\u00a0 We discovered a leak at the top of the gas collector in digester 7. It turns out that the threaded plastic fitting at the top of the gas collector had been broken before installation and was “repaired” in a less than satisfactory manner – basically with baling wire.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n ALWAYS A GOOD TIME AT DOMPOASE!<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n We always manage to have some real fun at the site. Eric is spraying weed killer in an attempt to stay ahead of the expolive growth of bush fueled by fecal sludge fertilizer and the onset of the rainy season. Justin brought his girlfriend Miki out while she was in Ghana – he sure knows how to show a girl a good time!<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n SUAME MAGAZINE REDUX<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n What month would be complete without a trip to Suame Magazine? Well, April was no exception – Bob and Rob ventured to Suame to pick up screens they had fabricated to screen incoming material and to assess progress on the reactor tank.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n MONTAL’S ENGINEERING @ SUAME MAGAZINE<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Montali runs a busy metal fabrication shop in the heart of the magazine. His main product is commercial gas bread ovens but he and his shop is capable of building just about anything out of metal. On the right is one of the two incoming screens we had designed and built.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n REACTOR IN PROCESS<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n This is our 120 gallon stainless steel reactor we are having built. It’s conical bottom allows for complete drainage.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n LET THERE BE LIGHTS!<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Our 20kW genset is finally wired up and running. John Agyeman and his crew did the wiring which supplies 240 volt single phase power to the office\/lab and 240 volt 3 phase power to the production floor. The generator itself puts out 400 volts, as you can plainly see on the voltmeter.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n WHO COULD HAVE PREDICTED THAT INFILL WOULD SETTLE?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Although it’s a bit hard to see in this photo, the ground around our sand filters has subsided a good \u00a0four inches (so far.) This occurs when you don’t properly compact the soil in layers when backfilling. The result is cracked piping on all three filters making backflushing for maintenance impossible. The result – three clogged sand filters. On the right you can see the flow of water that should be full of solids if backflushing was to be successful. Due to the gross undersizing of the backflushing pump, there is no chance this system is going to work as designed and built. Retrofit is in process.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n SAND FILTERS – POORLY DESIGNED AND CONSTRUCTED<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Sand filters, when properly designed work great. Ours, unfortunately, were not well designed by the Ghanaian engineering firm who did the work before we came on project. So it goes. This is not a major impediment to our project, just one more thing to work on. On the right you can see a \u00a0fine screen on the foot valve at the bottom of the pipe (1 inch!) that was to pull solids off the bottom of these 2 meter diameter tanks – as if! We pulled the screens off to allow solids to flow through the grossly undersized pipe – which should (probably) have been 3 inch minimum. Also note the fine concrete work which Ghanaians are known for.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n OVER 100 YEARS OF EXPERIENCE<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Yep, the seasoned professionals are on hand for giving sage advice and demonstrations of troubleshooting prowess while the young guys (and the trash pumps) get most of the work done. Rob came out for two weeks onsite and helped us get over some of this months technical hurdles.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n THAT JUSTIN IS ALWAYS WORKING!<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n He is becoming well-versed in the fine art of routinely moving big liquids around.<\/span><\/p>\n ____________________________________________________________<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n ____________________________________________________________<\/span> April found us finally flowing fecal sludge at the “design flow rate”. This was real progress and the beginning of overcoming operational “gotchas.” <\/p>\n <\/p>\n IT”S ALWAYS SOMETHING…<\/p>\n \n We discovered a leak at the top of the gas collector in digester 7. It turns out that the threaded […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4088,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sub-story","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/troutsfarmtoo.com\/latest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3828","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=3828"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/troutsfarmtoo.com\/latest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4224,"href":"https:\/\/troutsfarmtoo.com\/latest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3828\/revisions\/4224"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/troutsfarmtoo.com\/latest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/troutsfarmtoo.com\/latest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/troutsfarmtoo.com\/latest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/troutsfarmtoo.com\/latest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/troutsfarmtoo.com\/latest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/20130403BrokenConnectionDigestor.jpg\")
<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n[Latest]<\/a>\u00a0* [Troutsfarm]<\/a>\u00a0* [At Home]<\/a> * [Food Abundance]<\/a> * [FS2BD April]<\/a> * [Stumble Inn]<\/a> * [Elmina and Cape Coast]<\/a> * [Kakum Canopy Walk]<\/a> * [Rob’s Ghana Photos]<\/a> * [Party at Konongo]<\/a><\/h4>\n
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"