Climate Change and All Our Gas

I cannot say that I am a great believer in global warming, but at the same time, I do not deny that climate change may be taking place. It happens, it has always happened and it always will. We, the human race, may be helping the climate to change, but it would probably happen without our help.

Our world, all the other worlds in the Universe, the Universe itself is governed by laws – the laws of physics, chemistry, biology and maths. We haven’t figured out all these laws yet, but they are there. They are what we call nature. They are natural laws and cannot be bent or broken.

Hmm! I am off-topic already!

So back to gas.

Methane gas is a naturally occurring substance. It is formed when organic matter rots, and it escapes to atmosphere. The problem with methane is that it is 20 times more potent as a “greenhouse” gas than carbon dioxide, but we hear little about it. We all produce it, but all we hear about are references to cows farting methane. In fact, they don’t, they burp it.

The other difference between methane and carbon dioxide it that it burns. I am sure many of you have seen vents sticking out of landfill sites with a flame at the  top, burning off the methane from deep underground.

So, we have a gas, a naturally occurring gas, being produced all around us, twenty times more “dangerous” than CO2, but we do nothing with it!

It could be collected and used. In sufficient quantities, it could be used to fuel a power station. It is, after all the main constituent of natural gas that we pump up from deep underground.

On a smaller scale, we could capture this gas and use it for cooking, by collecting our organic waste rather than just leaving it to allow it to rot and pass methane to the atmosphere.

If all the organic waste that can be seen strewn along the roads of many Kenyan towns were to be collected and treated, the town would have a very cheap source of power that could run a generator or water pumps, or it could be bottled and sold for cooking.

At a smaller community level, methane collectors can provide an excellent fuel for cooking, clean, no smoke or particulates to irritate lungs and eyes.

And when methane is burned, it produces CO2 and water. So we reduce a gas with a potency factor of 20 to a gas with a potency factor of 1.

Now that’s got to be good for the environment.

No more cutting down of trees for fuel or charcoal.

And that’s got to be good for the environment, too!

Off to Kenya – Again!

I am travelling to Kenya on 11th November for a month. It will be good to see friends in Kisii.

More importantly, I hope to get a full-size anaerobic digester built and working on this trip. I need to find out how much gas (in cubic metres) my design will produce in a day. I know that 1 cu.m is enough for cooking the daily food for a family of 5-6 people.

But I have had enquiries for commercial applications, that is, to supply gas for places such as game lodges, with several kitchens and a need for hot water. This project, which started out as a way to stop trees from being felled for firewood looks like it could turn commercial!

It would not be a bad thing to find a commercial use for digesters, but I had not given that side of it much thought. After all, I am not really a businessman. Commercial potential for a project has to be dangled before me before I can see it.

But now, I am going to have to look  at our other projects to see if there is any commercial potential in those. Somehow I doubt it, but I am now looking at things from a different angle. I am trying to take off the blinkers of a tool-using thing-maker and look at things from a business perspective.

Trees, Charcoal and Rain

Once again I read that Africa is suffering because people are cutting trees for fuel and to produce charcoal. Generally, the charcoal production is illegal, but this can be sorted out with a back-hander – no change there then.

From what I have seen and heard on my trips to Kenya, the solar cooker, which can be made for pennies, are very efficient, but do not fit in with the East African psyche, they take too long to cook a meal. From my observations, it seems that Kenyans like to prepare and eat with little or no gap in between. So they need an instant heat source to cook on, wood, charcoal, kerosene or, if they are modern (and can afford it) butane gas.

So, trees will continue to be decimated until an alternative instant fuel is found, that is acceptable to those who have to use it.

You can read an article on the BBC website here

I have been working on methane collector design for a while now and have come up with a version that is easy and cheap to construct, and easy to use.

My contention is that if butane is acceptable, then so is methane. The difference is that methane occurs naturally, and to collect it is a simple matter. It is FREE!

Looking at its use ecologically, burning methane forms water and CO2, which is a good thing. Why? Because methane is 20 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2, so it is far more acceptable to have CO2 floating around rather than methane, isn’t it?

But most people living in rural East Africa are not interested in that, they are too busy surviving.

So, what about the charcoal makers? They will not be happy seeing their livlihood disappearing as people convert to methane for cooking.

