Saturday, October 6, 2007
News from Sri Lanka
The good news is that I haven’t been kidnapped by the LTTE, nor have I been mauled by a tusker (one of the large, vagrant male elephants that roam the Sri Lankan wilderness). The bad news is that I need to catch you up on nearly a month of Sri Lankan happenings.
Why the delinquency? I confess that during my spare, non-gasifier moments, reading Harry Potter VII has taken priority over writing. As has learning Sinhalese, cooking Sri Lankan food, and practicing piano (which I am relishing every minute of).
Okay, okay…enough with the excuses. What about biomass gasification? What progress have we made? What are the plans for gasifier R&D?
Most days in the workshop, I feel like we’re being pulled on ten different tangential paths – ten things need to be pushed forward in a world where it’s hard enough to follow one path from beginning to end. If you like to plan your day out minute by minute, it’s an environment that might drive you insane… most of the time, you’re ridiculously busy but at the same time, if you haven’t prioritized, you can end up sitting idle while you wait for someone to finish manufacturing a part and then find out that the welding machine needs more carbide. [Quick side note: at the workshop, they make acetylene straight from carbide and water! Just the way they used to make car head lamps in the olden days].
David and I try to stick to a two-tiered To-Do List to keep on top of everything: we keep one list of major to-do’s and then a list of “filler items.” The list of major to-do’s makes up the backbone of the day – for example, testing the governor system and seeing if it readjusts the gas/air mixture under varying loads. Then we have a list of smaller items that fill in the lulls – say, installing an air filter before the engine inlet or adding a four-way pipe before the blower.
Upon David’s arrival in Sri Lanka (one week after mine), we hit the ground running. We began by combing the local car and electronics markets for prototyping materials: ceramic tubes, air filters, and nicrome wire. Two weeks in Bhutan gave us lots of time to bounce ideas around and Greg, David, and I came up with a long list of design ideas and testing goals. Now we’re scrambling to implement them.
System testing is on the top of our list. How can you ensure happy customers when your product has not yet been thoroughly endurance tested? You can’t....So… While Lalith and Greg designed a variable load board (which is currently under construction), David and I worked with Ariyasenna (the main workshop and manufacturing manager) to create gas-tight pipe attachments for the temperature probes. Now, after three successful tests and three sets of data, the gasifier is looking less and less like a black box and we can start to understand why the engine reacts in certain ways under certain conditions.
The latest tests revealed shortcomings in the governor system and we’re due for a conference call with Prakash in the next few days to get more information about how to troubleshoot the system.
Aside from testing, David and I have been working on several new designs. Last weekend, we met with the village gasifier operators who gave us an update about which components were beginning to wear out and what parts of the system could use a redesign. Based on their input, we are designing a new hopper lid that includes a safety valve to make sure that the springs don’t wear out so quickly; we’re adding a T-bar to the end of the stirrer for easier access; and a new glass fiber filter inside the second filter for more efficient cleaning.
One of the most exciting design challenges has been developing a new firebox that is less expensive and more durable. The current design consists mostly of stainless steel, but stainless steel prices have been skyrocketing, and the high temperatures inside the firebox cause the stainless steel to warp. The week before David arrived, I made a visit to Mr. Parakrama Jayasinghe (also known as Para, for short), the director of the Biomass Energy Association and part of HayCarb, a huge Sri Lankan company that produces activated carbon. He gave me a few contacts, but it wasn’t until David arrived that we started following up on them. One that caught my attention was Lanka Refractories. Parakrama had mentioned that they make high temperature resistant materials. On our way back from the villages last weekend we stopped by the Lanka Refractories Office and were soon taking a tour of the whole plant with Mr. Pliyasiri. It turns out that Lanka Refractories makes ceramic castable parts that are less expensive and potentially more durable than stainless steel! Now, David and I are busy finishing up the drawings for the first prototype…
Days are hot and humid as the monsoons set in, but our greatest foe is the mosquito (or the mozzies, as David calls them). Even the trishaws we ride to the workshop every day can’t out-race these little blood-sucking fiends. Our morning ritual is to lather on as much anti-mozzy cream as possible (preferably right after stepping out of the shower). As soon as we reach the workshop, we burn an anti-mozzy coil in the corner of the office and turn on a fan to evenly distribute the anti-mozzy perfume of death around the room. Anti-mozzy wall plugs are a definite must but nothing is better than 98.11% DEET repellent. David and I have officially declared war against them and I hope they’re scared.
There is never a dull moment here. Maheeka and Hiranya are the most awesome younger sisters I could ever ask for :-) and I have already had a Stanford visitor – Kimber is a super star! Unfortunately, our weekend visit to Pokunatenna and the other villages was overshadowed by an icky bug that kept Kimber in bed for most of the weekend (though we did go out chasing after an elephant in the back yard one night…).
