My Master thesis is now published and can be downloaded from the following site:
10 page summary coming soon if you find the 129 pages a bit daunting!
/Isak
Wednesday, 21 July 2010
Monday, 21 September 2009
Communal, small scale Biogas systems - Thesis Presentation
My experiences have finally settled in, and a thesis-paper is starting to form. On October 8th, I will be presenting the results in a slightly original way (it's voluntary, so why not?).
An invitation including an abstract (in Swedish) can be downloaded at my drop.io site (password: biogas@lembang):
Feel free to join if you are anywhere close to Uppsala at the time. My friend Caroline will also be presenting her thesis on developing fruit dryers in rural Tanzania. Here are the details:
Thesis Presentations x 2
Thursday October 8
13.15 - 15.00
Ångströms Laboratorium, Room 4101
Uppsala
Hope to see you there!
An invitation including an abstract (in Swedish) can be downloaded at my drop.io site (password: biogas@lembang):
Feel free to join if you are anywhere close to Uppsala at the time. My friend Caroline will also be presenting her thesis on developing fruit dryers in rural Tanzania. Here are the details:
Thesis Presentations x 2
Thursday October 8
13.15 - 15.00
Ångströms Laboratorium, Room 4101
Uppsala
Hope to see you there!
Wednesday, 29 April 2009
A Singapore sling and a dash of MIT incredulousness
I am currently writing to you from a remote cabin in Northern Norway, normally housing MIT students working on their dissertations, doing research or taking courses at the MIT FabLab next door. FabLab is short for Fabrication Laboratory and the idea is to be able to create almost anyting in a small scale, user-adopted laboratory. It is quite surreal to be in such a remote area, and at the same time being able to connect to the internet with fiber optics, using the latest video conferencing technology and knowing that if you desperately need something constructed, there is a big chance the ShopBot router, Omax waterjetcutter and the Modella minimill in the house next door, can get the job done. There are FabLabs in rural India, South Africa, Ghana, Kenya, Iceland, a number of places in the US and here in Norway on the Lyngen peninsula. You can read more about the Norwegian Fablab here.
MIT FabLab Norway was built and is run by a local sheep farmer and art history Professor. MIT first contacted him due to the fact that he was putting GPS equipment on his sheep and recording physiological data.
I am here in Norway with my ski-touring friends Aaron, Niclas and Beau. For some great pictures from my friends adventures, check out Niclas photo-blog. I am however spending most of my time in and around the cabin, for a few reasons. First of all, I am starting to write my thesis and aiming to complete it in a little more than a month, and secondly the happy ending of my last entry has a hair-raising, nail-biting continuation that has left me slightly unfit for strenuous mountain climbs...
Lyngen peninsula.
There is a Swedish expression - don't holler hello before you have crossed the stream - which I have come to take very much to heart lately. After going back to work in Cicalung for a few days I started noticing the skin around my wound was getting redder and redder, thicker and thicker, faster and faster. Going in for a check up at the hospital, getting a few wrong diagnoses, a CT-scan and an ultra-sound, the doctors finally diagnosed me as having Cellulitis. Cellulitis is a deep skin infection (not to be confused with cellulites!). After recieving medical reports from my Indonesian hospital that indicated a slight lack of judgement and resources in terms of the correct and sufficient amount of antibiotics, my insurance company decided to fly me to Singapore.
Singapore health care was even better than I had anticipated. Knowledgeable doctors, working in large interdisciplinary teams and taking their time with the patients. My mother, no longer able to deal with my continuing health ordeals from a far, came down and accompanied me. Great to have some time together and have time to catch up, even thought the circumstances where a bit unusual. After 10 days of IV-antibiotics they felt safe sending me back home to Sweden.
The view from my hospital window at Singapore General Hospital.
