Saturday, July 10, 2010

Facebook Archive June 17 through July 10 2010

Doesn't the cosmic web of dark energy that links all galaxies together resemble the neuronal connection models of the inside of our brains? Some analagous happenstances are...Cosmic!


dsc.discovery.com
Think you know dark energy? Think again. Browse or list of 10 things you never knew about the most mysterious force in the universe

Thomas Henry Culhane This one is scary (or deliberately ironic) -- the Lennon sisters start doing a sing songy oopshoowaddywaddy version of Little Darlin' and then get interrupted because "women aren't supposed to sing rock and roll". They are forced by Dick Dale to sing a song "for their father, an old time tune" (Dick should know bette...r as the half Egyptian author of Misir Lou, which means "Egypt Lou" made refamous in Pulp Fiction, which challenged Arab and American patriarchal traditions by rocking out arab melodies in the 1950s )

See More
www.youtube.com
Dick Dale puts the kabosh on The Lennon Sisters singing rock'n'roll! From the 1992 special "The Lennon Sisters: Easy To Remember

This is a good version to study too, because of the signature gestures and movements which it would be fun to parody. Lyrics are here http://www.lyricstime.com/the-diamonds-little-darling-lyrics.html; I see Jeff's or Peter's deep bass doing the spoken part (a combo of "I took a Drink" from Love Pone, and "You've lost that lovin' feeling"), Paul or Adam, you guys are the only ones who can probably do the falsetto, solo is up for grabs.

See More

And here is the same group same song 50 years later that Adam sent; hopefully when we Harvard Squares/Quintessentials perform again at our 50th reunion we will be as good!

Thomas Henry Culhane Jeffrey Korn Peter Foxon Miller Paul Sagawa Adam Button Here is the 1957 version that Adam sent to compare with the 2007 version by the older but no less incredible Diamonds (let's add this to our repertoire for the events on the 6th and 7th of August, and for Sayn next year!)


Thomas Henry Culhane As I watch this for analysis and further troubleshooting it appears evident that one shouldn't try to start the engine under load (duh!), but it is interesting to see the results of trying. Once the load is removed is starts back up. But by the t...


  If I was to do it all over again, and got permission from the wife, I would place the biogas digestor next to the bathroom window before the grey water collection tank and run the hot water as it comes out of the shower and bathtub and washmaschine...

  We generally don't have enough gas (a max of 200 liters in this tiny experimental system each 2 to 3 days) to do extensive testing.

Thomas Henry Culhane A few things so far plague us (as non-mechanics) working on biogas home engine conversions. One is the difficulty of starting using a pull cord (broke two, with the springs). We solve this with a hand drill start method (but be careful grinding d...


Thomas Henry Culhane ‎@d3adp001 OK, but that means going out and buying 500 watt halogen work lights which I don't have and generally wouldn't want (the Bauhaus here now sells some really nice bright LED work lights). Can we think of another load that would work for y...

Thomas Henry Culhane The results were, we got about 9 minutes of generator time (on a 2kW genset) from about 200 liters of kitchen-fed-biogas; most of the time was idling, but for about 2 minutes we were pulling about 500 watts running the Insinkerator. The implication is that we could use about 100 liters of biogas to do our daily food grinding.

Thomas Henry Culhane ‎8:30 AM, no heat loss overnight, but no heat gain. Avg. tank temp 30 C with slight stratification (31 top, 29 bottom). Interesting result; normally uninsulated tank would lose heat overnight (ambient temp 26 C) but composter (which reads 43 C) apparently maintained but did not raise temp. Will have to insulate tank no...w that we have this control data, and observe again.


 People will look back at this turn of the century achievement the way we look at The Wright Brothers and Charles Lindburgh's baby steps in the last century. Bravo Piccard et al.


www.solardaily.com
Payerne, Switzerland (AFP) July 8, 2010 - A solar powered aircraft masterminded by a Swiss adventurer made history on Thursday as the first manned plane to fly around the clock on the sun's energy, bringing a step closer the dream of perpetual flight.


  A tip I learned for using those maddening .MOD video files your camera spits out in a video editing program: do NOT waste time or $ on conversion programs or the process of converting (which I used to do with ffmpegx). Simply rename the file with the .mpg extension, because it is, in fact, an


And while you are at it, make sure your computer does NOT hide extensions. Windows XP and 7 default to hiding them which allows malware companies to fool you into launching an .exe thinking it could be a .jpg or something. Uncheck the hide extensions box in folder options.

If that doesn't work (and mine didn't, because of some virus or something) turn on the "run" programs feature in the start menu (windows) and type in regedit, and go into your registry and search for all instances of "NeverShowExt" and delete them, then reboot. Microsoft supposedly knows that hiding extensions can get you into trouble, but they haven't done anything about it yet, so you will have to take action on your own!

  ‎11 hours in and the average temp of the 60 liters is now a balmy 32 for the whole tank (uninsulated), up from 25-26 this morning. Had to add 20 liters of 21 C water because of a slow leak inside the composter just now, averaging everything back to 30, and if the thermosiphon doesn't shut down overnight like last night due to water loss, we will see what temp we've achieved by morning.



 Congratulations to Solar CITIES International colleague Mike Rimoin (and his elephant-dung and other Woodlland Park Seattle "zoo-doo" derived bacterial friends) for successful backyard biogas production. It took 5 months and change and string of 96 degree days to get cooking, but hey, that's the Northwest! Mike, once... you get the solar heat exchanger going, it should work like a charm! Welcome to the club of birthday biogas bioneers!

See More
The backyard biogas digester finally started producing gas! It only required 96 degree weather! Next steps are to insulate it to try to keep the bacteria warm during colder (more normal) conditions.

After 8 hours the compost heat exchanger has raised the temp of the entire 60 liter tank from 25 C to 30 C (mixing temp). The warm water is now thermosiphoning in at 35 C, the temp at the heat exchanger is 42 C. Lets see what happens in a few more hours and how hot we can get the tank. The goal is to be able to heat K...ilian's kiddie pool with the composter so he can splash around comfortably.


Why grass-clipping-based compost heat for the kiddie pool instead of direct solar? Because Germany is so cloudy and aerobic bacteria work day and night, sunny or cloudy. And compost IS solar energy -- trapped by the grass. The idea is that all that energy concentrated by photosynthesis shouldn't go to waste while it decays toward entropic ... See Morefertilizer. Capturing it makes the most sense, and doing so with the least investment is the starter -- obviously if we could do as Claris Pharmaceuticals showed me and Alexis Ringwald in India, and gasify it to use for running a boiler or an engine that would be even cooler, but lacking gasification technology simply insulating the compost bin with styrofoam and sticking a heat exchanger inside really does work!

Joseluis Ortiz
I COULDNT agree more..... with grass clippings only we have our compost up to 145 150 after 5 days of decomp, hope it all works out for you, also Thomas i shared your info with some friends and architect in India that do sustainable building. who knows they may need your expertise down there

That would be great JoseLuis, I loved my work in India with the India Youth Climate Network two years ago! That is where my biogas odyssey began.
Let me know how long your compost pile continues producing heat. We are also now almost 4 days in and the heat is good with grass clippings only. Have you put your heat exchanger in yet? That will of ... See Morecourse take the average temp in the pile down; the question is how long can the pile sustain adding heat to a heat remover like water, and can we get useful temps in useful periods of time to make it all worth it. I think getting 60 liters from 25 to 32 in a day isn't unreasonable. If we can heat Kilian's wading pool that would be a win. Right now his grandparents boil water on the electric stove and pour it in and that just isn't sustainable so we are all excited about this since the pool is in the garden near the composter.

Thomas Henry Culhane Thanks to Frank Di Massa for passing this on (the webvideo link from HBO on the official website http://gaslandthemovie.com/whats-fracking
is interestingly "no longer available" -- bless the public that posts on youtube!) Check out 2:26 when the guy's kitchen sink lights up! This documentary gives even more good rea...sons to switch to biogas, which is the only gas worthy of the name "natural gas" in the "healthy" sense of the word "nature". Yes, fossil fuels are "natural" as arsenic and uranium and typhoid are "natural", but we can use the benign gifts of nature and leave the unhealthy parts buried where they belong.

