more developments with biogas

How to measure biogas pressure
Equipment:
1. Hose
2. Water
3. Tree stump
4. Tall guy

















Too cute by far



















Making Charcoal













The experiment















CAT get everywhere












Sunny, MK, MK wife & Doug















The experiment












If you ever wondered what happend to the old falcon ambulances











Video of Diesel running on biogas

My final trip to the RTC this time around was to run an experiment on the diesel engine running on biogas to try to ascertain just how much gas was being used as apposed to diesel fuel. I bought a few odds and sods at the Chinese market including a large syringe to meter the amount of diesel going into the engine.

Unlike the propane I used last year the biogas will not self ignite, therefore it will always need some diesel fuel for both ignition and lubrication of the injectors. There are also some issues of the detrimental effect that the biogas (which contains I unknown amount of sulphur) will have on the engine.

The plan was to disconnect the diesel fuel tank and fill the syringe with diesel directly into the fuel inlet. We can now measure how much fuel the engine was consuming for a set speed. We could then run the engine with the biogas and see how much less fuel was being used. The gas was regulated by the valve at the opposed hose connection end to the mixing chamber, as apposed to the valve at the mixing chamber end. The reason for this was that we wanted to take a measurement of the flow of gas which would have been difficult with the mixing chamber. The valve was cracked open slowly until the engine started spluttering as the governor ran through its confusing cycles of not really knowing what to set itself to and then the valve was closed slightly. At this point we reckoned that we were running the maximum amount of biogas that we could get away with.

We ran the experiment at a number of different speeds and we concluded that we were running the engine on biogas however it was not a large percentage about 15% at the higher revs. And I have to admit to being a little disappointed. However we have to look at these things in perspective.

1. We know we have issues with the digester, there is manure/ water mix oozing out of the containment plates and the discharge chute is still bubbling with methane, therefore not all of the biogas is being extracted. We have no idea of the composition of the gas and no means of testing (there could be as little as 30% methane in it). I am bringing a sample back with me for testing and I will be looking for a testing kit of some form to take with me on my next trip. If anybody has any ideas I would be more than welcome to listen to them. Clearly improving the digester function will improve the biogas quality.

2. The gas was not scrubbed in anyway, so there is C₀2, water vapour and sulphur in various amounts in there, the C₀2 and the water vapour should cause too much of a problem but the sulphur could be an issue. My next step will be to construct a crude charcoal scrubber to try to remove as many impurities as I can prior to ignition.

3. The engine itself is in very poor state of repair and will soon be destined for the scrap yard. As I have mentioned in previous blogs the low compression caused by the bad condition of the engine can be seen as helping the process and did allow the engine to run on 100% propane. However, logic would dictate that as the tolerances in the engine start to degrade the running efficiency will also degrade, this maybe a benefit or a hindrance to the running on biogas, at the present I don’t know however it is a variable.

On the conclusion of the experiment we measured the pressure of the gas using a manometer ( yes there was tall man holding the open end) and the pressure measured at 37”H₂O ( about 9.25 Kpa )and the flow rate was 6 litres/ min. We measured this by filling a 1 ½ Litre Pepsi bottle full of water and holding upside down in a bucket of water and inserting the biogas pipe into the bottle, turning on the valve to the set point and counting how long it took the gas to replace the water.

I am on my way back now and posting this blog in hotel in Bangkok, I have picked up a stomach bug in Laos and has been me some trouble for the last few weeks. I must have to admit that this trip has been a bit of a struggle for a number of reasons, nothing has seen to gone to plan and there have been a lot of disappointments. Seeing Vene again has been good and I can count the stuff I did at the RTC as some form of success. But it has been a sobering experience as I realise that if you choose to work in a country like Laos, nothing is going to easy, there is the Laos Laos way of doing things which when you first confront it is hilarious, but can be frustrating after a while, having you can’t let it get to you. Also there is the cultural sensitivity issue that you have to work with, this is an issue in Vientiane the capital, but in the countryside and poorer parts of the country can be a real struggle with local superstitions and mistrust of furlongs, there is also the endemic corruption which spans all of Asia but seems to be particularly bad in Laos. The simple truth of the matter is in the ‘big picture’ thinking of what I am doing here it is a remarkable opportunity, the country has huge potential and has a tenacious and dynamic people, there is a chance to do some real work here and really make a difference to peoples lives. Needless to say personally it is a huge adventure and a chance to do something which is totally ‘out there’ in my life. Of course the downside to this is you have to live it day in day out and you have to accept you will miss the creature comforts and look at the constant frustrations as part of the challenge and learning to live with them is part of the experience.

