March 11, 2017
Across from the Lowry Park Zoo and next to the Salvation Army on Sligh Avenue in Tampa lies the one-acre paradise called the Sustainable Living Center. The center was created by visionary urban resilience pioneer Will Carey. With Patel College Students we built a Solar CITIES IBC tank liquid compost biodigester to complement the composting operation they have on site. The digester produces rich fertilizer for the garden.
February 26, 2017
At the Rosebud Continuum, we built our second Puxin 10m3 biodigester in Florida next to the first one we built in 2016. We worked with students from Professor Thomas Culhane’s Food/Energy/Water Nexus class and the great crew of the Bishop Construction Company lead by Ervin Sonny Bishop, Brian Bishop, and Maryann Bishop. This digester is half buried underground with only the neck standing out. We call it the “Wishing Well” and it stands at a height making it easy for kids to feed and look inside to see the gas holder and what will serve as an experimental aquaponics reservoir.
February 22, 2017
At the Tampa Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI) across the road from my office at the Patel College of Global Sustainability, T.H. Culhane personally donated, and our students constructed, both a Solar CITIES floating IBC biodigester and my HomeBiogas digester from Israel. We worked with education leader Ian Reed and high school students from his summer school team. We can now showcase both the DIY digester method and a commercial system side-by-side. This is a great educational opportunity for students and visitors every day.
The original location of the digester was next to the Butterfly Garden. The effluent from the digester caused the Asclepias Milkweed to grow at twice the normal rate to feed the butterfly larvae. When MOSI closed half of its building, including the garden, we moved the digester out to the parking lot where you can see it today.
You can learn more about this project through this newsclip.