See More
www.youtube.com
GASLAND - (2010) Directed by Josh Fox. Winner of Special Jury Prize - Best US Documentary Feature - Sundance 2010. Screening at Cannes 2010. It is happening all across America and now in Europe and Africa as well - rural landowners wake up one day to find a lucrative offer from a multinational ener...

Thomas Henry Culhane Meine große Großonkel Hormuz Rassam المنقب
الآثاري المنسي هرمز رسام, Ein
anderer Explorer in der Familie, die im Irak entdeckt Nimrud und die
Steintafeln mit den Gilgamesch-Epos (die Gespräche über die Auswirkungen
der Entwaldung und verbindet sie mit der biblischen Sintflut). Zwischen Joseph
...Robidoux (Wer gründete St. Joseph MO) auf meinem Dad's Seite und
Hormuz auf meiner Mom's sind wir bestrebt, die Familientradition zu
erforschen pflegen. Die arabische Version dieses Artikels ist hier:
http://maakom.com/site/article/2089

See More

Please don't judge my atrocious German. As Anthony Quinn says in "Dem Himmel so nah" (US Title "A Walk in the Clouds, 1995 with Kianu Reeves): "Just because I talk wit an accent, dozent mean I think wit an accent!".

Thomas Henry Culhane My great grand-uncle Hormuz Rassam المنقب الآثاري المنسي هرمز رسام
, another explorer in the family, who discovered Nimrud in Iraq and the stone tablets containing the Epic of Gilgamesh (which talks about the effects of deforestation and links it to the Biblical flood). Between Joseph Robidoux (who founded St. Josep...h MO) on my Dad's side, and Hormuz on my Mom's, we strive to maintain the family tradition of exploring. The Arabic version of this article is here: http://maakom.com/site/article/2089

See More

Thomas Henry Culhane ‎"Cities on flame with rock 'n roll" sang the Blue Oyster Cult! Awesome nightime footage of Alvaro Silva's Solar South Central backyard biodigester breathing fire like a mythical dragon. Al, once you start storing the gas you will be able to use it to run a generator like I did yesterday. My internal tank slurry temp i...s now 29 C and I'm getting about 100 liters of stored gas a day. If I can get it up to 35 I should get 5 to 10 times that. My observation is that biogas pulses out in little spurts of pressure. I think that if we don't release the pressure by exhausting the producer tank to a collector it inhibits the next pulse. So each of those 30 second burns could be collected adding up. And, of course, if I were in L.A. I would paint the producer black to get maximum heat. Check the effluent temperature and tell us what it is, okay?

See More
solarsouthcentral bio-digester
Length:1:05

Compost heat pump showing promising results. Loaded with 600 liters grass clippings on morning July 6, morning July 9 hits 57 C in places with heatexchanger itself registering 39 C; water from tank going in to heat exchanger at 25 C, returning through thermosiphon to tank at 33 C. That 8 Degree delta T, if sustained, ...is very promising. Let's see how long it takes to heat up the full 60 liters.


Thomas Henry Culhane Spent the evening with Nils Andersch and Minke
Noordam demonstrating our rooftop biogas systems and compost heating
systems and hand made solar systems etc. so they can build and share
these great home-scale-technologies with Adam Masava
and our friends in the Mukuru slums of Nairobi in the coming two weeks.
... Wish I could be with you guys!!

  In 2009 the German GTZ did an analysis of the biogas potential for all of Kenya. This powerpoint (in English) shows the Return on Investment (ROI) and break-evens for several scenarios, concluding that Kenya has enormous potential for this technology. see http://www.gtz.de/de/dokumente/2009-en-burkard-projectcases-kenya.pdf

Thomas Henry Culhane Spent the evening with Nils Andersch and Minke Noordam demonstrating our rooftop biogas systems and compost heating systems and hand made solar systems etc. so they can build and share these great home-scale-technologies with Adam Masava and our friends in the Mukuru slums of Nairobi in the coming two weeks. Wish I co...uld be with you guys!! Meanwhile, bigger organizations than ours are also bringing biogas to Kenya!

See More

www.gtz.de
Kenia befindet sich in der Energiekrise: Wirtschaft und Bevölkerung leiden unter den stark wachsenden Energiepreisen und zunehmenden Stromausfällen. Vor diesem Hintergrund wächst das Interesse am Einsatz heimischer erneuerbarer Energien, unter anderem an modernen Biogastechnologien, sowohl in der Pr...

Thomas Henry Culhane Piccard's marvelous silent airplane isn't just a solar powered plane, but an electric airplane. So he is proving two concepts at once, and if he gets through the night he will have ushered in the idea of personal electric flight for about 16 hours between charges. This means that even if the cost of the solar cells i...s too high for most aviation buffs, a plane that has everything else but the wing panels for making 16 hour flights before landing somewhere to recharge is certainly feasible! Go Piccard!

See More

news.bbc.co.uk
An aircraft that draws its power from the Sun starts a round-the-clock test flight to assess whether it can fly in darkness.


Thomas Henry Culhane Here is an online QIF (Quicken Interchange Format) to CSV (Comma Separated Value) converter if you ever get stuck trying to get your .qif data into Excel.

shamikshah.com



Thomas Henry Culhane
If you are like me, and are leery of putting your precious financial info into a web-based converter, simply go-offline to use it. Or, better yet, what I do is hit "save as" for the online app, and save the webpage to my desktop. Then I can launch it whenever I am offline in my browser and do my QIF to CSV conversions (then import the CSV to Excel... See More using Data:Get External Data). The app is a JavaScript app so it works on your computer without you having to be online. Thus, don't waste a penny on QIF to CSV software.
Wednesday at 5:09pm ·
Thomas Henry Culhane
Big thanks to Shamikshah for creating this fantastic little JS App! Saved me hours of work!
Wednesday at 5:09pm ·


Thomas Henry Culhane Wasted too many hours and days putting all my finances into a program called GnuCash thinking I was on the road to supreme organization only to find out it is buggy and won't let me export. Now redoing everything in my own Excel sheets; grueling, painstaking, no fun.

Wednesday at 3:49pm ·

Thomas Henry Culhane Got about 9 minutes of generator time (on a 2kW genset) from about 200 liters of kitchen-fed-biogas; most of the time was idling, but for about 2 minutes we were pulling 500 watts. The implication is that we should easily achieve 45 minutes of battery charging time in the typical 1000 liter system, and might get a hal...f an hour of a heavier load. The experiments will continue...


Thomas Henry Culhane Hanna Fathy Rostom Mike Rimoin Here is how I have mounted my biogas regulator. The way I start the engine is that I close the choke and press the primer button on the back of the regulator a couple of times. Then I use the drill to start the engine. Once started I open the choke up and duct tape down the primer butt...on so it remains completely depressed, letting the maximum amount of biogas in. The other adjustments we spent so much time doing on your roof in Cairo don't seem to be critical -- open up the adjustment screw half way or so. I was using six bricks on my gas collector today, so about 27 kg pressure. I think mounting the regulator so you can access the primer button without burning your hand and without the regulator touching any hot metal parts is critical. I drilled two holes on the bottom frame to do so.

See More




Con much gusto! A video showing the conversion and running is in progress Alberto, thanks for asking. It won't be anything slick as my time is very limited and I have to do the shaky camera work myself, but it may help you to replicate! Cheers!
July 6 at 3:45pm
Alberto Eduardo
Alberto Eduardo
Excellent, thank you very much, should I look for the vid on your website? can you please tell me when is ready?We are making all this tests for an ecovillage in my country, you are more than welcome to come.

The idea is to have different sources for energy (waterwheel, solar panels and biogas) we are going to start our first building during this days using the ecodomes technology (superadobe) totally recommended!! I will publishing the videos soon.
July 6

Thomas Henry Culhane Hanna Fathy Rostom Here is what the flywheel attachment looks like. Note that because I am use a plug-in drill, to prevent grounding of the spark plug, I insulate the 21mm socket key with duct tape. Using the drill-start method I can get my engine going on low pressure biogas reliably every time! I suggest you do the ...same with yours. That way you can demonstrate to your visitors running your electricity on your biogas. Let me know how it works out.