Thanks to my amazing friends and colleagues in Indonesia, the experiments and empirical research that I needed for my thesis have been completed without me. Thank you Wawa, Yono, and the rest of the Biogas team for doing my work while I was in the hospital, both in Indonesia and in Singapore! By the next entry, I will hopefully have a first draft of my thesis finished and let you have a peek.
MIT FabLab Norway was built and is run by a local sheep farmer and art history Professor. MIT first contacted him due to the fact that he was putting GPS equipment on his sheep and recording physiological data.
I am here in Norway with my ski-touring friends Aaron, Niclas and Beau. For some great pictures from my friends adventures, check out Niclas photo-blog. I am however spending most of my time in and around the cabin, for a few reasons. First of all, I am starting to write my thesis and aiming to complete it in a little more than a month, and secondly the happy ending of my last entry has a hair-raising, nail-biting continuation that has left me slightly unfit for strenuous mountain climbs...
Lyngen peninsula.
There is a Swedish expression - don't holler hello before you have crossed the stream - which I have come to take very much to heart lately. After going back to work in Cicalung for a few days I started noticing the skin around my wound was getting redder and redder, thicker and thicker, faster and faster. Going in for a check up at the hospital, getting a few wrong diagnoses, a CT-scan and an ultra-sound, the doctors finally diagnosed me as having Cellulitis. Cellulitis is a deep skin infection (not to be confused with cellulites!). After recieving medical reports from my Indonesian hospital that indicated a slight lack of judgement and resources in terms of the correct and sufficient amount of antibiotics, my insurance company decided to fly me to Singapore.
Singapore health care was even better than I had anticipated. Knowledgeable doctors, working in large interdisciplinary teams and taking their time with the patients. My mother, no longer able to deal with my continuing health ordeals from a far, came down and accompanied me. Great to have some time together and have time to catch up, even thought the circumstances where a bit unusual. After 10 days of IV-antibiotics they felt safe sending me back home to Sweden.
The view from my hospital window at Singapore General Hospital.
Thanks to my amazing friends and colleagues in Indonesia, the experiments and empirical research that I needed for my thesis have been completed without me. Thank you Wawa, Yono, and the rest of the Biogas team for doing my work while I was in the hospital, both in Indonesia and in Singapore! By the next entry, I will hopefully have a first draft of my thesis finished and let you have a peek.
Friday, 27 March 2009
Incisions and losses
Well, I finally ran out of luck. Life took a turn for the worse. A series of most unfortunate events. Anyway you put it, the last two weeks have in some ways been more suboptimal than the others.
It all started with an unfortunate incision made into our newly installed multi-family prototype digester. The incision was made by a foot and happened very quickly - I was suddenly holding the person connected to the foot in my arms and helping her out of the smelly interior.
The week continued with the loss of my wallet. It ended with, what I thought, would be a short trip to the hospital, to investigate some newly acquired stomach pains and fever chills. I was quickly diagnosed with appendicitis and was, just a few hours later, lying in morphine induced relaxation mode on the operating table. After another incision and extraction, I was an appendix poorer, but very happy to have it over with. I got a high fever for the next few days and was worrying a bit when the doctors starting debating if it might be Dengue, Typhoid or Malaria, that I might be suffering from. Turns out it was probably just an infection caused by infectious tissue still left in my body or that popped in during the operation. I have now tried three types of Indonesian antibiotics and one of them seemed to work. And boy are they strong.
Daily shower routine, taken in bed.
Enough of the health-talk. I have been completely surrounded by helpful, caring and cheerful friends during my stay here at the hospital. My room became somewhat of a social gathering place and even a number of work-related meetings, where held in the couch next to my bed. I was brought flowers, sweets, fresh fruits, DVD's, books and of course good company. Albeit the great attention and care I've been getting here at the hospital, I am really looking forward to leaving. I will be picked up and dismissed (or whatever the term is) within an hour.
