Installing a biodigester

A big part of my SIT program is service learning projects and experiential learning. aka I get credit to stand in ankle deep mud(?? hopefully mud, very possibly could have been something else)... 

Pretty sure my shoveling ability is calculated into
my final grade. A+ probably

For all those who don't know what is a biodigester is– it's a contraption that digests organic material into renewable gas, mainly used for cooking. I'm not judging if you didn't know what is was because I had a foggy definition of it until a few weeks ago and, as you can tell from the following text, am still no expert. Anyways, in our case, the organic material that is funneled through is pig and human waste. Cool. So there are two main parts to the biodigester: the compost bag, and the methane bag. The first task we had was to line a long, thick plastic bag, with two more long, thick plastic bags. This functions as the compost chamber. We eventually set this unit of bags into a trench that we dug. One end of the bag has a wide pipe where the decomposable waste is funneled through. This organic material slowly moves through the bag, decomposing and creating a biogas. The total retention time is about fifty days, so the organic material is in there for a while, the bag isn't terribly long: probably about thirty feet, so the waste is just slowly moving–  the longer the organic material decomposes the more biogas that is created. This biogas rises to the top and is piped to the methane bag. The gas is then ready to be used as fuel for cooking and lighting. The family saves approximately 300,000 – 500,000 dong per month. Big money! Besides the economic incentives, there are a lot of benefits of a biodigester: like environmental sustainability, improved hygiene, and reduction of workload for farmers– especially the women who are responsible for gathering fuel. It is hard to explain the process because I am most definitely not a science person, but hopefully everyone gets the picture of what a biodigester does. An additional plus of the biodigester, after the manure reaches the system's output it is an organic fertilizer that is used both in the gardens and as food for fish. This particular biodigester will last for five years, possibly ten if the farmers do a good job with the upkeep of the system. Even though it wasn't the most pleasant work (the first time I went into the mud an eel slithered by my feet– I may or may not have let out a little scream, I mean what sort of eel lives in water that muddy?) it was, and still is, gratifying to know that what we accomplished is long-term and will improve the family's quality of life AND it is sustainable. It's a win-win.

securing the pipe

the pipe that funnels the waste into the compost
bag where the magic happens

This post is about two weeks late– we installed the biodigester on our second to last day in Hoa An. I really didn't want to post anything about it until I had pictures and I didn't bring my camera with me that day. Fortunately, Mikala did. And lucky for Mikala, her camera is waterproof so when she fell into sparkling clean (haha joke) water with her camera still attached to her wrist it was a-okay. So this post is delayed because I just now had time to get the photos, and by "just now had time" I actually mean that I decided to stop being lazy. I don't know why but this whole week I have been so sluggish with school, emailing, and blogging. Thank goodness it is FRIDAY.