See More


Thomas Henry Culhane Hanna Fathy Rostom Sometimes God gives us what appears to be a problem so we can find a better solution. No more start-pull cords or starter springs to break for us! A 21mm socketwrench key in a handdrill turns out to be the best way to start a biogas-modified engine. Remove the starter device completely. Remember t...he music band on the boat in Lake Tanganyika, how they started their generator with a rubber belt from the flywheel mounting? Instead you can turn the flywheel with a drill. If it is an AC drill, insulate the socket key with duct tape, if a battery powered DC drill, just use as is. Works like a charm!

See More



Hanna Fathy Rostom
Hanna Fathy Rostom
Its very good idea I will try it thanks
July 6 at 4:17pm ·

Eric Santiestevan I'm just going off Wikipedia...what do you know about the European Ni-Fe batteries used in mining operations. What's the efficiency of current Ni-Fe vs. lead-acid batteries? Seems like they charge slowly compared to current lithium batteries and would be best for storage (as you mention) compared to operation of, say..., a car. Have you heard about storing energy in the form of heated salt?

See More

www.metaefficient.com
Solar power is a truly efficient source of energy, but it tends to fluctuate, and, as you might know, it turns off at night. One clever way to alleviate this intermittence is to store solar energy in the form of

Thomas Henry Culhane Seems China is one of the few places you can get these batteries these days. Because of low volume demand the price is really high. But China is touting them as preferable "green batteries" and the company, which apparently bought its manufacturing machinery from a defunct German company, says NiFe batteries are "gra...dually replacing lead batteries" particularly in renewable energy applications as well as the usual telephone line box application. Welcome to 1914.

See More

changhongbatteries.en.alibaba.com
Find detailed product information for Nickel-Iron rechargeable battery and other products from Sichuan Changhong Battery Co., Ltd. on Alibaba.com.



Beth said: Everything that was "old" becomes "new again" - you have heard that saying before, I am sure!

So true Beth; hopefully this time around what is new will not become old again and forgotten. The more I read history the more I see how many absolutely genius ideas fell by the wayside -- the Greeks actually had a sophisticated "computer" (a brass calculating machine) thousands of years ago, and Archimedes used concentrated solar thermal power ... See Morelike we are now building in the deserts of Arizona. Is our obsession with "wizards" and "magic" atavistic memories of a previous time when we got this far (and maybe farther) technologically, but simply forgot after the collapse? Let's hope we don't collapse, or that somebody saves all these digital correspondences somehow so we can rebuild. The problem with our digital world is we leave to hard copies, no evidence. One jolt of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) from a nuclear blast and all our records are wiped out forever...
July 6 at 2:26pm

Thomas Henry Culhane ‎|Thinking of the Ford/Edison concept of Independence Day and wishing we could go back to 1914 and try again.

July 6 at 1:26am · 


TH -- What's the short version of why this technology didn't fulfill the social/commercial promise you've identified?
July 6 at 1:29am

Sabotage at the Edison plant (the whole operation burned to the ground) and World War I all hitting at the same time. By the time the war was over (the world's first industrial war, which used combustion engines for portability of the war machines wherever oil could be had or shipped) the infrastructure for continued oil use was in place and none had been built for an electric storage solution future.

Amer Rabayah
Amer Rabayah
I need more info, and we can try


Thomas Henry Culhane Amer Rabayah Sam Sal Hanna Fathy Rostom Joram Samaon The solution for electrical storage appears to have been solved (at the level we are working) by Thomas Edison in 1901 and improved to the point of commercial feasibility by 1912. Read Edisons advertisement from 100 years ago here http://noonco.com/edison/battery_ad..._+.jpg
where he says, "The Edison Storage Battery may, without harm, be short circuited, charged in the reverse direction, left standing idle indefinitely either charged or discharged, charged at rates several times normal and at any time regardless of the state of charge. The Edison Storage Battery is guaranteed to be capable of developing 100 percent capacity at the end of four years."
Now all of us who have worked with PbSO4 batteries or even Li batteries know that none of these attributes apply, so why are we not simply building our own Ni Fe batteries based on Edison's design? Yella bina, let's simply do it ...

See More
noonco.com
Assembly information, free videos and parts for experimenting with the remarkable Edison battery



t I LIKE challenges. I am a big fan of The Skeptic magazine (see online version at http://www.skeptic.com/) which my mentor professor Jeff Miller at AUC introduced me to. I also enjoy poking fun at the credulous crowd (though rarely from a diesel powered train or one running on uneven tracks -- can't... See More wait for the Maglevs to finally become cost effective (room temp superconductors anyone?) so we can not only type on a train without jitter, but build houses of cards two meters high and balance tea cups on spinning saucers on poles, like in the circus.

  A beautiful article -- thanks Sarah Rifaat and Mustafa Hussein and Omnia and Hanna and Hussein et al. for including me and Sybille in the Daily News Report, and Mabrouk for a great event!


Thomas Henry Culhane Independence Day? Chapter 8: " 1914 - The End of the Beginning" is one of those eye opening reads that could change everything if we can get the information to the right people (you may be one of them). The key idea would be to pick up right now where Henry Ford and Thomas Edison left off in 1914 with their plans to g...ive America full energy independence at the home scale. The answer, according to them, lay in Edisons Nickel Iron batteries which he considered "the crowning achievment of a lifetime of invention" (p.128)

See More

www.internalcombustionbook.com
Red Devil OuttakeHostmen--ExpandedHistorians/ExpertsReader CommentsReviewsMediaInterviewsAuthor ArticlesTour & EventsWorldwide EditionsIllustrationsResourcesTravelEdwin BlackContactAwardsSite ThanksResearchers NeededView the TrailerAutographed CopiesOrder a CopySupportAlso by Edwin Black The PlanN...



Thanks for passing thattrailer on B! I bought the book when it came out in 2006 and read the first chapter and then didn't get back to it until last week. Now I wish I'd finished it when I'd first started. No matter, it will help in our work regardless. I thought you would like it! Glad to share this with you!

Byron DeLear
I read black's 'banking on baghdad' grt stuff grt history

  I'm working in developing countries where Edison's Batteries would have an enormous impact. Any recommendations for off the shelf, ubiquitous sources of nickel that we can use? I had heard that some screens are nickel plated. How might we get the...


Sarah Rifaat  Hassan Rifaat, Thomas Henry Culhane, Sybille Fruetel Culhane, Mustafa Hussein, Ecooptions Egy ; you are all in this article!
My performance of "Flow" - the piece I developed at the Climate Advocacy Institute- is also mentioned : )


July 5 at 11:14pm ·
vimeo.com
Dokumentarfilm über Sozialprojekte im Mukuru Slum von Nairobi, Kenia. (12 Minuten, 2009) Weitere Infos zum Studentenprojekt findet ihr unter www.simama.de

I found my Hebrew Name, Tom using the My Hebrew Name application:



Thomas Henry Culhane Africa's Walking on Sunshine, Woa oh, and don't it feel good!


Thomas Henry Culhane Dr. Mohamed Salem, the brilliant inventor and pioneer of Palestinian made environmental technology.



Thomas Henry Culhane Photos from Palestine's "Brother's Engineering Group" exhibition of their windmill technology made from local materials (like sewer pipes for the blades and rewired washing machine motors for the generator). Ingenuity at its best!







Here you clearly see the promise of the two state solution when we as brothers and sisters use our common environmental challenges to foster ingenious cooperation. On the left is an innovative Palestinian turbine, on the right an innovative Isreali turbine; they work together to harness the wind that blows without thoughts for borders, providing benefits for all the dialog is about tapping into our human capital, fostering the genius of our peoples for peace and prosperity and health.
July 4

Thomas Henry Culhane Here is Mohamed Salem|s Brothers Engineering Website for all interested in the Eco-Palestine movement, and in self made wind generators. It is in English, Arabic and Hebrew.


www.brothers-group-eng.com
‫مجموعة الإخوة الهندسية- المصنع الأول لتوربينات الهواء في فلسطين‬

  Many thanks to our friend دكتور محمد سالم Dr. Mohammed Salem of مجمع الاخوة الهندسية Brothers Engineering Group in Bethelehem for including our biogas project in their development work. The poster looks great!