Still, I miss everyone at school and hope you’re all blowing Stanford away with your spaz and spunk, rip-roaring into the new school year.
Love from Sri Lanka,
Andi
Why the delinquency? I confess that during my spare, non-gasifier moments, reading Harry Potter VII has taken priority over writing. As has learning Sinhalese, cooking Sri Lankan food, and practicing piano (which I am relishing every minute of).
Okay, okay…enough with the excuses. What about biomass gasification? What progress have we made? What are the plans for gasifier R&D?
Most days in the workshop, I feel like we’re being pulled on ten different tangential paths – ten things need to be pushed forward in a world where it’s hard enough to follow one path from beginning to end. If you like to plan your day out minute by minute, it’s an environment that might drive you insane… most of the time, you’re ridiculously busy but at the same time, if you haven’t prioritized, you can end up sitting idle while you wait for someone to finish manufacturing a part and then find out that the welding machine needs more carbide. [Quick side note: at the workshop, they make acetylene straight from carbide and water! Just the way they used to make car head lamps in the olden days].
David and I try to stick to a two-tiered To-Do List to keep on top of everything: we keep one list of major to-do’s and then a list of “filler items.” The list of major to-do’s makes up the backbone of the day – for example, testing the governor system and seeing if it readjusts the gas/air mixture under varying loads. Then we have a list of smaller items that fill in the lulls – say, installing an air filter before the engine inlet or adding a four-way pipe before the blower.
Upon David’s arrival in Sri Lanka (one week after mine), we hit the ground running. We began by combing the local car and electronics markets for prototyping materials: ceramic tubes, air filters, and nicrome wire. Two weeks in Bhutan gave us lots of time to bounce ideas around and Greg, David, and I came up with a long list of design ideas and testing goals. Now we’re scrambling to implement them.
System testing is on the top of our list. How can you ensure happy customers when your product has not yet been thoroughly endurance tested? You can’t....So… While Lalith and Greg designed a variable load board (which is currently under construction), David and I worked with Ariyasenna (the main workshop and manufacturing manager) to create gas-tight pipe attachments for the temperature probes. Now, after three successful tests and three sets of data, the gasifier is looking less and less like a black box and we can start to understand why the engine reacts in certain ways under certain conditions.
The latest tests revealed shortcomings in the governor system and we’re due for a conference call with Prakash in the next few days to get more information about how to troubleshoot the system.
Aside from testing, David and I have been working on several new designs. Last weekend, we met with the village gasifier operators who gave us an update about which components were beginning to wear out and what parts of the system could use a redesign. Based on their input, we are designing a new hopper lid that includes a safety valve to make sure that the springs don’t wear out so quickly; we’re adding a T-bar to the end of the stirrer for easier access; and a new glass fiber filter inside the second filter for more efficient cleaning.
One of the most exciting design challenges has been developing a new firebox that is less expensive and more durable. The current design consists mostly of stainless steel, but stainless steel prices have been skyrocketing, and the high temperatures inside the firebox cause the stainless steel to warp. The week before David arrived, I made a visit to Mr. Parakrama Jayasinghe (also known as Para, for short), the director of the Biomass Energy Association and part of HayCarb, a huge Sri Lankan company that produces activated carbon. He gave me a few contacts, but it wasn’t until David arrived that we started following up on them. One that caught my attention was Lanka Refractories. Parakrama had mentioned that they make high temperature resistant materials. On our way back from the villages last weekend we stopped by the Lanka Refractories Office and were soon taking a tour of the whole plant with Mr. Pliyasiri. It turns out that Lanka Refractories makes ceramic castable parts that are less expensive and potentially more durable than stainless steel! Now, David and I are busy finishing up the drawings for the first prototype…
Days are hot and humid as the monsoons set in, but our greatest foe is the mosquito (or the mozzies, as David calls them). Even the trishaws we ride to the workshop every day can’t out-race these little blood-sucking fiends. Our morning ritual is to lather on as much anti-mozzy cream as possible (preferably right after stepping out of the shower). As soon as we reach the workshop, we burn an anti-mozzy coil in the corner of the office and turn on a fan to evenly distribute the anti-mozzy perfume of death around the room. Anti-mozzy wall plugs are a definite must but nothing is better than 98.11% DEET repellent. David and I have officially declared war against them and I hope they’re scared.
There is never a dull moment here. Maheeka and Hiranya are the most awesome younger sisters I could ever ask for :-) and I have already had a Stanford visitor – Kimber is a super star! Unfortunately, our weekend visit to Pokunatenna and the other villages was overshadowed by an icky bug that kept Kimber in bed for most of the weekend (though we did go out chasing after an elephant in the back yard one night…).
Still, I miss everyone at school and hope you’re all blowing Stanford away with your spaz and spunk, rip-roaring into the new school year.
Love from Sri Lanka,
Andi
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