On the 25th of April 2018 Lumia and I drove to Ilmajoki. We got invited by Jyrki Ilves to hold a Biogas workshop at SEDU. SEDU is a versatile education and training provider which operates in the South Ostrobothnia region in Finland.
Weeks before the workshop I ordered many of the parts from different suppliers and also drove to Tampere to buy the PP pipes. With all the parts and a lot of equipment (hole saws, knives, etc.) we started our journey at 6 o'clock in the morning. A road trip from Pälkäne to Ilmajoki takes about 3 hours, which gave us plenty of time for discussions about Biogas, Permaculture and our business and also for a coffee break.
3 hours later we arrived in Ilmajoki. We headed to the main school building and at 10:15 started with the DIY Biogas 101. The lecture was mainly about different available DIY systems, as most of the students already knew a lot about biogas theory. We also discussed basic topics like temperature keeping and pH and answered a lot of questions.
After a delicious lunch break we went to the farm side of the school where a long row of IBCs already waited for us. We started with one IBC to show the build process step by step. From there the students built their own systems, working together in loose groups. We had some trouble with the 1 1/2" Uniseals. They are not that usable for 50 mm pipes (they are intetended for 48 mm pipes - but that is not a continental Europe standard). The hole saw diameter should be 63 mm, which is standard, but the actual hole size needs to be 67 in order to fit the 50 mm pipe. Therefore I would rather go for the 2,54" Uniseal which goes very well with a 75 mm pipe. But they were not available when we composed the workshop so we went for the alternative. Luckily we had a lot of knives and Leathermans, so widening the holes wasn't an issue at all.
After a coffee break and some of the digesters already finished we started to build some floating IBC storage systems. All in all we built 5 digesters and 3 storage systems - in less than a day! Very effective I would say.
We got everything ready until 4 o'clock and we also got to see a small scale biogas plant build by students from Ghana.