To complete the story and bring you to the happy ending, the digester with the great hole was operated on March 18. Thanks to Wawa's nimble fingers it has reached full recovery. I am maybe one week away from stabilisation. Hopefully this will be enough time to complete what I came here to do. My wallet is still lost somewhere in the wilderness of Lembang or in the urban jungle of Bandung. Happy enough ending for me.
Pre-op. preparations
Nice and tigth seal. Can you figure out how it was done? Not so easy, eh?
It all started with an unfortunate incision made into our newly installed multi-family prototype digester. The incision was made by a foot and happened very quickly - I was suddenly holding the person connected to the foot in my arms and helping her out of the smelly interior.
The week continued with the loss of my wallet. It ended with, what I thought, would be a short trip to the hospital, to investigate some newly acquired stomach pains and fever chills. I was quickly diagnosed with appendicitis and was, just a few hours later, lying in morphine induced relaxation mode on the operating table. After another incision and extraction, I was an appendix poorer, but very happy to have it over with. I got a high fever for the next few days and was worrying a bit when the doctors starting debating if it might be Dengue, Typhoid or Malaria, that I might be suffering from. Turns out it was probably just an infection caused by infectious tissue still left in my body or that popped in during the operation. I have now tried three types of Indonesian antibiotics and one of them seemed to work. And boy are they strong.
Daily shower routine, taken in bed.
Enough of the health-talk. I have been completely surrounded by helpful, caring and cheerful friends during my stay here at the hospital. My room became somewhat of a social gathering place and even a number of work-related meetings, where held in the couch next to my bed. I was brought flowers, sweets, fresh fruits, DVD's, books and of course good company. Albeit the great attention and care I've been getting here at the hospital, I am really looking forward to leaving. I will be picked up and dismissed (or whatever the term is) within an hour.
To complete the story and bring you to the happy ending, the digester with the great hole was operated on March 18. Thanks to Wawa's nimble fingers it has reached full recovery. I am maybe one week away from stabilisation. Hopefully this will be enough time to complete what I came here to do. My wallet is still lost somewhere in the wilderness of Lembang or in the urban jungle of Bandung. Happy enough ending for me.
Pre-op. preparations
Nice and tigth seal. Can you figure out how it was done? Not so easy, eh?
Sunday, 15 March 2009
New sounds, fried banana, and the cycle of life
My composter has been invaded by ants. Apparently this happens if you load it infrequently, or add a bunch of sweet things, like watermelon. There is an indonesian saying: Ada gula, ada semut (There is sugar, there is ant). So I spent the morning fishing watermelon pieces out of my composter and adding yet another ant-colony to the backyard of my house. Ants are extremely fascinating by the way. There are ants who live underwater, ants that can direct the way they fall, ants that build rafts, ants that herd caterpillars (they lead them to feeding areas in the daytime and bring them back to the anthill at night and then massage them so they excrete delicious honeydew). As if this wasn't enough, they thrive in almost all ecosystems (save marine and arctic ones) and are believed to constitute around 25 % of the animal terrestial biomass! Wikipedias ant-page is very entertaining...
Learning new languages and being here in Indonesia, there are a lot of new sounds in and around my head at the moment. Here are a few songs that I've been humming lately:
Ojeg Cunihin - Motorcycle-taxi playboy (sundanese pop song)
Aduh bagja Pisan (Wow I'm very happy)
Narik ojeg ngalarisan (I'm bringing my first ojeg passenger)
Nutumpakna guelis pisan (A passenger very beautiful)
Hate sok seseredetan (My heart is beating fast)
Keur Kasalameutan (For safety...)
Nuguelis kedah nyeupeungan (beautiful, grab on to me)
Tikus Kantor - Office mouse
Iwan Fals is indonesias bob dylan, without the harmonica.
Bubuy Bulan (trad. Sundanese song)
A song that I think is about various ways to cook celestial bodies (e.g. the moon, the sun and the stars), but I could be wrong. Also the video is really funny.
