The Ethiopian charcoal project

However my very intensive studying did bring results. Now, when I have finished the first semester successfully, I spend most of my time volunteering for the Biosmart Initiative, of course apart from the time I study. I know I have already described this project in my last blog, but since that time we have made quite a significant progress.

To summarize the project: its aim is to facilitate sustainable business of Ethiopian farmers who will create and through a social entreprise also sell products of biochar (green charcoal). Apart from selling these products they will also use them - as an organic fertilizer for their fields, and also as burning fuel made by pressing biochar into briquettes. In the future we would also like to expand the ways we can use biochar to use it as a component of water filtration system. We are currently working on this proposition with a development team from the University of Leicester. Many sentences could be written to describe all the beneficial properties of biochar, however for the scope of this blog it should be sufficient if I mention that it recycles organic waste materials, increases fertility of soil by binding nutrients to the carbon structure and it also sequesters CO2 from the organic materials to the soil, so that it is not released back into the atmosphere, fighting global warming.

After we created the business plan and a network of advisory partners with whom we consult our project (for example the Bristol based company Carbon Gold, the International Biochar Research Center in Edinburgh or the Oxford Biochar initiative), we have tested our first prototypes and we started to make some real-sized models to make biochar.

The first mini prototype testing happened in the garden of my house. When the flames reached one meter high I became quite worried about the safety of the event, but in the end everything was just fine.

The tests brought positive results and when the neighbors asked me the next morning what was all the smoke, I told them it came from a barbecue, which was not a lie, as we did grill some marshmallows on the flames. The flames you can see in the picture are exceptional and they were caused by a construction mistake which allowed too much oxygen in the barrel, letting most of the material burn instead of undergoing pyrolysis. But we still got some biochar produced. We have acknowledged the insufficiencies of this model and the next ones will tackle these problems.

At this stage we are working on the project with our partner university in Bahir Dar in Ethiopia. We also started making several types of full size models and hopefully next week we will test their functionality. We should be testing it in specially air conditioned rooms in the department of archaeology, which are made for archaeologists to work with open fire, so that they can simulate the medieval life conditions.

We have just started our crowdfunding campaign to collect the means to make this project a reality (the link is here: http://igg.me/at/biochar-ethiopia. In case the campaign has already expired and you still wish to see our promo video, you can view it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fslIgPYYwjI). Apart from this funding we are also filling out a lot of grant applications and we are taking part in the Unilever student grant competition. The excursion to Unilever headquarters in London was definitely an impressive experience. We have met many interesting people doing other charitable projects and we also got a lot of insights about the new Unilever sustainability strategy. Visiting the factory shop with untaxed prices was also great - I have bought great stock of Marmite (a traditional British yeast spread). We have now proceeded to the second round of this competition, among the 5 finalists, winning £200 and competing for another £500 and a trip to the world championship in Unilever head offices in the US.

Along Biosmart Initiative I still take part in the Out of Doors Society committee, organizing Saturday countryside walks for students. My love for South East England makes me share some more pictures of it here…

Usually there is as many people as to fill a coach that we rent. When there is less brave hikers in the winter we use public transport instead.

Although the beaches can be beautiful, they are no good for swimming. Only few hardy English people have jumped in the sea, otherwise the rests stays out of water…

There are many wild living animals to meet in Cornwall and Devon. Most of them are used to tourists.

And this picture illustrates that even the inland fields can look magical.

Weeks pass by unbelievably quickly - I have just been sitting my exams and it is already week 7 (out of 11 this semester) and it’s almost time to prepare for the next exams… Between hiking and work for Biosmart a mostly read journals for my seminars and sometimes I meet my local Czech and Slovak friends. We are still keeping our society active and this weekend we are going to visit Exeter catacombs to explore local history. As you can see, I am trying not to miss any opportunity and I try to enjoy this year as much as I can.