  Thanks Dan, your "drill starting" videos gave me an idea for how to start the biogas converted generators we are using in Cairo and Germany. We always seem to break starter pull cords and recoil springs through all the trials. This method with the ...

Thanks Dan, your "bored sunday morning" video gave me an idea for how to start the biogas converted generators we are using in Cairo and Germany. We always seem to break starter pull cords and recoil springs through all the trials. This method wit...

 This article, "The lark sings no more" shows sadly how even though the German biogas industry originally was planned to use garbage to create biogas, the garbage mafia and perverse incentives due to policy and market distortions are trying to drive the biogas industry here to use monocropped corn as the feedstock, just... as the ethanol industry in the U.S. was driven away from switch grass and waste inputs. Unbelievable. Another reason why the home and community scale approach should be ramped up -- do you know any family with an insinkerator who would go out and buy corn to make biogas when they have kitchen garbage flowing out every day? Screw the supposed economies of scale of large scale operations -- it seems that path always leads to an undesirable outcome. Small is Beautiful.

See More

www.regenwald.org
Mit Biogasanlagen wollen unsere Politiker das Klima retten, ihre Betreiber werden mit hohen Vergütungen belohnt. Monokulturen aus Mais begraben nun die Lebensräume der Tiere und Pflanzen. Mit Klimaschutz hat das nichts zu tun – und die Artenvielfalt macht sich vom Acker

Thomas Henry Culhane Frank DiMassa and I visited the vast Abengoa solar fields in southern Spain. They are a great company, this is a great and simple but powerful technology, and it is great to see that Obama is giving the business world the security it needs to replicate such efforts, and scale them up, in the United States.


news.bbc.co.uk
The US is to give nearly bn in loan guarantees to two solar energy companies, creating one of the world's biggest solar energy plants in Arizona.

  Working through the 3DPlatform tutorial in the Unity3D physics engine. So far me likes this program very much. Very intuitive. I recommend it and hope others of my friends will join me in developing in it so we can create brave new worlds to inform reality.

July 4 at 12:17am

Thomas Henry Culhane ‎@JimboJitsu Thanks for the note about the water-- no I didn't notice any build up on the cotton. The moisture is never a problem when it is running. What I have trouble with is starting the thing (which is why I ripped the pull cord here and in ...



Alvaro Silva
Alvaro Silva
Good Job T.H

Thomas Henry Culhane ‎@d3adp001 Also, yes, I need gas pressure regulation. I'm using 6 bricks on top of a tottering gas collector to provide the pressure. Thats about 20 kg. I've designed a different system that uses water pressure to force the gas out and is much mor...

Thomas Henry Culhane ‎@d3adp001 I would also say that I think for small scale use using the gas for cooking fuel is more efficient. But our neighbor, Imbrahm, has a company in Kettwig Germany that uses all the cafeteria and market waste and produces 4.5 million KwH per...

Thomas Henry Culhane Since we only need to run the insinkerator 3 to 5 minutes daily (which my watt meter says consumes about 16 watt-hrs -- the unit draws 475 watts when grinding, but over the 3 to 5 minutes I don't register over 20 watt hrs total) it seems that we can run it on about 100 liters of biogas.

Thomas Henry Culhane ‎@d3adp001 Thanks for the tip d3ap, I'll try to test many different loads. The insinkerator issue is germane because we are trying to prove that it is worthwhile running an insinkerator to grind up the food waste despite its energy costs.


Thomas Henry Culhane ‎@JimboJitsu Right you are on the camera score Jimbo; I wasn't sure what would happen so I just put the camera where it wouldn't fall and tried to start up the engine, wanting to capture the first attempt no matter what. I really posted this for archival purposes.

Thomas Henry Culhane If the pull cord hadn't snapped I could have run my experiment of how much gas it takes to run the insinkerator. Now I will have to wait a few days... but stay tuned.

 Yes, I look to  my wife to take the ugly experiments I run and turn them into things of beauty, as you did for the biodigestor and home made solar heater. Your ideas are always welcome (modulating the engine noise into bird noises would be a challenge; how about turning it into a lions growl or roar)!!
July 2 at 9:58p

Thomas Henry Culhane Got the generator running on biogas for a good long time but after making adjustments was having trouble starting and finally broke the pull cord. Oy vay! Will have to delay further experiments until I can repair it. Oh the indignity of it all!

Thomas Henry Culhane Re-gapped my sparkplug for better generator performance on biogas. US manufacturer said "to 0.02" but didn't specify inches or mm! Looked all over town for a gapping tool that went down to 0.02 mm but nobody had them. Bought the .05 to 1 mm toolset from a specialty shop and decided after web research that they must m...ean 0.02 inch = .5 mm. At any rate, it worked!

See More


Thomas Henry Culhane Hanna Fathy Rostom I got my 4 stroke generator running on my kitchen porch biogas, but just like at your house, the second time I tried to start I had trouble and then broke the starter rope. Here is a video I found that shows how easy it is to replace the starter rope. Hope you have success too!

www.youtube.com
HOW TO REPLACE Generator STARTER ROPE & Motor OIL. Use sae 30 in summer and 5w30 in winter

Thomas Henry Culhane Go to 1:49 in this video walkthrough and look to the left, above Chris Redfield's shoulder.Throughout this scene from the first level of Resident Evil 5, as you walk through a 3D rendering of an African vilage, you see the ubiquitous cylindrical black 1000 to 3000 liter water tanks that we use to make our ARTI Biogas units. Now a real survival horror game for me would be one where you could survive the zombie plague by actually building your own biogas and solar energy systems in the game... the painstakingly created assets and the physics are all in there... now we just need to convince Capcom to work with us so you could play your way to sustainabiity through your favorite game.


www.customglassanddoors.com
Resident Evil 5 Walkthrough - Civilian Checkpoint Mission Part 1 HD



Yes, I've played the Sid Meier's games and I like them for stimulating thought (much more fun than Risk was back in the day). What I'm still aiming for (and increasingly will fold into my career as an urban planner) are games that have good story lines and characters but actually let one interact with the physics of the world to build things that ... See Morebecome survival solutions. Valve started in Half Life 2 with making as many objects in the world interactive -- you could pick up beer cans and newspapers and anything that was lying around and throw them as projectiles, or stack them up to climb over them. But you couldn't hammer them, weld them, join them etc. and none of the games have that critical element in a manipulable way: WATER. I seek a game (or will create one given enough time) that lets water and thermodynamics be manipulated along with materials. A generation will hopefully then grow up learning real engineering in a pleasurable way as well as learning possible histories. Thanks for bringing Civ IV back to my consciousness -- those were many fun spent hours.
July 3

Thomas Henry Culhane Palestine's First Rock-Rap Band! Way to go Amira Bernadette ! Great material, great website, great band. One of these days we need to do a solar powered concert in Palestine together like we did back in Cairo! Hope you'll connect with Palestine's Engineers without Borders and the Palestinian Wildlife Society run by f...riends Amer Rabayah and Sunbird Pal. Maybe you guys can set up some events together. Meshallah!




Thomas Henry Culhane Just finished conference call with Ford
Foundation about Assets-based Approaches to Poverty Reduction and about
to have conference call with St. Louis based Emerson Electronics about
their leadership in American innovation for Energy Efficency and
Renewables -- their home scale technologies are examples of assets that
can help reduce poverty by transforming wastes into value added
products.



July 1 at 8:02pm ·

Sharon J Benheim
keep fixing the world TH - your energy is inspiring
July 2

Thomas Henry Culhane Just finished conference call with Ford Foundation about Assets-based Approaches to Poverty Reduction and about to have conference call with St. Louis based Emerson Electronics about their leadership in American innovation for Energy Efficency and Renewables -- their home scale technologies are examples of assets tha...t can help reduce poverty by transforming wastes into value added products.



Thomas Henry Culhane When one of the world's biggest nuclear power companies turns to the sun (the safest and most reliable source of nuclear power, with the fusion plant a safe 93 million miles away), things are getting better all the time. Thanks Areva -- you are nudging your way toward sustainability. Now enough with the radioactive rocks arredy...


blogs.forbes.com
Areva hints that it is developing a hybrid solar power plant, one that combines solar thermal and solar photovoltaic panels.



