I’ve been laid up with food poisoning the last two days. I ate fresh ‘cheap’ oysters on Saturday and spent all of Sunday and most of today in bed. I did have to return the computer to City Hall this morning though. That was fun with a gut wrenching pain in my stomach that would come and go between the bouts of diarrhea. Sunday morning I though for sure I had some sort of amoebas. I’ve had food poisoning before, this was my third time this year, but never so painful.
Two weeks previous about seven Peace Corps volunteers went to Boracay. Five of them got sick. All started out with what seemed to be basic food poisoning. One ended up being put on Cipro and the worst had amoebas and was hospitalized. Which is funny if looked at in our context, we just said, “Bummer, at least it’s not Dengue.” The next weekend 18 of us went back and even ate at the same restaurant we suspected was the cause. But all my thoughts as I laid in bed Sunday we telling me I had amoebas and I need to drink or I am going to end up having to go to the hospital. So I drank and as far as I know I am better now.
My Project:
Kabankalan City has about 23,000 hectors (57,000 acres) of sugarcane under cultivation. Each hector produces about 10,000 kg (22,000 lb) of leaf waste twice a year which is burned to prepare the field for replanting. My project is to help the city implement technology developed by Dr Karve at Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI) in Pune, India. My proposal is to purchasing 127 operational units. Each unit consists of two charring kilns, sixteen retorts and a meat grinder powered by bicycle pedals and costs about 25,000 Pesos ($450 USD). The working unit is easily portable and completely human powered. With this technology five people and can process 576 kg of cane waste a day, producing 140 kg of green charcoal which can be sold for about 1,050 Pesos.
Each kiln is a cylindrical structure- 150 cm (59 in) wide and 100 cm tall- made out of sheet iron. The kilns are taken to the field where sugarcane harvesting is in progress. The cane waste is then filled into the retorts which are made out of aluminum sheeting- think oil drums but smaller, 37.5 cm wide and 60 cm tall. The volume of each retort is 0.07m³ (18 gallons) and filled with 3 kg of cane leaf. One kiln accommodates eight retorts at a time and by alternating kilns between burning, each kiln can complete eight 45-minute burn cycles during an 8-hour work day. This process produces 128 kg of loose char. This raw char is then converted into 140 kg of green charcoal briquettes by mixing 10% by weight of cassava starch as a binder and putting the mixture through a meat grinder.
By selling the green charcoal at 7.25 Pesos/kg, the five fieldworkers can make a daily wage of 153 Pesos. Unfortunately, this amount is not that much during the harvest season when there is more work than workers. Its real potential comes with the ability to store and sell the green charcoal in the off-season creating a revenue stream where there previously wasn’t one. In addition there are a whole slew of national and local laws the city must sooner or later comply with. The long term goal of this project is to use a series of sticks and carrots to reduce logging by introducing an alternative to bulk-wood charcoal, which will also protect city’s watershed; reduce the amount of bio-waste that is burnt, which must be done to comply with the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act (RA 9003) and the Clean Air Act (RA 8749); and create a renewable energy that can be sold as a livelihood project
