Biotech site visits – the quest continues

.

Mr Sajidas, director of Biotech http://www.biotech-india.org/, was very welcoming, and has been most accommodating, leaving me in the care of Mr Biju, a colleague and a cameraman.
Biotech has plenty of different digesters to show me. At their offices they have non-functioning models on show. They are all the floating dome type, and most of them made of fibre glass, although some have concrete bases with either GRP or metal domes. They don’t wait for people to see the biogas light; they take their technology out on the road in a little truck. The road show goes to cities and villages, with examples and videos, posters and demos.
I have been to see digesters in domestic situations, restaurants, markets, abattoirs and orphanages. I have stuck my camera, and my nose, down the inlets to observe the introduction of such delights as vegetable waste, offal, and pre-digested meat waste, and down the outlets to view manure and processed waste water. I have looked at gardens of thriving banana and jackfruit trees, lime bushes, tomatoes and cucumber, all thanks to the application of digestate and nutritious irrigation.
All the activity was recorded on film and at the end of the field trips I had to give an interview to the cameraman. It’s all great fun – I think I’m getting the hang of it now, and its good practise for the dissemination when I return.
The interesting thing to note was, that as before in all these digesters, there is no smell, no flies.