Thursday, May 31, 2012- My Project

Since I still wasn’t feeling entirely up to par today (half due to being sick yesterday and half due to the lack of sleep last night), I accomplished nearly nothing except to finish my plan of work, read a newspaper, and take a nap. Since this was a less than exciting day (and I want people to continue to read my blog), I am going to take this opportunity to explain what my next three weeks are going to entail for work.

I am going to be working with the biodigesters. As I said before, a biodigester breaks down organic matter (manure) and as a byproduct, methane is produced. The methane gas is then burned in a stove for cooking (like a gas stove in the US). These gas stoves are much safer than the traditional wood stoves (like the one my host family had in language school) because they do not produce the dangerous smoke and particulate matter as wood burning stoves.

I am going to be doing a study on that compares the thermal efficiencies of the different types of stoves. There are two types of stoves that are attached to a biodigester. One is a stove that is made by EOS. It is not very pretty but it does the job. However, the flame is very hard to control due to the low pressure of the gas. Then there is a commercially bought stove that looks nicer and can control the flame a little better for burning. I will be comparing these two stoves to each other and also to the traditional wood stove. In addition, I will be doing the test on a commercial stove that is attached to a propane tank. Propane is very expensive here, and some of the engineers here are hoping to show that the biodigester has similar thermal efficiencies to the expensive stoves while being a fraction of the cost.

I am going to measure the thermal efficiency of each type of stove by doing what is known as a water boiling test. It is actually a series of three tests done in rapid sequence. In the end, I will know how much energy it took each stove to boil a pot of water. The thermal efficiency is then how much energy each stove used divided by how much energy that pot of water should have used in a “perfect” world. I have to weigh all the wood before and after the test, the pots, and the water before and after. I also have to figure out the amount of water in the wood, the type of wood, and the local boiling point, which may be different than 100C due to elevation. For the gas stove, I also need to be able to estimate the volume of gas in the biodigester after each portion of the test.

I need to repeat each test three times for each stove to ensure accurate results and to be able to run some simple statistics on them. I also don’t want to disturb a family’s cooking routine too much, so I am only going to test each stove once per week and stretch it out over a three week period. I would also like to add that one of that has the biodigester with the commercial stove and a traditional stove offered to be my host family for three weeks while I am doing my testing. They live about 20 minutes by bus away from the office in a very nice house in the “campo”. They also live across the street from the family with the biodigester attached to the homemade stove. Therefore, on Monday, I will be moving in with them. The plan is to do my testing in the mornings and then take the bus into work in the late morning or early afternoon and spend some time in the office doing other things. This way I can also have the internet.

I will have pictures and more explanations as time passes if there is any confusion or uncertainty. Sometimes I struggle to explain myself well because I know what I am doing and can easily forget to mention some key details. This is why I seem to be continually updating my plan of work here haha. If there are any blaring questions, feel free to email me at lgeiger09@gmail.com though.