We were dearly missing Vesa and Konrad on March 10th meeting, other than this had a board full of notes again. In a planning curve after few talks with Nassib and a few turns of discussion we set a new objective that might sound like:
Provide technical guidelines for the Phase 1 of Rock Village construction with 1 family inhabiting the area. Final aim is an involving way to present concepts of eco-conscious and sustainable farming on the exemplary case of 1 family farming.
With these two objectives on our mind we set following directions for the result:
1. Smallest possible biogas plant
Sakari has managed to find an example from 2002, where Indian family has nearly managed to cover the cooking gas production utilizing bio waste from their cattle. Six chicken and one pig have produced just enough manure (aka "animal poop") to feed 610L gas plant reactor (daily need for water input 11L). Resulting with 0,699 m3/day of gas used in the kitchen (with a daily need about 0,850 m3 - Not too bad!). 1L of water takes about 0,04m3 of gas to boil, for example.
In fact, using anaerobic digester plant for direct gas production is not the most efficient way of utilizing it's capacity. More reasonable solutions come with use of the plant to generate energy and heat. However in the small-scale case the input of the manure might be not enough to sustain the energy level. When does it become efficient? This is one of the questions we will look into. Sakari promised to produce an Exel with the book-values on animal manure production that can calculate how many animals and of which kind would produce enough material for the plant to grow.
Requirements to begin with seem pretty basic: container for manure, container for the gas, a little batch of other equipment and water added regularly. However there are specific conditions that the plant would need, such as permanent temperature about 30-40C. Given set up of 6 chicken and 1 pig was enough to keep the plant running which keeps us optimistic about the possibility to suggest it for the Phase 1 area development. Some agriculture waste can as well be used to run the plant, but this input has its limits and will not be the main one. Number of productivity vary a lot in real life and can not be fully predicted mathematically.
To run the digester plant you need a special sort of seed sludge (anaerobic bacteria). There is a functioning reactor in Beirut and getting in touch with them Rock Village may acquire a scoop of the material sufficient for the stage 1 little container.
2. Use of grey water in irrigation
Nassib has mentioned this topic as particularly desired one. Ville will look into the filtering techniques used in Finland, as they seem to function pretty well. Vesa should take a look into small scale grey water irrigation solutions.
The very basic idea of the grey water reuse system is a basin connected to the kitchen drain and collecting the dumped water.
3. Solar panels
It was made clear to us that self-sustaining is not the aim of the project. What matters is to provide a spectrum of techniques and concepts that could illustrate local farmers the opportunity of running households in the way not harmful for environment. As solar panels are getting cheaper we thought that Konrad and Axel may take a look into the small scale solutions in this field. Quite possibly we can find a lot of data in previous Aalto studies on this account, but the situation in this field is changing so fast, that more relevant studies could have been made.
Nassib explained that since the area is still under the stress of uneasy political tension any big energy plant is seen as a potential problem. Solution we propose should be more on the household level.
WORK SCHEDULE
for tasks outlined above
17.03 — studies on the small scale functionality should be presented to the group on the next meeting
24.03 — before this group meeting we should forward our mid-way report to Nassib to check if we are on the right way and hear more insight in response. Feedback would be good to get before 28.04 so we can react fast enough before the review we have in the class.
31.03 —Mid-review in the class.
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