So, show them how to make methane collectors, install them and maintain them. Yes, they need maintaining. A 45 gallon methane collector will produce gas for about six months before it needs refurbishing. But, the by-product is fertiliser, just what is needed on a shamba.

So, to recap:

• Methane is free
• Using methane saves trees
• A methane collector produces fertiliser
• Using methane helps to eliminate a potent greenhouse gas that would normally escape to atmosphere.
• Methane is a clean fuel, so there are no particulates to irritate and inflame eyes and lungs.
• Charcoal producers can be easily trained to make, install and maintain methane collectors, so they will not lose their income. In fact, with a little persuasion, maybe they will even promote the use of methane.

Methane can also be used as an alternative to petrol, so it will run a generator or water pump.

What is the next step?

KCIS has produced a working model. We can produce free methane. We are willing to spread the word.

We have contacted various charities and NGOs who are supposed to be interested in saving trees and protecting the water catchment areas. What is their response?

NOTHING!

If you are interested in saving trees in Kenya, contact us. We will work with anyone who is serious about making people’s lives better in Kenya, or even East Africa.

Also published at Baba Mzungu’s blog

Careers Advice Isn’t What It Used To Be

I went to a good school, a state-aided grammar-style, guild school. OK, so it was in east London, the Cray brothers were just around the corner, but all that meant to a schoolboy was that he was pretty safe on the streets. For all their brutality, the Crays did not tolerate anyone who harmed kids, or so I was told.

But that is not what this blog is about. As I said, I went to a good school – and I managed to make the very least of it, escaping with just three passes at G.C.E. ‘O’ level, English, French and Maths.

In that last term of school, we were all paraded before the Careers Advisor, who just happened to be our geography teacher.

It went something like this:

Ah, BabaMzungu. You father is in banking, is he not?

He was, Sir. he died in January.

Well, I suggest you get in touch with his colleagues and play on their sympathy to follow your father’s footsteps. There is little hope for you anywhere else.

Thank you, Sir.

Next!

That was really helpful. I was not asked if I had any aspirations, interests, ambition. It was assumed that, because I had not done well in my exams, I had none of the above. But he was wrong.

Since I was a small boy, I had always been fascinated by Africa. Initially, I wanted to be an explorer, like Livingstone (as well as being a policeman, like most little boys). My fascination with Africa is still with me.

In the event, upon leaving school, I went into an engineering apprenticeship and I found that I had an aptitude for it. I actually enjoyed college, and became a tool-using thing-maker as well as a half-decent draftsman. Mr Careers Advisor didn’t foresee that, did he?

After the apprenticeship, I fulfilled my boyhood dream – no, not becoming an explorer – I joined the police. I was helping society, serving a community. I liked this. But I didn’t like the reams of paperwork. I wanted to be out on the streets, not pushing a pen in an office. So, after six years, I left, totally disillusioned.

But, I did learn something in the police. I learned observation – and I haven’t forgotten it. Even now, 30 years later, I observe, and  then I study.

My first real opportunity to observe something different was during an extended visit to South Africa. It was during the apartheid era when Africans were herded into townships, existing, not living. And I observed. Then I noted. I brought my notes home and with the advent of the Internet, I researched. I wrote a book.

So, I have been a school drop-out, apprentice engineer, policeman, engineer (again) and IT consultant. But, all this time, I should have been a social anthropologist. It’s too late now.

Too late to be a “proper” social anthropologist, but … when I conceive, research, design and build a system to do something useful in Kenya, I have some idea of what is acceptable to the people I am designing it for, and what is not.

And another thing … I met up with three pals from school a few years back. Two of us were considered no-hopers. We have both lived and worked in several countries. We have travelled (and I am not talking about 2 weeks in Majorca, although I have done that as well), we have seen the world.

The other two got good exam results and have never lived more than 20 miles from the school we all attended.

Cheap Diesel

I am lucky enough [?] to drive  a diesel-powered car in the UK. It is not powerful, nor is it a recent model, but it gets me from where I am to where I want to be and back again in comfort.

But it drinks diesel like a fish drinks water, mainly because it is fitted with much smaller tyres than it was originally designed for.

