Kenya Bio Gas

For those of you that are part of the Green Challenge, Yvonne and I were introduced to Bio Gas. I was very intrigued (I am not sure that Yvonne was as intrigued) so will spend one blog just describing this process. On Sunday and Monday we saw two of these installations. Here is how the system works.

Every project (school, hospital, orphanage, etc.) has cows. They are milk, beef and also “Bio Gas.” To make this work three holes are made in the compound. Each hole is downhill from the next. The first hole is just sump (not very deep) that the cow manure is washed down into where the grass and dirt clods are pulled out and water is added to make slurry. There is a pipe that transfers the slurry into a large hole with a tank (12+ feet in diameter) in it (much like a diving bell) that has no bottom. (The picture to the left shows how deep the hole is and the gas pipe that is sending the gas to the kitchen.) The slurry releases the methane gas into the tank. As the tank fills with methane gas it raises to the surface of the slurry so that those who are operating the system knows how much gas is in the tank. (The picture to the right is a full tank while the picture on the right is one that is filling.) When the tank begins to sink (because of usage and that no more methane gas is being released from the slurry) a valve is opened and the slurry is released to a third hole (sump) and there is taken out to be used on the garden while new slurry is added to the main tank to start the whole process over.

The tank is heavy so this creates pressure on the gas so it can be piped to the kitchen where it drives the stoves. Though all of the kitchens we saw had wood burning stoves, we were told that the Bio Gas stoves rarely ran out of gas. These kitchens are feeding from 10-30 meals three times a day. What a simple system and good use of all the parts of the operation.

The Sisters were amused that I thought that this was such a big deal. They almost did not even show me this as it is such a part of the regular part of the operation.