Hi! This is a guest post from Anna and Niclas who are currently at Done Right in Cambodia to build a bio-digester. We are engineering students and a part of the engineering cooperative Emulsionen. Currently we are doing a trip around the world to study sustainable building projects and have made a stop here in Cambodia to contribute with a simple way to make energy out of feces.
Can you really do this, you might ask. The process is pretty simple and is happening in nature and also in waste treatment plants all over the world. If you put feces and other organic waste in an air-free environment it will be digested by microorganisms and produce methane. The methane can be harvested and used to run stoves, lighting, engines and much more. At Done Right we will focus on producing methane for the gas stoves. It will also treat the human waste to turn it into prime fertilizer and kill potential pathogens along the way, witch is a huge advantage in a place without waste treatment.
We are building it out of cheap materials available on the market here in Cambodia to make it a possible option for local farmers in the future. The method is already quite popular in Vietnam and if we are lucky we might speed up the process of spreading it here. And we look forward to be using less fossil fuels in the stoves and better close the human-food-energy-circle!