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

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!)

Tinkering with Allen Scythes

I had another tinker with the Allen scythes (circa 1950) yesterday. I am trying to get at least one of the pair I have acquired to work, using one to replace parts for the other.

Of course, these being British built and old, all the nut, bolts etc are Imperial, that is A/F. I have a small set of A/F sockets but I no longer have any spanners.

Why? Because my son, a car mechanic, started work at a garage that renovates old cars and builds hot rods, and he raided my ancient toolbox, removing anything that wasn’t metric.

Although a socket set is a useful thing to have, some of the fixtures that need to be removed from the Villiers engine are only accessible with a spanner. I was a little annoyed with my son!

Oh well. I suppose the next phase will be to visit a car boot sale to see if I can find any ancient spanners.

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.

Scrap Heap Challenges

Some of you who have tripped over this blog may have realised that I have others blogs, on various topics, and touching on my own personal brand of “engineering”.

I am a mechanical engineer by training (if that is the right word), having served and apprenticeship and attended college for umpty-tump years.

My main field of interest is making things from junk that do a useful job, the idea being that these “things” can be made by anyone, using anything to hand, to improve the life of someone. I am an avid viewer of the UK TV programme, Scrap Heap Challenge, in which (for those of you who have not seen it) two teams are set a challenge to build a vehicle or other engine purely from what they can find in a scrap heap. There is a time limit and at the end, the two engines are pitted against each other to see which is more efficient – lovely!

Presently, I am working on a couple of projects. I do not claim that the systems I am working on are my ‘inventions’, I am just trying to devise a way of making them available to a larger community:

• a water purification system that can be used simply in the hot bits of Africa (i.e. Kenya), but that does not cost lots of dollars to make or use. I want something that someone can pour dirty water into one end and get drinking water out of the other end – simple!
• a methane collector that will give a rural community a form of power, either directly for cooking, or as a fuel to drive an engine. This can, in turn drive a generator, water pump, etc. If adopted for cooking, it will replace wood and charcoal, meaning that trees do not need to be cut down, meaning that soil erosion may be reduced, meaning crops stand a better chance of producing food. A by-product of a methane collector is that it produces pure fertilizer.

In the US of A, there is a bunch of crazy [?] people who say they can split the H and O elements of H2O, producing a gas they call HHO. They further state that if this gas is introduced into the air intake of a car (petrol or diesel), fuel consumption will be improved – considerably – and in the case of diesel engines, power output will also be increased. And of course, harmful exhaust emissions will be dramatically reduced.

OK, so it’s the old “car running on water” urban myth again, or is it? I needed to know, so I conducted a few experiments and this is what I found.

Yes, following the procedure, a gas can be collected from water. I am not a chemist, so I cannot say what the gas is, but I can say that it is inflammable. This is a good start. I can surmise that, as water is a hydrogen/oxygen mix, the gas is also a hydrogen/oxygen mix.

So, why isn’t everyone converting their cars to this form of propulsion?

Cheap bio-diesel in the form of filtered, used cooking oil can be used in certain makes of diesel engine without any expensive or complicated processing. It has to be mixed with “real” diesel and the proportions are dictated by the climate – cooking oil emulsifies at quite a high temperature and can goo up the works.

I have tried 25% to 30% bio-diesel mix in my vehicle (in summer), and the only side-effect is that people I pass suddenly have the urge to go and buy fish and chips. This could be a bad thing in a country where the Whitehall Nannies are obsessed with obesity. (Incidentally, did any of them take a close look at our erstwhile deputy leader, to mention but two?)

Of course, you can go out and buy a gizmo that processes cooking oil, adds other chemicals and produces a perfectly good alternative to pump diesel. I believe it costs about £2,500, but the end product is a litre of diesel for about 50p. Another of course; you can only use this bio-diesel for your own personal use and only 3,000 litres a year at that. The government is losing out on 85p a litre in revenue, so I can imagine that they are not terribly happy, despite their insistence on being “green”.

Anyway, back to HHO. Does it work? I don’t know, and although I have seen hundreds of testimonies (mainly from the US of A) to the effect that it does, and read papers from universities in the USA and Australia that state that, [in theory] it works, I will not believe it until I have seen it for myself.

If it does, and if I can find a “Scrap Heap Challenge” way of making this gadget, I will let you all know, at the risk of bankrupting the government – oh, I forgot, they are doing that already – without my help.