Joe Bui
Thanks for the great article, Bob. It's nice to see that some efforts have been made, albeit underfunded and lower-priority than what its potential upside might have been. I was speaking more generally about the killing of the electric car and the whole "global warming is just a myth cooked up by Al Gore" position our government we took for most of... See More the past decade or so. I see the post TH shared and wonder if a U.S. company could have been the leader in sustainable energy had we been a little less tied to Big Oil. From the article you posted, it sounds like the algae biofuel research program has been terminated. (Or did I read the term "closeout report" incorrectly?
July 1
Bob Plotkin
Bob Plotkin
That study was completed and the close-out was the publishing of all of their findings (from what I understand, anyway).

There has been constant research into the algae biofuels, though when oil was at $40 a barrel, clearly it was not a priority for everyone. Look at MIT's projects, for instance.

One of the challenges now is that government spending and private investors need to weed out the snake oil from true long term solutions. Just look up AlgaeLink - a perfectly promising looking technology that duped investors. Excess hype around "global warming", in my opinion, can only damage growth of alternatives.

We should be looking at ways to reduce our energy needs and lessen the impact on our planet - period. By tying this obvious long term need to a single concept of "global warming" - you risk the possibility that people can challenge that notion, then defend NOT doing things to help the planet.
July 1

Thomas Henry Culhane Alvaro Silva These people would be good for you to join with your skill set.


Education:3,810 people like this.


Alvaro Silva
Alvaro Silva
Thanks T.H.
July 2 at 5:15am

Thomas Henry Culhane Edwind Suryadi Mike Rimoin Here is the "Bible of Biogas Engine Conversion". It is highly technical but if you can slog through it, tells you most of what you need to know, with illustrations, to convert that diesel engine (and otto engines too). See http://www.gate-international.org/documents/publications/webdocs/pdfs/g36ene.pdf


Thomas Henry Culhane via Sybille Fruetel Culhane: For a great laugh and a sober reminder.

www.youtube.com
This is what happens when BP spills coffee. More comedy videos: http://www.UCBComedy.com/ Like UCB: http://www.facebook.com/pages/UCBcomedycom/10522597325?ref=ts Follow UCB: http://www.twitter.com/UCBcomedy Director: Peter Schultz & Brandon Bassham; Writers: Gavin Speiller, Eric Scott, Er...

Thomas Henry Culhane Burning the midnight oil working my way through tutorials for Sketchup Pro and Unity 3D, modelling ain't easy for those of us who grew up on 2D... but slowly creating a virtual copy of our home with the renewable energy systems... detail by painstaking detail...



June 30 at 7:48pm ·

Edwind Suryadi

In this photo:

I have a 2000watt diesel fuel generator in Sapeken island and I'm wondering if it can use biogas :)
June 30 at 7:45pm

Thomas Henry Culhane John Culhane Hind R Culhane
Here is the first chapter of the book that Hanna Fathy Rostom recommended to me and which I read much of on those 7 hour minibus rides from Cairo to the Sekem farm where we were trying to create our own epic reality with our experiments in low cost solar and biogas solutions. The idea is t...hat we like epic stories because they reflect the true story, the Gospel, the good news, that our Creator endowed us with a longing to fulfill. The author compares beloved film scripts in a Joseph Campbell way with the Biblical mythic stories. Hope it helps you with your own memoirs.

See More

www.epicreality.com
It's been quite a journey for Frodo and Sam when the little gardener wonders this. Ever since they left home they’ve encountered more wonders and more dangers than they could have possibly imagined. The battle on Weathertop. The flight to the ford. The beauty of Rivendell. The dark mines of Moria, w...

Thomas Henry Culhane If I had the $150 to spare I would be using this tool with sketchup for solar site analysis right now: " Insolation Analysis takes account of the Geo-Location of your
model as well as the current time of year, to produce a daily Kwh/m²/day
visualization. As with Lux Analysis, a light meter gives spot results
for the s...urface being hovered over but in addition a tracked
value for the surface to aid Solar Energy analysis. " Anybody who would like to donate this software plug-in to Solar CITIES would be highly esteemed.

See More

www.light-up.co.uk
LightUp gives the ability to have realtime walkthrough and flythough of your fully lit model, all running inside the SketchUp window. Simply place light sources in your Sketchup model switch to Touring mode and you can explore how your model looks from any angle. Change the time of year / time of d...


Thomas Henry Culhane Our friend Edwind Suryadi from East Java in Indonesia has shared these great photos of his home-scale biogas project using 200 liter barrels. Great job Edwind! Hebat sekali!


JANGAN-JANGAN-JANGAN SEKALI-KALI MEMBAKAR BIOGAS YANG PERTAMA KALI TERBENTUK, DEMI KEAMANAN –KESELAMATAN BUANGLAH BIOGAS PRODUKSI PERTAMA TERSEBUT
This is my biogas project, these pictures represent the way how to build the biogas reactor, so this is not final yet. Later I'll upload the biogas storage (penyimpanan gas nya) then the application of the final fun part: The cooking!!! Additional info: the process of m...aking methan takes about two weeks, but gradually the reactor produces the methan everyday :)

Thomas Henry Culhane At Kilian's birthday party: Turning 2 years old today, little Kilian Aurelius helps Dad convert a 2000 Watt engine/generator to run on biogas. Child's play, where play is life...

June 27 at 10:11pm
Thomas Henry Culhane

Thomas Henry Culhane Kilian's biogas birthday bonanza: As he celebrated his 2nd revolution around our ultimate power source, Kilian assisted in the simple conversion of a 2 KW electric generator to run on the natural gas produced from his own kitchen waste. Wahnsinn! We expect each birthday to be an even better celebration of a steadily improving rather than worsening planet.


Thomas Henry Culhane Kilian Aurelius Culhane's 2nd birthday celebration included a simple biogas engine conversion. Here Kilian helps mount the regulator on the 2000 W engine, vaguely understanding that even though Russia is threatening to embargo Germany's gas supply, his future will be secure because he is learning to turn his kitchen garbage into his own truly natural gas.





 At Kilian's birthday party: Turning 2 years old today, little Kilian Aurelius helps Dad convert a 2000 Watt engine/generator to run on biogas. Child's play, where play is life...





Ted Stern
Looks in the photo like Killan's turning up your biogas generator to 11 !!!
June 28

Thomas Henry Culhane For when you need the figures on hand.


netenergy.theoildrum.com
Posted by David Murphy on April 7, 2010 - 10:57am in The Oil Drum: Net EnergyTopic: MiscellaneousTags: david murphy, eroi, minimum, original, sustainability, transportation, u.s. [list all tags]

Thomas Henry Culhane Mustafa Hussein, wish I could be there to hear you read your great poem (is it the one you read at the Water Ministry office to all the staff when we visitied Magdi? Sarah Rifaat, wish I could see the performance piece you did in Turkey! Hanna Fathy Rostom, wish I could be there to share the solutions with you! Have a... great time you guys, and remember me and Solar CITIES to the group! I wish I could perform our solar powered music there too!

See More

Location:‫من ساقية الصاوي الي النادي السويسري ‬
Time:5:30PM Saturday, July 3rd



Mustafa Hussein
actually the one you are talking about was for the water remember :) but this one I did read for the first time loooong time ago when I met you with Hala Mohey at some point when you got back from the US I guess how ever I wish you could have made it to represent our Solar CITIES project but ISA Hanna and I will do our best to let ppl know about it.

good you are keeping up with us and best of luck
June 26 at 11:54pm

Thomas Henry Culhane Finished setting up the compost heat-exchange
experiment in time for Kilian's birthday, now all we need are the grass
clippings to start the aerobic enthalpy (thermodynamic potential)
process...

June 26 at 10:08pm

Thomas Henry Culhane Finished setting up the compost heat-exchange experiment in time for Kilian's birthday, now all we need are the grass clippings to start the aerobic enthalpy (thermodynamic potential) process...


