On the weekend of the 28th of April Lumia and I drove down to the Parainen Permaculture, better known as Päivärinteen permakulttuuritila. I was invited by Lotta, who is the owner of the permaculture farm, to run a biogas workshop. Our objective was to create an IBC biogas system and a Floating IBC gas storage. We arrived in Parainen shortly before 11 o'clock. And over the next 15 minutes all participants arrived.
I started with a more or less extensive Biogas 101, talking about gas composition, biology, microbiology and biochemistry, safety aspects, digester designs and so on. Once we finished the biogas theory we had a tea break and then started building the actual digester and the gas storage system simultaneously. We also had a lunch break. Lotta got us rice, falafel (made by refugees, a project coordinated by Lotta), humus and tsatsiki. After we were nourished we continued building the system. Shortly before the end we had another break: this time some coffee to warm us up, as it had started to rain.
At the end we carried the ready to use systems to the greenhouse. The digester will be inside the greenhouse and the gas storage is outside. Both need to be filled with water and the digester needs a starter.
It was a great opportunity for me to talk about biogas and meet interesting new people.
If you are interested in building an IBC Biogas digester there is a pretty good building instruction over at Biogascentral. There is also a manual for the Biogas storage system. I am also available to give biogas courses in Finland - just use the contact form to get in touch!
This is the pumpkin we chose to harvest for this project.
