Success of biogas project:

The mixing chamber complete














Finnishing touches
Note use of Bluntstone Thongs















Fabricating the chamber










The impeller, crafted using an angle
grinder












Video of diesel running on biogas

After toiling for a couple of days at Doug’s compound and with the aid of one of his guys who was pretty switched on with the welding, we managed to create a mixing chamber for the biogas. The tricky bit was the making of the stationary impeller (nozzle) for mixing the gases. A quick chemistry lesson, methane molecules are very small, much smaller than butane and propane and it was thought that the problem with the original plan of introducing the biogas into the air filter cowl was not giving the air/ biogas mixture a chance to mix prior to being drawn into the combustion. To overcome this I constructed a mixing chamber from length of 5” galv. pipe and to assist in the mixing a stationary impeller (we have not thought up a suitable name, a ‘nozzle’ is the name given to the stationary blades in a steam turbine.) This was fashioned by an angle grinder from sheet of steel. The original inlet pipe was stuck in the side with the addition of a hose connector protruding to the centre of the chamber and cut at an angle of about 50 degrees to allow the venturi effect to draw the gas to the centre of the chamber and mixed with air through the impeller. The idea was to remove the existing air filter and fit the mixing chamber directly to the inlet of the engine, the air filter is then stuck on the inlet of the mixing chamber and the biogas is feed into the side of the top half of the mixing chamber with the control valve.

Again we filled the camera’s memory with video to analyse the test so no stills were taken, however I have managed to reduce the file size of one of the video’s sufficiently enough to load onto the blog. As we understand it opening up the biogas valve too far means that there is too much biogas being forced into the engine and the governor rack is cutting off the diesel and the engine requires the diesel for the ignition and to lubricate the injectors. (Unlike the propane which does not require the diesel to ignite). When the gas is shut off the rack is returned to its original position with an inrush of diesel, thus causing the black smoke which is unignited diesel. The next test is to quantify the fact the engine is running on biogas rather than diesel by measuring known quantities of diesel and timing the runtime both with and without the biogas.

The ladies at SEDA-Laos with thier solar cooker














The prototype

Another side project I have been involved with over here is constructing a solar cooker; I downloaded some plans for the “Sunny Cooker” from:

http://www.freewebs.com/sunnycooker/funpanelcookerplan.htm

These things are pretty simple to make just a cardboard box, a roll of ally foil some glue and gaffer tape and away you go. (Valerie Singleton Eat your heart out), I made a test unit at my hotel and the I gave a ‘workshop’ at the SEDA-Laos office which was a much larger unit I made with the girls. We had the smaller test unit outside whilst we made the larger unit and by the time we completed it had raised the temperature of a glass of water up to about 70 degrees. We had no way of testing the temperature accurately but putting your finger into the water certainly gave you the ‘Zoikes’ factor.

Back to the argument of Day running lights.

For those of you who haven’t known me through previous incarnations will know I was involved with an organisation called the MRAA (Motorcycle riders association of Australia). During my tenior with the MRAA I was involved in the issue of Day Running Lights (DRL) hardwired lights for motorbikes. Without going into all whys and wherefores of the argument there is just a very interesting observation to be made in Asia. Thailand has DRL, hardwired bikes, that is the bike is not fitted with an of/off switch only a hi/lo beam. It is illegal in Thailand not to have your headlight on even in the day. In Laos it is illegal to have your headlight on in the daytime, and you are liable to a fine of either 20,000 kip 30,000 kip or 40,000 kip (depending on how many policemen are at the collection booth, sorry police post), it also interesting that you can get fined for not having your headlight on at night time so there is a period around dusk where you will be in the wrong no matter what you are doing. I was so pleased to be fined for this as it is slightly more ludicrous than the fine I received for indicating.

I have now been in Laos for a few months in total and the bizarre is now just commonplace, it is perhaps just the natural order of things that in a country where the primary form of transport is the step through motorcycle, seeing ridiculous things on the road is commonplace, however some are worth a special mention.

Things that should not be carried on a step through motorcycle.

1. 30 Kg bag of carrots and a Dog;

Wedge bag of carrots between your knees, stick dog on top.

2. 6 x10 metre length of concrete reinforcing rods;

This can be achieved by bending the rods in half, wrapping it around your waste and strapping across the rear seat. Corners are very interesting.

3. An umbrella, a mobile phone and a baby

The baby is placed in bag which is placed over the neck with just the head and the arms sticking out, (If you can remember the character ‘Kuato’ from the movie ‘Total Recall’ is the effect your looking for).With practice the umbrella and phone can be held in one hand. The umbrella is to keep the sun off the baby so at least the child’s’ safety is one down the list after the priority of the mobile phone call.