6. September. 2007

New scene: Paro, Bhutan

Characters:

Captain David Young
engineer and mentor
member of…Druk Air Flight Operations Division
thinks about…solar collectors and wind-powered hydrogen generation
designs…gasification systems
fond of…cheese sandwiches and happy-ending movies

Scraggles
companion and house guard
full of…fleas
good at…finishing off our leftovers
less good at…chasing away vagrant cows that come into the garden

Lamu
deep-voiced and kind-hearted
cooks…delicious japati, daahl, and shamu dishes
tries to…tidy the organized chaos that David and I create

Home
cozy Bhutan cabin with Bhutan paintings and Bhutan colors
location…just beyond the Indian road workers’ camp
overlooks…the roaring Pachhu river and some new building construction
comes with…yummy microwave-cooked bread

It’s raining today, just as it rained yesterday and the day before. If I didn’t know better, I’d say Bhutan is having a healthy rainy season. In fact, David says I must have brought the rain, because they haven’t had any all summer. With such a good track record (three straight days of rain in Bhutan and three straight evenings of rain at Barefoot College), David warned me he may have to hire me out to South Africa.

Andi
rain-maker extraordinaire
loves to…make SolidWorks parts
not so fond of…moths that fly into the candles when the power goes out
excited to…be helping on the Sri Lankan biomass project

In the mornings, I keep busy reading about downdraft biomass gasifiers. David leaves very early in the morning to get in his seven hours of work and comes home at two O’Clock in the afternoon. We chop up some of Marion’s microwave-cooked bread, peal some apples, and bring out peanut butter, honey, cheese, and apple juice to the table. Marion is David’s wife. Unfortunately, I narrowly missed her when I arrived because she had to fly out to Laos for work. Her specialty is teachers training and she has been writing her Ph.D. on developing world education programs. She is looking at what kind of education program would be most relevant for, say a student in rural Bhutan or rural Cambodia, where chemistry lessons are perhaps not the best use of time spent away from the family farm. Right now, she is working with EndNote to put the finishing touches on her Ph.D. thesis and is getting ready to defend it in November. Before she left Paro, she cooked up lots of delicious bread (and all without a proper oven!).

After lunch, David and I get down to business. David has patiently been helping me get up to speed with the Sri Lanka project—giving me lots of reading material and answering all my questions. As a starting point, we updated the six-month agenda—adding new design considerations and testing goals. But as the six-month agenda started looking like a year-long agenda, we had to be very judicious in laying down number one priorities.

Yesterday afternoon, we went through testing log sheets and updating them. When I pulled out all of the new test equipment that was wrapped between layers of clothing in my suitcase, David wondered how I had room for any of my clothing.

There are several challenges to setting up the tests…like figuring out a way to stick the thermocouples into the firebox without frying the fabric protective sheath and thinking of how to measure the flow rate of the gas out of the gasifier without inhaling noxious CO fumes.

Between meals and gasifier-talk, David and I are working on translating all the gasifier drawings into SolidWorks. It’s a fun challenge and even gets a bit addictive.

Our goal by the end of the weekend is to start designing a gasifier from scratch. We thought this is the best way for me to get a handle on all the design considerations and for David to brush up on his design-thinking since it has been a year since he first designed the Lanka 100.

Cheers from the land of the Dragons,
Andi