So, last Spring, I decided to supplement pump diesel with the contents of my deep-fat fryer. This gives me about 3 litres of clean fuel every two to three weeks. After I have processed it, I mix it with diesel, depending on the ambient air temperature. In the height of the UK Summer, I got away with a 50/50 mix, but in Spring and Autumn, I drop ot back to 25% bio to 75% pump diesel, and in Winter, I use 100% pump diesel.

This is because bio emulsifies at a relatively high temperature and will clog up the works in a typical UK Winter.

However, this would not be a problem in warmer climes, such as Kenya. So when KCIS eventually gets itself organised enough to actually own a vehicle, we will be getting a diesel, and we will run it on a bio-diesel mix.

If we can find a major source of used cooking oil (just how many fast food outlets are there in Nairobi?), we may be able to produce enough to pass on our excess to the likes of KWS, Rhino Ark, the UN (but not for their petrol-guzzling Hummers) and any other organisations running fuel-hungry diesel 4×4s.

It will be a lot cheaper than pump diesel and performance is not compromised.

Clean Water – design finished – Part II

I woke up in the middle of the night with a design feature bouncing around between my ears.

Although the water purification plant was finished on paper, there was something niggling at me.

Last night, it came to me and I had the presence of mind to have a pad and pencil next to my bed – for once.

The system is now easier to build, the filters are easier to clean, and the cleaned water easier to extract.

Now, that was worth waking up for.

Clean Water – Design Finished

In my capacity as the Tool-using Thing-maker for Kenyan Community Initiative Support, I have been working on a design for a cheap, easy to build, easy to use water purification plant for use at household or small community level.

Well, the design stage is finally finished, and it will work.

The design allows for modification so that easily available materials can be used to keep the cost down.

So I’m ready to roll – just need the funding (as ever!)

Turbo? What Turbo?

2.3 litre, turbo-diesel Surf

I have had another play with my sick Toyota Surf. The symptoms are simple, drive along with a light foot (so the turbo does not kick in) and it goes like a dream. Put your foot down so that the turbo does kick in – and it doesn’t. The car coughs and splutters as it copes with being drowned in its own go-go juice.

I have ascertained before that the turbo and the bypass work correctly, so I stripped off all the pipework between the turbo outlet and plenum chamber. There is a lot of air coming out of the turbo, at very high pressure, so that works.

I stripped off all the pipework from the air filter to the turbo – big suction (whoops! where’s my hand gone!).

Put it all back together and – no turbo.

So, is there a restriction in the air intake at the filter lever or from open air? That is the next question to be answered – when it warms up enough to work on a tonne and a bit of cold metal again.

The car runs well, as long as the driver is very light-footed. And having a non-working turbo is not a case for MoT failure, so I may just get it on the road before the end of the month when the VEL is due on the other old bus.

All In The Mind

I love my bed. I love the 7 or 8 hours I spend in it out of every 24. But I hate it when think of some brilliant [?] idea, only to have forgotten it by the time I get up.

This happened last night. I was thinking about boreholes – well, don’t we all? – and had a “scrapheap” idea about how to raise the water up to ground level – and the rest, I can’t remember!

This happens quite often. I have a pad and pencil next to my bed, but I always forget that it is there. I have tried a tape recorder next to the bed, but concentrated so much on the fact that it was there to be used, that I didn’t get any inspiration.

I have even got up at 3 am just so that I can work on some idea that I have had. Unfortunately, on one such occasion, I needed the number-crunching power of the computer, and by the time it had wheezed itself into life and I had made a cuppa, my mind was a total blank, craving nothing more than sleep.

I sat in front of a blank screen, delving into the depths of my mind to try and dreg up the idea that had got me up, to no avail. So I went back to bed.

Of course, the following morning I feel like warmed-up-death and moped around the office, eyes half shut.

I know that my short-term memory is not as good as it was, which is not good news as it has never been very good – as far as I can remember.

I stared at the list of projects and concepts on my website, trying hard to jolt my memory into something resembling life.

I have tried to clear my mind by reading the 20 or so blogs that I follow. But in the back of my mind, there is a guilt feeling that I really ought to be working on the concept I had whilst under the duvet.

Frustration has now set in – hence this rambling.

I think I will go and tinker with my mechanical scythes. This is worthwhile, even if it doesn’t solve the water shortage problem in parts of Kenya. But it is mechanical, and it may just do the trick.