In these workshops, you can learn how to: Make and Use Biogas

Save Money on Fuel

Build and Sell Biogas Digesters

Save The Planet and Have Nice-Looking Flowers (Want to know more about what you might learn at these workshops? Visit this link…) Your browser does not support the video tag David talks about how the spread of inexpensive (plastic bag) biogas digesters can have an impact on global poverty and climate change. Biogas is a strong catalyst, providing benefits that people can use to improve their own conditions, help their family and village, and escape the worst impacts of their poverty.

When’s the next one?

No workshop is scheduled just now (spring of 2020), but you can if you are interested in hosting a workshop, or you can sign up for our rare, informative email messages, to the right and nearer the bottom…

Beginner’s Workshop address:

Ecoheal, in Chapel Hill Ecoheal has unexpectedly decided to permanently close it’s doors… Therefore the weekend workshop will also be held in Siler City. See below for address and similar details. $ Description Purchase! $200 The Beginner’s Biogas Workshop is a two-day workshop. The first day (Saturday) you will learn “All About Biogas…”. You will gain a solid understanding of how to make and use biogas. (You? Instant expert!) Biogas digesters accept food waste and other materials, acting powerfully against global climate change, and releasing the energy embodied in the carbon bonds of the food as lovely, burnable methane. Save the planet! Make Biogas! On Sunday, teams of 2-3 participants will get hands-on experience building their own a very low-cost ($25) plastic bag digester. We think you can use this digester design to become personally “carbon negative” (see link above), and to develop a new green business. Everyone who attends will leave with a copy of The Complete Biogas Handbook, and a CD full of peer-reviewed and authoritative articles about biogas. We have been offering biogas workshops since 2011, all around the US including Hawaii, and as far away as Australia. Participants have included ordinary citizens, renewable energy experts and even biogas professionals, and in the anonymous feedback forms provided at the end of these workshops, virtually all have expressed their enthusiasm about what they have learned and experienced. Please purchase your seat by clicking the “Register!” button just above and to the right. The workshop is planned for a limit of 35 participants. Be one. Come with questions: We’ve got answers. (This workshop will be followed by a 5-day Builder’s Workshop where we will build [The_Cube]. It’s very exciting! See just below!) Builder’s Workshop address:

Powell Acres Farm map) Need a place to stay in Siler City? See hotels/motels nearby Powell Acres Farm. $ Description Purchase! $600 The Builder’s Biogas Workshop is intended for those who want to learn to build [The_Cube] (pdf), an innovative, low-cost (~$750 in materials cost), fully insulated, cool climate (US-ready) small (1.3 m3) biogas digester. This workshop is listed as five days, but it is really a seven-day workshop, since all workshop participants should attend the Beginner’s Biogas Workshop on Saturday and Sunday, to insure that they have a solid grounding in the fundamentals of biogas. (Note that the cost for the Builder’s Workshop includes the two-day Beginner’s Workshop.) Without the knowledge offered in the first workshop, the scientific basis for the design of biogas digesters in general, and for [The_Cube] specifically, may not be clear. Because Powell Acres is a bit off the beaten path, arrangements have been made for anyone satisfied with a sleeping bag to have a warm place to sleep. (Please bring your own bag or bedding, and pad.) This will reduce costs for those participants who wish to take advantage of this option. The workshop cost includes a light breakfast, and lunch. Dinner will be available for a nominal cost, for any who wish to eat with us. (Be sure to tell us if you have any dietary restrictions.) Please purchase your seat by clicking the “Register!” button just above and to the right. The workshop is planned for a limit of 15 participants. Be one.



Near you! Where you are,

anywhere in the world

if you arrange it… Cost? Negotiable. (Registration is not yet open for this workshop. But it could be! So contact us!) (And how cool would it be to have a workshop and build a big (small) digester, eh?)



What are these workshops?

Biogas is a great, entirely natural alternative fuel which can be made from a composting process, using almost anything that was once alive to produce a burnable gas. (It’s really almost magical. Honestly. Biogas astonishes.) Would you like to know how to generate biogas? What produces it and how to use it? How to make really cheap, practical digesters? Attend a workshop!

Our workshops provide complete information about how to understand, successfully make and properly use biogas (first day), offer the best information on the planet about how to make more than four standard designs for biogas digesters. It’s not just about small digesters, either: You will also learn a good deal about the tools and techniques required to build fairly large digesters. To top it off, our workshops now feature full information about how to make simple, effective, low–cost US-ready, cold-weather digesters (second day and onwards: hands-on!).

Several days packed with digestible information, presented with humor and energy by the author of the best-reviewed, most comprehensive biogas book on at least one planet. And please note that we’ve learned a lot more since the book was written, so a good bit of the information provided in this workshop is not in The Complete Biogas Handbook. (Yes, yes, agreed: That of course means that it’s not ‘complete’, but calling it The Nearly Almost Pretty Much Complete Biogas Handbook just didn’t seem like such a great idea…)

Who will be presenting?

David House is the author of The Complete Biogas Handbook, and has lectured and taught a variety of subjects in more than 20 countries. (More information about David found here.)

More about biogas

Biogas is a naturally produced fuel, capable of powering stoves, lights, refrigerators, and anything that natural gas or propane can power. It is a gas composed almost entirely of CO 2 (carbon dioxide) and methane (CH 4 ) produced by a composting process, where air is excluded: anaerobic digestion.

Almost anything that was once alive can produce biogas, but plants provide a good deal more biogas than manure, pound for pound. (Want to know more? Well buy the book, hey….)

Briefly: Biogas? Well… It’s simple

It can be really inexpensive to build a biogas “digester”

And it offers far more energy per unit land than either ethanol or biodiesel

(Honest! Proof? See the chart and read the links below.)

Composting

process Outcome Heat Methane Cell

growth Aerobic

(with O2) 40% ~none 60% Anaerobic

(no O2) ~none 90% 10%

As you may know, a properly–built ordinary (aerobic) compost pile will get very hot (sometimes as much as 150°F – 70°C). So much kinetic energy (moving; hard to capture and use) is released from the breakdown of compost materials! A lot, yes, but more than twice the amount of energy in that kinetic heat is released as potential energy (stored; easy to capture and use) in the bonds of the methane molecule in biogas.

(Look at the chart at the right. You can see that 90% is more than twice as much as 40%.)





How much energy? Well, many studies show that when converting plant matter from a given unit of land into biogas vs. ethanol or biodiesel, biogas wins the contest big time, offering (for example) eight times the net energy of ethanol. (It offers lower greenhouse gas emissions than either ethanol or biodiesel as well.) For example:

(The above shows data from a 2009 study by Roger Samson and his colleagues.)

So in sum, if you come to a workshop, you will learn essentially everything you need to know about biogas to be able to make and use it, and you will be given resources to build any of several different kinds of biogas digesters.

Want it all, biogas-wise? Here it is. Come and get it.