More on creature comforts:

1. Find somewhere to live other than a hotel, 8 weeks living in a hotel is just a dog, no being able to go to the fridge and make a sandwich when you want a snack gets to you after a while.

2. Next trip to Laos will include a trip to Udon Thani to buy a coffee maker

3. Missing a decent bike, the YZM 110 just does not cut the mustard

4. I miss the TV*( particularly the bike racing ), although I can download ‘The Daily show’ & ‘The Colbert Report’ and radio is no problem as I can stream RRR & Radio 4.

5. Boscastle Pies

6. Also my friends of course, I do have a number of acquaintances in Vientiane which is cool but it is a very different scene.

*The selection of TV channels you get in the hotels you stay in is usually a mixed bag, the Manohra hotel I am in a the moment which is the river end of the Sukhumvit road in Silom, Bangkok, which I must admit is an excellent hotel at a pretty reasonable rate and caters for mainly Indians, therefore there are a lot of Indian TV on the hotel TV, there is a RT ( Russian Times ) which is an English version of Russian magazine program which features constant Pro Russian anti USA propaganda which is far more subtle than the propaganda dished out by the English Chinese Magazine CCTV9, which last night explained how evil the Dali Lama was by ignoring one of the main tenants of Buddhism which is the love of the mother land, I am not making this up. The most disappointing is the Australian Network although you do get the ABC news and heavens be praised the footy the rest is what I term as ‘spiders & snakes’ which as a lot of people wearing hats and doing bogan bush things, This from a country where 99% of the population lives in cities.

Missed doing a number of things in my last few nights in Vientiane, I must take a video of the ride down the Dogphon road from Doug’s compound back to the city. Why would you want to buy a PS2 when you can ride down the Dogphon road on a step through? It’s the combination of being quite narrow, very busy and has a lot of side roads leading in at odd angles. Being Laos there are no traffic rules as such and things arrive in your vicinity form all angles. It’s not a fast moving road so there is usually plenty of time to do something about it, its just heaps of fun.

The Laos Laos way of doing things; It is taken me quite a while but I realised that along with Vientiane and Van Vieng , Vene also has a name with a ‘V’ in it but the Laos language ( as well as the Thai) does not have a ‘V’ sounding letter. It is seemed an obvious question, so I asked Vene, the Laos answer, “It is not interesting”.

Look forward to seeing a lot of you again soon

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.

The trip up north

Many thanks for your comments on my last blog, I have been in constant touch with Jazz back at Erawan and he has been keeping me abreast of the fire situation in Victoria, I can’t really think of words to say that would adequately cover it, it is a surreal feeling watching the images on the TV. You get used to seeing images of disasters on the news; Katrina, Asian Tsunami, George Bush etc. but to see them from your home is shocking. On BBC world this morning, the top story was the Memorial service from the Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne, although I am not in Australia at the moment, I would express my solidarity with my countryman, all I can do is wish people well and hope they all get through this OK.
Its been a tough few days in Vientiane with one thing and another, things not running to plan etc. realising I needed a break from the city. I do like Vientiane, it’s a fascinating place, but it can be hard going sometimes, not as much as Bangkok, but I guess if you add heat and humidity to anywhere it can be a strain. Myself and Vene talked about over dinner with Somjan and his wife Ng and we decided to hire a car and drive out to the country for a couple of days. I was up for driving to Louanphrabang which is about a nine hour drive but Vene said it was too far for just a few days and suggested Talad instead ( meaning ‘market’), a town by the side of big lake which was just a few hours drive north in Vientiane Province. I picked up a 2006 Ford Ranger, I wanted a normal sedan but the hire car companies said you can only have a sedan if your staying in Vientiane, the roads get so bad outside of the city that they insist that you have a 4WD, normally you get a driver at no extra cost but not my way of doing things.

Dinner at The Moon The night with Somjan & Ng

Takes about an hour to get out of the city traffic although the city limits get a little blurred, it is just a gradual thinning out of the traffic chaos and more wildlife on the road. We took the opportunity to drop in at the Hui Hanna waterfall, which is where myself, Chris and Somjan were going to ride to for a cold drink on our return from the RTC the Sunday before, but the 18 km round trip from the main road on top of the 1 ½ hours that we already had covered was too much. There is an enormous sign pointing the way and local talk suggests that it is very beautiful, so as we had a good set of wheels I thought it was worth a look see. Vene try to discourage me saying that there wasn’t anything there, I said that there doesn’t have to be anything there I just wanted to have a look at the waterfall. OK OK OK, always listen to local knowledge, on the plus side it is very peaceful, you are certainly not going to be disturbed by falling water, a bit of poetic licence was used in the naming as I would not consider a weir a waterfall, specially one that doesn’t ‘weir’. There appeared to be some sort of aquatic park with bars/restaurants and such which was completely deserted and run down apart from a sultry young girl who approached us to relief us of 15,000 kip (about $AUD3), I did inquire exactly what we were paying for and the response was ‘ everybody pays’, which is not a answer at all. The word disappointment didn’t quite cover it. So back on the road.