Thomas Henry Culhane Grace Gobbo and Joram Samaon have sent their latest home-scale kitchen-garbage to biogas and fertilizer photos from their houses in Kigoma, Tanzania to share. It cost us about $800 to build these two systems; with a bit of financial support we can spread this technology to all the areas around Gombe Chimpanzee prese...rve and stop the charcoal/firewood extraction causes of deforestation completely.

See More

Thomas Henry Culhane Grace Gobbo and Joram Samaon have sent their latest home-scale kitchen-garbage to biogas and fertilizer photos from their houses in Kigoma, Tanzania to share. It cost us about $800 to build these two systems; help us spread this technology to all the areas around Gombe Chimpanzee preserve and stop the charcoal/firewood extraction causes of deforestation completely.

June 26 at 2:57pm ·

Thomas Henry Culhane wants you to check out the good work being done on this project by visiting the Action Atlas


Villagers and townspeople surrounding the Gombe National Park are learning how to transform their kitchen and agricultural wastes into clean burning...

Thomas Henry Culhane Here you will see that the Navy has created 3D gaming environments to teach VESSEL damage control without the risks of commissioning real ships while Northrop Grumman creates their own games for their Virtual Training System for difficult technologies (running powerplants for example). The question is WHY ARE WE NOT ...DOING THIS FOR VITAL URBAN PLANNING ISSUES AND THIRD WORLD DEVELOPMENT? Help me change this.

See More

www.delta3d.org
A well-supported and fully-funded open source project, Delta3D is a full-function game engine appropriate for a wide variety of modeling and simulation applications (training, education, visualizations, and entertainment). Its modular design integrates other well-known Open Source projects such as O...




Jane Shevtsov
We also need a good free dynamic simulation program. Systems thinking is too important to be left to Stella and its pricy ilk.
June 26 at 3:13am

Thomas Henry Culhane Too bad this one costs so much -- the ability to lay pipe and connect solar and biogas systems in VR is enormously helpful. When we get the money...


www.3skeng.com
Download your personal copy of 3skeng Pipehere you can buy your copy of 3skeng Pipe Conceptual in only a few steps. You will receive online an installation package with a setup software, which will upgrade your SketchUp installation with the powerful 3skeng tools.

Thomas Henry Culhane Your tax dollars really at work: The U.S. Department of Energy makes this plugin available for free on their Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy site so there is no excuse for architects who still build buildings that consume too much of the wrong kind of power.

apps1.eere.energy.gov
OpenStudio is a free plugin for the Google SketchUp 3D drawing program. The plugin makes it easy to create and edit the building geometry in your EnergyPlus input files. The plugin also allows you to launch EnergyPlus simulations and view the results without leaving SketchUp.

Thomas Henry Culhane Another great tool for the ARG, but this one costs. It does have a Google Sketchup plugín though, so you can integrate it with your kmz files and model your sites wind power potential.


www.virtualwind.com
Virtualwind is an advanced research and development company dedicated to providing customers with easy-to-use software solutions to their complex flow physics problems.

Thomas Henry Culhane

Thomas Henry Culhane wants you to check out the good work being done on this project by visiting the Action Atlas


The streets of Cairo, Egypt are filled with rotting trash -- most of it organic garbage festering in broken plastic bags, bringing disease-bearing...


June 26 at 1:38am via Action Atlas Application ·

Thomas Henry Culhane The tools keep coming! With the Sketchy Physics plug in for Google Sketchup we can begin to realize our dream of conducting interactive real life experiments in renewable energy technology designs with our friends in the developing world before committing the money and time to fly there, buy materials and build. This s...hould save our NGO money and accelerate and multiply the potential of our work.

See More
www.youtube.com
Models found on the web. All the simulations were made with Sketchyphysics and SketchUp. You can download it here: http://code.google.com/p/sketchyphysics/ For more examples go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLvXvzPvfWI

Thomas Henry Culhane Just made my first georeferenced 3D building in my home town of Chicago.Download it and put it in your Google Earth program then make one yourself. Takes about 5 minutes. This is crowd sourcing cloud computing citizen science at its next to best! Now if only Google will add Cairo Nairobi, Kigoma, and Bethlehem among the places we can model.

sketchup.google.com
Modeled with Building Makerby TH Culhane, Solar CITIES

Thomas Henry Culhane Um... wow! This is fantastic. Our website is totally going to be using the Earth API and GE Plugin to provide 3D content that is georeferenced and interactive. In this talk, Google Development liaison Roman Nurick does a great job of explaining the power of these data visualization tools. Google gets it. Let's hope t...he rest of us can put these tools to good use before we lose too much more biodiversity, habitat and life support and more of our children.

See More
www.youtube.com
Google I/O 2009 - Building Advanced 3D Geographical Applications for the Web with the Google Earth API Roman Nurik -- Contents -- 1:31 - Happy 1st Birthday, Earth API! 3:05 - Quick refresher 7:34 - My Earth demo 13:05 - New open source utility libraries 19:15 - Animation, effects, and int...

Thomas Henry Culhane Spending the weekend setting up new (and expensive, ouch!) production studio workstation (PC tower with GeForce 250 graphics card and Intel i7 chip, Alesis mini-studio interface and multi-media software) to jump into creation of 3D gaming interface for sustainable development pre-visualization and radical/advocacy pla...nning. I invite help from all quarters -- using Unity 3D and Ryzom source code, Blender etc.



June 25 at 9:51pm ·
Play as Life.
June 25 at 9:51pm

Thomas Henry Culhane We are getting closer to having the tools we need to create our "echtzeit/zukunftzeit" MMORPG Solar CITIES ARG for sustainable third world development. With Google Building Maker, which is even easier and more accurate than Sketchup (albeit using texture wraps) we can model our cities very easily now and share the re...sults with everyone. If the Google Earth Inside project ever gets completed we will be even more on our way to having a "digital copy" of our planet from a "built-environment" perspective. Then we will have to work on not only the plumbing, but, most importantly, the eco-system modeling. But we are getting there.


sketchup.google.com
Building Maker is a 3D modeling tool for adding buildings to Google Earth. It's fun to use, and an easy way to get on the 3D map. Here's how it works:



‫مقدمه عن المشروع البيوجاذمن حنا فتحي في حي الزبلين في القاهرهتشكل القمامه في كثير من الاماكن مشكله كبيره و خصوصا مشكله التخلص من المواد العضويه واعاده تدويرها ونتج عن ذلك تراكم المواد العضويه بالشوارع او التخلص منها بالقائها فى اماكن خارج المدينه واحيانا في الماء وهذاما يؤدى الى تلوث التربه والماء...‬

Thomas Henry Culhane The frightening thing about this is that people in the gulf states are generally on the side of more drilling, the logic reportedly being, "if our fishing and tourism industries are totally killed off, the only viable industry we will have is our oil industry", so the worse this gets the more it paradoxically creates t...he incentive for greater, not less, exploitation of deep-sea oil. And this will continue -- the more our biosphere is destroyed the more we will feel it is time to get in there and rape what resources remain. If you really want to fight these polluting extractive industries you can not do it through the scare tactics of "consciousness raising disasters". You have to obviate the need for the products they are supplying. As Sheikh Yamani said, "the stone age did not end because we ran out of stones." Now get with the biogas, folks!

See More

news.bbc.co.uk
A US federal court judge blocks President Barack Obama's six-month moratorium on deep water oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.



I can however understand the logic since this comes in the wake of the rig disaster - 'if the Gulf is already a toxic wasteland, let's keep drilling.'


