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Reuben and his gang from Beta Construction are getting things done at our site. <\/p>\n TWELVE TANKS TO PLAY WITH The heart of the fermentation side of our project is the array of twelve 10,000 liter cement digester tanks. This is where we will conduct pilot scale experiments on the effects of fermentation techniques on saponifiable lipid generation and extraction from fecal sludge- FUN! <\/p>\n THE GATES OF FECAL HELL Current sanitation practice in Kumasi is to dump the untreated fecal sludge into “ponds” that were purpose-built at the Dompoase landfill site. The is a far cry better than what happens in other cities in West Africa, where untreated sludge is discharged directly into the ocean or waterways where it is responsible for many waterborne diseases. The retention time in these ponds allows for the sludge to undergo decomposition, although with no resource recovery. Over 100 trucks of fecal sludge per day arrive at this site. We are working on ways to recover resources form this stuff. <\/p>\n THE PROJECT LAB AT KNUST This is our lab at Dr. Mensah’s house on the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) campus. We have a small lab space with a fume hood where we are performing bench scale experiments, and a small office connected to it where we can set up our computers to work. This arrangement allows us 24\/7 access <\/p>\n HERE COMES THE SLUDGE! These sludge drying beds are on the KNUST campus and service a few of the residence halls. On the right, Jeremy works in the lab with some of the lipids that have been isolated from the sludge. <\/p>\n DR. MENSAH’S OTHER RENEWABLE ENERGY PROJECTS Dr, Moses Mensah is our teammate from the Chemical Engineering Department at KNUST. Here he is showing Bob a cyclonic burn chamber that her has used to get more efficient combustion for his activated charcoal processing unit. On the right is the pyrolysis unit that he constructed to produce activated charcoal out of palm nut shells. <\/p>\n FS2BD PROJECT MEETING MIXER Our entire project team was invited to a mixer on the opening night of our two and a half day meetings. We met poolside at the Royal Lamerta Hotel for introductions and drinks. On the left, Justin, Martin, Johannes, Wilson, Jeremy, Alyse and Helen listen to the intros. The next morning, we all piled into a tro-tro (van) for a visit to our plant site at the Dompoase landfill. Dr. Mensah, our friend\/driver Eric, and Jeremy are making sure everyone is aboard. <\/p>\n TRO MATE Every tro has a mate to make sure everyone is aboard, has paid, and to open and close the door. Since Jeremy plans on starting his own tro fleet in the future, he is training as mate now. We arrived at the fecal sludge ponds where our plant is located, you can see an incoming truck of poop making its way to the dump site. <\/p>\n PROJECT TEAM AT THE PLANT SITE The team took a tour of the site which is rapidly taking shape. The plan is to accept the first truck of sludge at the end of September, just in time for some of our birthdays! <\/p>\n INCOMING!<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n On the left is a shot of the incoming gate to the digesters, as clean as they’ll ever be. On the right is a plume of incoming sludge to one of the current sludge ponds next to our plant. <\/p>\n WHAT A SITE! We can’t wait to start running pilot scale experiments in our new plant. On the right is a look inside one of the three sand filters that will final treat effluent water prior to discharge. <\/p>\n SHOW & TELL We all climbed down and looked into the bellies of the digesters. Kartik seemed pleased with the progress. <\/p>\n WATCH YOUR STEP <\/strong> Bob, Wilson, Martin, and Johannes had a closer look at the sand filters. You can see the current landfill cell behind the guys in the picture on the left. <\/p>\n TEAM BUILDING EXERCISE No big get-together would be complete without a team building exercise. Ours was an impromptu clean-up of our muddy shoes prior to going back into our meeting room. <\/p>\n CLOSING CEREMONIES We ended our multi-day meeting with a fabulous dinner at Jofel in Kumasi. The entire team gathered for a group photo. Front row from left to right: Bernadette, Tony, Kartik, Wisdom, Ashley, Moses, Joanne, Alyse, Helen, and Camille. Back row from left to right: Wilson, Tim, Justin, Martin, Emmanuel, Johannes, Edward, Jeremy, John, Amit, and Bob ____________________________________________________________<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n ____________________________________________________________<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" <\/p>\n Fecal Sludge to Biodiesel Plant Construction <\/p>\n <\/p>\n DIGESTER PLUMBING <\/p>\n \n Reuben and his gang from Beta Construction are getting things done at our site. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n TWELVE TANKS TO PLAY WITH <\/p>\n \n The heart of the fermentation side […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1198,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[110,33],"class_list":["post-1131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sub-story","tag-fs2bd","tag-kumasi","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/troutsfarmtoo.com\/latest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/troutsfarmtoo.com\/latest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/troutsfarmtoo.com\/latest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/troutsfarmtoo.com\/latest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/troutsfarmtoo.com\/latest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1131"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/troutsfarmtoo.com\/latest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1201,"href":"https:\/\/troutsfarmtoo.com\/latest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1131\/revisions\/1201"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/troutsfarmtoo.com\/latest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/troutsfarmtoo.com\/latest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/troutsfarmtoo.com\/latest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/troutsfarmtoo.com\/latest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/troutsfarmtoo.com\/latest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/20120802Overview.jpg\" "\\"20120802Overview\\"")
<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0![\"\"](\"https:\/\/troutsfarmtoo.com\/latest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/20120802DigesterCrew.jpg\" "\\"20120802DigesterCrew\\"")
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