The cascading waterfalls at Hui Hanna

Just north of Kilometre 56 the road hits the mountains and twists and turns at a steep angle. According to Vene this is nothing compared to roads from Vang Viang to Louanphrabang, the roads are not to bad it was the suicidal driving that was the biggest concern, overtaking on blind bends is the norm. Also the road winds through a lot of small villages and is quite narrow, the houses come right up to the edge, there are small children and school kids everywhere with simply no sense of the danger, the idea of hurtling through at 80 kph is just plain stupid. We arrived in Talad after about a 2 ½ hour drive, must admit didn’t look much of a town apart from a picturesque river. Anyhoo, after a few inquires we were pointed to towards a decent hotel, I was expecting it to be in the town but we crossed the river towards Lake Namnyung. The centre of Laos is very mountainess and covered in forest, this would explain why there are no trains in Laos; I don’t think I have ever been to a country that does not have trains before. The mixture of mountains and lakes mean that they are very big on hydro electric power and we passed a large dam and then up again into the mountains. After about 30 minute drive we found a hotel which had a simply spectacular view of the lake, so we decided this was our pitch. The location of the Namnyung view hotel was a small fishing village of about 200 people and the port for boats travelling the lake. All though the view from hotel room was spectacular it was rather odd that we were the only guests in the hotel. We decided to have a walk into the village for dinner and this was also strange, there were many large restaurants which all had inviting fulang names and were completely empty, again we were the only people eating out. I suspect that the village were used to having a large number of fulang, and I would guess at construction of the dam, now that the dam was finished there was nobody here and the village was dying as a consequence. It would be interesting to reflect on the cause and effect of large injections of cash into a community for projects such as this, the amount of different variables are long and complex but there is one thing that is certain in any project which effects communities it is essential to understand to reap the true benefits you have to be prepared to be in for the long haul (Are you listening George Bush). I was OK with the room, it was a great view and the peace and quiet after the noise of Vientiane, but Vene was a bit freaked out by it (the Laos equivalent of the twang of banjo’s) and cajoled me into driving to Vang Vieng the following morning.

Smart set of wheels

Lake Namnyung

Breakfast with a view

Hydro electricity

I had heard of stories about an Vang Vieng being bit of a tourist trap, but if there is one thing that I have learnt is don’t take anybodies word for it, go have a look for yourself, plus gives me a chance to see a bit more of this fascinating country. The three hour drive north was fairly uneventful, average speed was about 50 kph, traffic, windy roads and slow driving through the towns and villages keeps the average speed down. The approach to Vang Vieng is beautiful, the mountains jut out of the flat countryside the product of a violent tectonic movement at some prehistoric point in time. A shallow river runs between the town and the mountains and the choice places to stay are river side. The town itself is exactly as described, the Laos equivalent of Torremalenos or Sanur beach, Bali with a bit of Ibiza thrown in, thousands and thousands of pissed backpackers from every conceivable corner of the globe descending on this small town in the middle of Laos to drink, dance, partake of ‘de ‘erb’ and attempt to breed. I shouldn’t be too harsh; it is exactly the sort of thing I would have been doing ¼ century ago, so I shouldn’t be tut tuting at the following generation’s excursions. Having said all this we managed to find a real good hotel which the view from the bedroom balcony is simply breathtaking, especially the sunset which I completely failed to take a photograph of. The river below our balcony was in the process of being dredged, by hand no less. I watched the six guys for about 10 minutes and I was exhausted watching them. I took a short video on my camera but the file is too large to load onto the blog but I shall describe the process.
There are two rickety wooden pontoons which are hardly above water level, they walk a wheel barrow down to the end of the pontoon and turn it round, grab a shovel and jump into the water, at this point the water was up to their midriff. They commence to shovel the rubble out from the river bed and toss it into the barrow. When the barrow was full they pushed it back up the pontoon and built up the banks with it. When that bit was dredged sufficiently the all jumped into the water and dragged the pontoon to the next bit. Keep this up all day and add heat and humidity, (although the water would be keeping them cool), they would be earning about $2 a day doing this.
We took a walk down to the riverside and bought a couple of cold drinks at a riverside bar, who looked like they were just starting to wind up for an evenings partying so it was pretty quiet, Vene said the bars usually close about 5:00 AM. We sat ourselves on one of the river bank drinking couches and watched the spectacular sunset over the mountain. The choice entertainment for the backpacker was to hire a truck inner tube and jump in the river at the top end of the town, park yourself in the inner tube and let the gentle flow of the river take you all the way to the riverside bars. So there was a constant stream of semi inebriated backpackers passing in a inner tube in front of us. The new game of “guess the nationality of the pissed backpacker” was created, a more sophisticated version of Pooh sticks.