Speaking about cooking, here are some of the many things that I have enjoyed running through my body the last few months:
Spicy sambal peanut sauce, fried green beans, yellow rice, brown rice, fried banana (yes, I really do like it!), bala-bala (fried vegetable cakes), fried tempeh, fried noodles (yes, very many things are fried), gorengan (fried flour chips), fresh milk with cane sugar and of course everything that Wawa's mother cooks (I don't think I have had the same meal twice, and every time it is just as delicious).
Listening to a foreigner trying to sing Ojeg , is much more interesting than going to school...
Cicalung dangdut session
Just one of the many delicious meals with Wawa and his family
Learning new languages and being here in Indonesia, there are a lot of new sounds in and around my head at the moment. Here are a few songs that I've been humming lately:
Ojeg Cunihin - Motorcycle-taxi playboy (sundanese pop song)
Aduh bagja Pisan (Wow I'm very happy)
Narik ojeg ngalarisan (I'm bringing my first ojeg passenger)
Nutumpakna guelis pisan (A passenger very beautiful)
Hate sok seseredetan (My heart is beating fast)
Keur Kasalameutan (For safety...)
Nuguelis kedah nyeupeungan (beautiful, grab on to me)
Tikus Kantor - Office mouse
Iwan Fals is indonesias bob dylan, without the harmonica.
Bubuy Bulan (trad. Sundanese song)
A song that I think is about various ways to cook celestial bodies (e.g. the moon, the sun and the stars), but I could be wrong. Also the video is really funny.
Speaking about cooking, here are some of the many things that I have enjoyed running through my body the last few months:
Spicy sambal peanut sauce, fried green beans, yellow rice, brown rice, fried banana (yes, I really do like it!), bala-bala (fried vegetable cakes), fried tempeh, fried noodles (yes, very many things are fried), gorengan (fried flour chips), fresh milk with cane sugar and of course everything that Wawa's mother cooks (I don't think I have had the same meal twice, and every time it is just as delicious).
Listening to a foreigner trying to sing Ojeg , is much more interesting than going to school...
Cicalung dangdut session
Just one of the many delicious meals with Wawa and his family
Thursday, 5 March 2009
A quick run to town
A massive thunderstorm has just pulled in over
Matt and Meghan have come and gone. We did a lot of exploring by foot, played a bunch of cribbage, exchanged books and made guacamole. It was very nice to have them here and it made me feel just a bit more at home than before (nothing better than having guests to boost you perception of knowing a place). I guess they are now somewhere east of here, maybe between Bali and
I am on my way back to Cicalung this afternoon (I just popped down to
Tuesday, 24 February 2009
Pasir Angling
Tuesday morning here in Bandung. I have just finished my breakfast consisting of oatmeal with raisins and raw cane sugar along with some green tea. The sun is shining in through my window. Clouds are covering most of Bandung but the peaks on the crater-rim are still bathed in the morning light. The plan for the day is to go up to Cicalung and figure out a way to measure gas production from Wawa's large scale system. Before that, I am meeting Rima, one of the volunteers at YPBB, who will be helping out to make an Indonesian-English Biogas dictionary and a curriculum for teaching english to the biogas team in Cicalung!
This past weekend, I took part in my first biogas system installation in a village called Pasir Angling. It is much more remote than the other villages in the area and is best reached on foot. A large installation team consisting of Yono, Wawa, Wawas young crew of biogas technicians and myself, set out for Pasir Angling on Saturday morning. We spent three full days installing two new systems in the village. Ususally the installations are quicker and require less people but since the design of both digesters where new (one vertical cylinder and one short and fat horizontal one), there where several technical hurdles that had to be overcome. Heavy afternoon rains also made it more difficult. Working from early morning to way past dark, it was amazing to see the commitment and enthusiasm from the team, that in turn was reflected back by the active and strong participation of the many villagers, who took part in the installation. Many of the them are now interested in building their own systems (hopefully by themselves but with the possibility of support if they need it).