مقدمه عن المشروع البيوجاذ (من حنا فتحي في القاهره)تشكل القمامه في كثير من الاماكن مشكله كبيره و خصوصا مشكله التخلص من المواد العضويه واعاده تدويرها ونتج عن ذلك تراكم المواد العضويه بالشوارع او التخلص منها بالقائها فى اماكن خارج المدينه واحيانا في الماء وهذاما يؤدى الى تلوث الترب

In this photo:

, after a wonderful morning commissioning the first Palestinian ARTI style biofuel unit, presented a Sunlinq 25 Watt foldable Solar Panel to Imad Atrash of the Palestinian Wildlife Society as a gift on behalf of Solar CITIES as Amer Rabayah from Engineers Without Border...s looks on; EWB Palestine has built the first model eco-home here in Bethlehem at PWS for all to see integrated sustainability solutions.
See More
June 22 at 5:13a

Liked on www.youtube.com
Harvard Krokodiloes and Radcliffe Pitches perform at Harvard 25th Reunion, Class of 1985

Thomas Henry Culhane Amer Rabayah Hi Amer! I've suggested this website to Hanna Fathy Rostom in Cairo (who you should hook up with!) but these concepts would also work well for your eco-home demonstrations in Palestine, as I had suggested to Mohammed Salim when we visited the solar powered demonstration home on the street across from his pharmacy.


www.azsolarcenter.org
Arizona Solar Center

June 21 at 11:44pm ·

Thomas Henry Culhane Hanna Fathy Rostom Here is a good resource to answer your question about cooling your apartment in Cairo. Look at figures 22 and 25 in particular. If I were you I would build the trombe wall (figure 25); because they are famous it would be something you could add into your Solar CITIES tour. Lots of people would want... to get a first hand look on how you build it. Basically you would be building an extra wall outside your south facing wall.

See More

www.azsolarcenter.org
Arizona Solar Center

Thomas Henry Culhane As we plan our Nigerian trip to introduce biogas to former President Obasanjo's home village (upon his personal invitation to help him fight deforestation - a passion of his) we are blessed to serendipitously hear from Oluwasegun Balogun (via Marcel Lenormand) who is managing the waste management company "Naijatomo" (..."Clean Nigeria) and has suggested a cooperation . Their website is inspirational and it would be great to find synergies with a group dedicated to "redefining waste management in sub-saharan Africa".

See More

www.naijatomo.com
A holistic waste management company, Waste management Companies Nigeria Africa Waste Recycling, Sewage Disposal, Medical Waste, Landfill,

Thomas Henry Culhane Now experimenting with the heat of aerobic decomposition in a styrofoam, duct tape and stretch wrap insulated 600 liter compost bin. The trick is to retain the heat but still allow good air flow and moisture drainage. Perhaps our findings will lead to recommendation that all compost bins be insulated -- for those not ...capturing the heat you should still get a much faster turn-around


June 21 at 9:42pm

Thomas Henry Culhane Finished insulating the new compost bin. Objective: to see how much thermal energy we can capture from 600 liters of grass clippings during aerobic decomposition; will it heat 60 liters of water to bath temperature? If so, in how long and for how long? What will rate of replacement be? Next task: finding a 40cmx40cm ra...diator to use as the heat exchanger (must be special ordered).

See More




Edwind Suryadi
I hope someday TH come visiting Indonesia to introduce us about the green project
June 22 at 12:14pm

Edwind Suryadi
btw, if there is technology to make inexpensive solar panels would much help indonesian people.
June 22 at 12:22pm ·

 

Thomas Henry Culhane Statistics on environmental injustice in Germany showing the same pattern as everywhere -- the immigrants and the poor suffer most yet have the least capacity (due to lack of awareness, education or political capacity) to deal with it.

www.uni-bielefeld.de

Thomas Henry Culhane Sybille Fruetel Culhane There is a good resource here, a UNESCO study on the need for training the German Turkish community in Environmental Awareness.


www.umweltbundesamt.de
Das Umweltbundesamt (UBA) gehört zum Geschäftsbereich des Bundesministeriums für Umwelt, Naturschutz und Reaktorsicherheit und ist Anlaufstelle in nahezu allen Fragen des Umweltschutzes. Es arbeitet für den Schutz von Wasser, Boden und Luft und kümmert sich um den technischen Umweltschutz sowie über...

Thomas Henry Culhane Sybille Fruetel Culhane Here is a site dedicated to finding green jobs in Germany.

www.greenjobs.de
Das Angebot bei greenjobs.de wächst trotz der Krise. "500 aktuelle grüne Stellenangebote sind ein neuer Rekord für greenjobs.de", freut sich Ende Januar Jan Strohschein, Vorstand des Trägervereins greenjobs e.V. ...

Thomas Henry Culhane Sybille Fruetel Culhane Many of the statistics we need for our business proposal on doing Solar CITIES "green-collar" job training here in Essen are in this "GreenTech -- Made in Germany" document. Germany, although an export led economy, weathered the economic recession, it is said, because innovation in industry (pa...rticularly high-efficiency so-called "green" products) is strong here. By training the immigrant population we can keep it strong.

See More

www.bmu.de
GreenTech made in Germany 2.0 - Umwelttechnologie-Atlas für Deutschland ++ Umwelttechnologien gehören zu den wichtigsten Zukunftsmärkten des 21. Jahrhunderts. Sie sorgen dafür, Belastungen für die Umwelt von vornherein zu vermeiden, sie zu verringern oder bereits entstandene Schäden zu beheben. Zugl...

The Green Recovery Paper: Eine Wachstumstrategie für Deutschland: neue arbeit durch Investitionen in Energie und umwelt.

www.bmu.de


www.bmu.de
Bundesumweltminister Sigmar Gabriel hat heute der TBM Technologieplattform Bioenergie und Methan in Geislingen-Türkheim (Baden-Württemberg) rund 3,5 Millionen Euro aus dem Umweltinnovationsprogramm zur Verfügung gestellt.

derstandard.at
Der Sektor Umwelttechnologie wuchs in der Vergangenheit wesentlich stärker als der Rest der heimischen Wirtschaft


www.bdi.eu
Willkommen auf dem Internetportal des BDI - Bundesverband der Deutschen Industrie e.V. Hier finden Sie Informationen zur deutschen Industrie, Wirtschaft und Wirtschaftspolitik - Startseite


www.wirtschaftfuerklimaschutz.eu
Sie können sich die komplette Studie, Berichte zu den einzelnen Wirtschaftssektoren und weiteres Material als PDF herunterladen.

blog.energieszene.de
Die EU plant, für die dritte Handelsperiode ab 2013 statt der nationalen Budgets ein gemeinschaftsweites Emissionsbudget und die Auktionierung als grundsätzliche Zuteilungsmethode sowie einheitliche Zuteilungsregeln für kostenlose Emissionszertifikate einzuführen. ...

www.advice-business.com
Es gibt viel Gerede in den Medien über "grüne" Arbeitsplätze, dem Weg der Besserung und neuen Wohlstand durch solche Arbeitsplätze. Hunderttausende von Arbeitslosen fragen sich zwei Fragen: Was ist ein ...


www.biofueldaily.com
Knoxville TN (SPX) Jun 18, 2010 - Some bacteria destroy oil. Might those bacteria lead oil companies to change their methods of harvesting the energy of the oil while at the same time reducing the carbon dioxide that burning oil and gasoline discharges into the atmosphere? Steve Larter thinks that...

Thomas Henry Culhane Hanna Fathy Rostom Joram Samaon Please take a look at the pictures in this article and start experimenting. Joram, I'm preparing your certificate for the work we did in Tanzania in March.


www.permacultureactivist.net
The following article originally appeared in The Permaculture Activist, #44, Nov. 2000 Copies of this and other issues are available from the Activist (see Back Issues).


 The definitive compost heat-exchanger, turning the therms generated by aerobic bacterial decomposition into useful oil-offsetting energy. Want to kick your oil addiction? Learn from Jean Pain, who figured it out and published his results back in 1973 during the first "oil crisis".


www.permacultureactivist.net
The following article originally appeared in The Permaculture Activist, #44, Nov. 2000 Copies of this and other issues are available from the Activist (see Back Issues).

Thomas Henry Culhane Ever since Hanna Fathy Rostom and I got back from working with Grace Gobbo and Joram Samaon in Tanzania, where we discussed "bacterial fueled home energy" and creating heat exchangers to supply hot water and winter heat for our biodigestors through compost, I've been trying to come up with a simple compost heat exchang...er in the backyard. I'm close, but here is a good article from those good folks at Mother Earth News who have already succeeded. Take a look.

See More

www.motherearthnews.com
Here' s the latest update on our experiments to obtain usable heat from compost. All systems are ' go' with MOTHER' s latest innovation in the field of do-it yourself home energy: a decomposing compost heap that will produce hot water.