The view from our hotel

The following morning we went to the Tham Jang caves for a quick look see before setting off back for Vientiane. For those that followed my blog of my travels through Thailand last year may remember I visited the Erawan Caves near Udon Thani which I found on the off chance, they were a bit off the beaten track and although they were pretty spectacular the facilities were pretty poor (including a very poor lighting in the caves).Tham Jang caves being in a large tourist trap was a different matter. Like the Erawan caves there were more than sufficient steps to get to the entrance 147 of them this time( as apposed to the 610 to the Erawan Caves), these were much steeper and alarmingly hard work. The cavernous interior was much smaller than the cathedral like Erawan caves but the rock formations were more ornate and the stalactite and stalagmite formations were exquisitely detailed. The interior was well lit and had solid walkways and steps, the use of coloured lights emphasised the beauty of the rock formations which was a bit touristy but effective.

Tham Jang Caves

It was going to take most of the day at a steady pace to get back to Vientiane. The drive back was the same as the drive up except heading south instead of heading north. Vene wanted to stop and buy a fish for her mother on the way back, apparently the fish is cheaper an fresher in the country and is ‘free range’ as apposed to ‘fish farmed’, I could not say weather there is any difference in the taste, it would be easy to say it’s rubbish, but I have been caught out too often by my ignorance. We stopped at a small town called Tha Heua about 50 km south of Vang Vieng, a town famed for it’s fish, this was apparent by the shear number of fish mongers, in fact the whole town appeared to be entirely fish mongers. I was reminded of one of Douglas Adams creations, can’t remember the book exactly, possibly ‘long dark tea time of the soul’, which had a planet called ‘Frogstar’ which fell into ruin by being over run by shoe shops. Fish purchased on our way again.

A town entirely comprising of fish mongers

Our final stop was at Nam Nik Kayaang, an eco village which had a huge signpost by the side of the road, I thought with the biogas, sustainability thing I was getting involved in it might be good to do a bit of networking. A new road and plenty of signposts were of ominous sign of style of substance and I was not disappointed, although there did seem to be some small holding banana plantation, there was nobody there, the only thing of substance was a shallow river which was pretty and had a group of ‘river urchins’ as apposed to ‘street urchins’ who were having the most enormous fun dragging a long bamboo pole up and down the river for no apparent purpose. I must admit the kids here are great, they smile all the time and will often shout ‘hello’ to you or ‘ sabai dii’ the Laos equivalent. They are always interested in the fulangs; I think they are just as curious about me as I am about them. On the whole it’s not a begging thing, they never seem to be after anything, the street beggars in Vientiane are quite confrontational which is a bit off putting, the Thai beggars are very placid and if you give them anything will return with a blessing, I have found some of the Laos beggars quite aggressive.
After dipping our toes in the water we headed back to Vientiane to hit the Friday night traffic, filling the Ford Ranger up with diesel was a bit of a shock ,I don’t know why I think I was used to filling the step through up for about $AUD3, the ranger came to 210,000 kip over $AUD40. We were both pretty tired, the Ranger is not an easy car to drive and although apart from the odd detour it was all highways. Having said that a highway which is not the smoothest, very twisty and steep in places and shear concentration to avoid everything else on the road. So the fatigue was a little understandable. Imagine my delight when they told me that my room had been let out and I would have to stay in a different hotel for the night, this was the second time they had done this so I told them to shove it, I did get the feeling that someone at the hotel didn’t want me there, you would not normally do this to a guest who tends to stay for months at a time. A quick decision was made and we decided to check in at the Hotel Vansana which is out on the Road 13 South, a bit out of the city and the drive across town in Friday evening rush in the Ranger was pushing my stress needle into the red, remember in such a tall car you can see the any of the step-throughs flying around you, at night it is worse as they don’t use their lights, they don’t look and the don’t stop. If you hit one, you are a fulang so it is your fault. The Vansana Hotel is a bit more expensive but has a very good swimming pool. The rooms are very pleasant and the cable TV has Australian network so I managed to catch the Hawks and the Demons game from Launceston. The internet is pretty poor here, there are “ETL Wi-fi available here” stickers everywhere but why should you pay for a service when the free stickers will do the job just as well.

Vene amongst the river urchins