The Uganda biogas project was closed out in the Spring of 2019 following our final monitoring trip in December of 2018. The biogas system was fully implemented in May of 2017 at a vocational school in the community of Nakyenyi Uganda. Biogas is used as a form of renewable energy, replacing fire wood in a country that faces deforestation on a large scale. From a manure and water mixture, methane is captured and piped to the school’s kitchen for cooking purposes. This project was intended to serve as a proof of concept and teach students at the school the necessary skills to go out and replicate this system elsewhere. 

There have been five trips to the community. The first two trips were monitoring trips to the community. On these trips the travel teams gathered information on what sort of system the community really wanted. They determined how many people would be dependent on the system, what the accessibility to input materials would be, and how to design a system that would be simple and replicable. Once a design had been decided two implementation trips occurred in August 2016 and May 2017. On the first implementation trip the team helped complete the main slurry tank. This tank that holds the slurry mixture was built by the community. The team verified its ability to hold water as well as dug the pipeline that gas flows through to the kitchen. During this trip it was evident a few designs needed to be changed. On the May 2018 trip, these design changes were implemented mainly being a supporting cage, a system of weights, and a pressure release system. The system was operational when the team left in May 2018 and will verify its effectiveness come December 2018.