Thomas Henry Culhane
I would use the Mother Earth News method but it takes up too much space for our peri-urban backyard so I'm trying to see just how small we can get it and still be useful. For bathing their result of a constant 101 F is perfect, and this would work for keeping the methanogens in the biodigestor warm and productive too. The 130 to 140 degrees they ... See Moregot for two to four months is intriguing because my experiments have shown that the compost pile is quickly cooled by the water running through it so you definitely want temperatures far in excess of what your end temp is. But it is good to know that the size piles they make at Mother Earth do the job for household heating. I want to see if we can get ours to work using the standard 300 liter compost bin. Hmmm.
June 18 at 10:41pm ·

  Wonderful site where I buy many of my books and instructional videos; this time Steve Harris shows how he drives around in his truck fueled by a balloon full of methane that he tows behind it. Marvelous!


www.ush2.com
This Video ANSWERS that question for Natural Gas, Hydrogen, Propane, Wood Gas and more. How far you can drive on a 10 gallon air tank, a 3000psi cylinder, or a bag of gas. Its one of the best Videos Steven Harris has Made.

Liked on www.youtube.com
The U.S. faces twin crises of high unemployment and dirty energy. Can innovative public policies address both challenges? Our panel of guests discuss several public policies that are truly blue-green i.e. friendly to workers and the environmen...

Thomas Henry Culhane Congratulations to our good friend Byron DeLear, Candidate for Missouri
House of Representatives, for co-founding this marvelous midwestern initiative! You are a true patriot Byron! My prayers that you will win the election and represent us all -- "Mr. DeLear Goes to Washington" with you as the real life Jimmie Stewart!

See More

www.maaep.org
Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) legislation passes in Missouri!Members: We have been working very hard to get PACE passed, special thanks to all who helped to move this forward. Get ready to ramp up! -- MAAEP Exec. ...

Thomas Henry Culhane via Isabel A. M. Cole: ‎"Fool me once, shame on me, fool me 8 times... I must be a @!@#$% idiot" -- with these hilarious words Jon Stewart chronicles the last 8 presidential speeches in which our fearless leaders all promised to get us off of oil. From Nixon in 1974 who promised 100% energy independence by 1980, to GW Bush who promised up to ...70% independence by 2025 this compendium of clips makes me ask, "since govt, big or small, can't or won't do it, who will join me toward I-will-make-my-home-100%-energy-independent by 2012?" Sometimes I feel so... alone.

See More
www.thedailyshow.com
America is an unstoppable oil dependency-breaking machine -- unfortunately the machine runs on oil. Airdate - //

Thomas Henry Culhane Looks like Alvaro Silva and I may be featured in this magazine regarding our urban biodigestor in South Central L.A.


attra.ncat.org
ATTRA - National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service: Your source for the latest in sustainable agriculture and organic farming news, publications, events and funding opportunities

  This is a fantastic idea. Perhaps we can help encourage the production low-cost fertilizer and bio-active irrigation water to maintain this great green wall via biodigestor technology.


news.bbc.co.uk
African leaders meet to push forward the idea of planting a tree belt - the Great Green Wall - across Africa from west to east.

Thomas Henry Culhane ‎@insAneTunA Great to hear from you insAneTunA! I agree with you; I did work with aquaponics back in the early 1990s in my biospherics class at Crenshaw High School in L.A. and started a system at a demonstration eco-home in Santa Rosa last year th...

Liked on www.youtube.com
Harvard Krokodiloes and Radcliffe Pitches perform at Harvard 25th Reunion, Class of 1985

  Just arrived in Germany and found that our new HDPE tank reactor, which was started with no animal manure, only clear effluent from the old telescoping reactor (which survived the winter freeze), is finally producing its first flammable gas. Conclusion: once we have the fluid innoculant we can create a mobile and urban biogas solution that needs no animal waste.




Mike Rimoin
speaking of overfeeding- I'm thinking of emptying my over-fed digester out and re-loading it with new poop/lake bacteria...thoughts? any suggestions on what to do with 275 gallons of poop/veggie oil/compost slurry?
June 18 at 5:39pm

Thomas Henry Culhane
Before doing that, I would take a pH measurement. If it isn't acid it might not be overfed. Temperature could be your enemy. The best thing to do would be to take a few gallons of slurry and put them in an airtight container with a valve (a 5 gallon sealed paint bucket worked in Alaska; just put a valve in the lid). Let it sit in a really warm ... See Moreplace and see if you get gas. Another thing I did (because my system didn't produce for almost 3 months here) is add water to the system from the feeding pipe to create a kind of overpressure, then test the gas. Yesterday when I arrived from the U.S. and checked my valve I was getting negative pressure (suction) -- the tank was inhaling. So I thought "no gas". But then I started filling with water and this pushed the gas that was inside out -- and it lit. That is how I got the picture. It may be that your tank is indeed producing gas (I would suspect it is) but that you don't have a way to get the gas out (because the quantities are small because of the temperature -- remember these bacteria are optimized to work at body temp, 37 C. so before doing anything radical try those fixes. After all, the stuff in there is FOOD for bacteria, no reason to throw any of it out. If it is acid, try adding baking soda.
June 18 at 6:00pm

  We are now in a dialog with the Uiracu Institute in Brazil to bring biogas to the endangered Atlantic Coast Rainforests. One campaign would be to use biogas to stop charcoal production to save the "Charcoal monkey" (mono carvoeiro, a.k.a. the woolly spider monkey Brachyteles arachnoides, the largest and most endanger...ed primate in Brazil) from deforestation caused by the fuelwood industry.



www.studentpulse.com
Much debate has recently arisen over China’s and India’s responsibilities as related to climate protection. These two countries have repeatedly pleaded that their emissions be judged on a per-capita basis, since their per-capita emissions...

Joseluis Ortiz Hey Thomas, this is Jose with Affordable Solar Group just wanted to say hi and let you know im loving the work your doing so revolutionary. your the man

June 17 at 5:14pm

  I took Dad to physical therapy today at Phelps Memorial Hospital as he recovers from his brain surgery and, because I had seen the Wii device at Isabel's house and I asked their professional opinions about its therapeutic value they said "oh, we actually have... one here at the hospital; it is a very important tool" and then they decided to start him on the "Wii Fit Therapy" this very day. It was fascinating to see how this technology is being employed by professionals to radically accelerate the rewiring of brain and body after trauma; they wouldn't have suggested it for him however, if I hadn't brought it up, remembering Isabel and Alex's affection for it. They said, "more and more we are getting our staff to use it and we recommend our patients get one for home so they can continue the exercises on balance and strength and then come in for evaluation. It makes it so e...

See More

wiifit.com
These 15 activities, brand new to Wii Fit Plus, will give your body a serious workout, all while making you smile and maybe even tickling your funny bone!

  What an honor to be invited to be among these luminaries at this year's Aspen Environment Forum July 25-28th! I look forward to the synergies that will result and to working with this great bunch of visionaries to get the ideas we come up with in Aspen onto the ground and into implementation so that we can help reali...ze the ambitious plan that President Obama so courageously laid out in his address tonight! There is no time like now to say "yes we can".

See More

www.aspenenvironment.org
The Aspen Institute and National Geographic magazine join forces to produce the first ever Aspen Environment Forum, a powerful, three-four day exchange examining the future of the environment, our growing need for energy, the realities of climate change, and what we can do as citizens, corporations,...

Watching Obama take on big oil and put our citizens and our environments first (finally a government that seems to be working on behalf of our people and country!)


4 comments:

Blogger said...

I'm using Kaspersky antivirus for a number of years now, and I'd recommend this product to you all.

Blogger said...

Get all your favorite alcoholic drinks on Duty Free Depot!

All the popular brand name beverages for unbeatable low prices.

Blogger said...

ROBLOX is empowered by a growing player base of over 300,000 creator players who produce an infinite variety of highly immersive experiences.

These experiences range from 3D games and contests, to interactive adventures where players can take on new personas imagining what it feels to be a dinosaur, a miner in a quarry or an astronaut on a space exploration.

Blogger said...

QUANTUM BINARY SIGNALS

Get professional trading signals delivered to your cell phone daily.

Start following our signals right now and make up to 270% a day.