Tomorrow is an exciting day. My very good friend Matt from California and his girlfriend Meghan are arriving in the morning. They have been traveling around South East Asia for the last 6 months and decided to stop by and visit before they make their way back to the states. I am working on a plan to integrate their visit with my tight schedule. I am sure I will be able to put them to work and hopefully add a new dimension to their travels.
The horizontal digester with mixer, aka "The Fat One".
At around 5 m3 volume, this digester will provide biogas for the cooking needs of the family of the RW of Pasir Angling (the local community leader). The biogas will replace fuelwood and fossil fuel based cooking fuels such as kerosene and LPG. In reality however, a hybrid system is often used.
Biogas team in action. Yono and Wawa work together to open the gas valve.
The RW of Pasir Angling during installation.
Awan is heavily supervised while preparing the mixer for the Fat One.
Rain, thunder and lightning, every day, 3 o'clock.
Checking for leaks in the piping system with a newly constructed portable manometer. On the left is a pressure valve and safety valve integrated into the same plastic bottle (Designed by Wawa). The pressure in the digester is regulated by the water level in the bottle and the safety valve makes sure that the pressure never becomes higher than the material strength of the plastic used for the digester.
Mud, rain and late nigths - but the digester is installed!
Hanging out (Nongkrong in Sundanese) in the Warung (café/store) in Cicalung and slightly delaying the departure to Pasir Angling. Here we are chatting about family, directions and noses. They find it strange that I don't have brothers or sisters, wonder how far it is to Sweden and think I have the longest nose you could possibly imagine.
This past weekend, I took part in my first biogas system installation in a village called Pasir Angling. It is much more remote than the other villages in the area and is best reached on foot. A large installation team consisting of Yono, Wawa, Wawas young crew of biogas technicians and myself, set out for Pasir Angling on Saturday morning. We spent three full days installing two new systems in the village. Ususally the installations are quicker and require less people but since the design of both digesters where new (one vertical cylinder and one short and fat horizontal one), there where several technical hurdles that had to be overcome. Heavy afternoon rains also made it more difficult. Working from early morning to way past dark, it was amazing to see the commitment and enthusiasm from the team, that in turn was reflected back by the active and strong participation of the many villagers, who took part in the installation. Many of the them are now interested in building their own systems (hopefully by themselves but with the possibility of support if they need it).
Tomorrow is an exciting day. My very good friend Matt from California and his girlfriend Meghan are arriving in the morning. They have been traveling around South East Asia for the last 6 months and decided to stop by and visit before they make their way back to the states. I am working on a plan to integrate their visit with my tight schedule. I am sure I will be able to put them to work and hopefully add a new dimension to their travels.
The horizontal digester with mixer, aka "The Fat One".
At around 5 m3 volume, this digester will provide biogas for the cooking needs of the family of the RW of Pasir Angling (the local community leader). The biogas will replace fuelwood and fossil fuel based cooking fuels such as kerosene and LPG. In reality however, a hybrid system is often used.
Biogas team in action. Yono and Wawa work together to open the gas valve.
The RW of Pasir Angling during installation.
Awan is heavily supervised while preparing the mixer for the Fat One.
Rain, thunder and lightning, every day, 3 o'clock.
Checking for leaks in the piping system with a newly constructed portable manometer. On the left is a pressure valve and safety valve integrated into the same plastic bottle (Designed by Wawa). The pressure in the digester is regulated by the water level in the bottle and the safety valve makes sure that the pressure never becomes higher than the material strength of the plastic used for the digester.
Mud, rain and late nigths - but the digester is installed!
Hanging out (Nongkrong in Sundanese) in the Warung (café/store) in Cicalung and slightly delaying the departure to Pasir Angling. Here we are chatting about family, directions and noses. They find it strange that I don't have brothers or sisters, wonder how far it is to Sweden and think I have the longest nose you could possibly imagine.
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