic material that would take too long to break down and was starting to clog up the system.
NOT FOR THE SQUEAMISH
Although the material that was shoveled and bucketed out was mostly rumen and not feces, it certainly had some of both and was a dirty endeavor.
PILES OF “SOLIDS”
You can see that the material removed from the digesters looked more like cow manure than human manure – full of grass undigested by the cow or our digesters. We call these “solids”, you might call them something else.
WILL WONDERS NEVER CEASE?
After spending over seven weeks in customs in Ghana, a shipment of 2 inch plumbing parts that was ordered in February finally reached us in May. It can not be overstated that trying to accomplish routine tasks in Africa can take much, much, much longer than you’d think.
ADVISORY BOARD MEETING REDUX
We had another very productive meeting of our project’s Advisory Board in May. We returned to the same hotel conference room we used last August for our two-day agenda. These meetings have been one of the most rewarding aspects of our project – a roomful of intelligent, dedicated professionals and students working towards common goals, aimed at making the world a better place.
NEW TOYS!
With the arrival of all that 2 inch hardware, we now had the ability to implement our long awaited larger piping on our fecal sludge delivery system. This first meant moving a couple thousand liters of (precious!) water from one of the tanks to be retrofit into a smaller water tank. While filling we found a couple of small tree frogs living in the previously empty tank.
AND THEN THE REAL FUN BEGAN
After transferring water from the 10,000 liter Tank 2 (big white one on the right), we proceeded to drill two 3 inch holes in each of the two 10,000 liter tanks to install the new 2 inch bulkhead fittings. As you can see, Tank 1 (the one we’ve been using for incoming fecal sludge) had some pretty solid material in the bottom. Since we couldn’t pump it out though the 1 inch fitting we previously were limited to, it meant that we got to drill into it and deal with the consequence – objectively proving the old adage that “shit flows downhill.”
BRAND NEW BETTER FITTINGS
Aren’t they gorgeous? These will make our jobs a lot easier – particularly the camlok fittings. We now will begin work to design and construct 2 inch loading manifolds and piping – thankfully with material that came in the same order.
TEAMWORK
As you can see by the smiles on the Fermentation Team’s faces, although they have a smelly workplace, teamwork is rewarding.
TOYS R US
Team Fermentation installed two of the four valves by themselves after learning the basics of holesaw and bulkhead fittings from Bob. This is another one of the rewards of these kind of projects – the chance to get hands on learning that may prove useful later in life.
WHO DOESN’T LIKE TO PLAY WITH FIRE?
At the end of a long day of installing new fittings, the guys wanted to perform some qualitative testing of our generated biogas. They take gas samples from four digesters twice a week for rigorous quantitative testing. Yes – the methane content is high enough to support continuous combustion.
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