BLUELab Biogas Team

Organization

BLUELab Biogas Team

Mission

Two major main tenets of our organization are social responsibility and environmental protection. Most villages in Liberia, West Africa, the women and girls burn coal and wood to fuel their cooking stoves. Exposure to fumes from these stoves can cause severe lung damage, in addition to deleterious effects to the environment. The BLUELab Biogas Team has proposed a solution: small-scale anaerobic biodigestion.

Organizational Expertise

Capacity Building, Climate/Environment

Technologies & Fuels

Biogas

Clean Cooking Activities

This summer, we implemented a biogas digester on the University of Cuttington's campus in Suacoco, Liberia. Right now, the gas-collection bag is connected to an gas stove (via a hose) to safely burn off the gas. The ideas is that-after initial start up costs-the biogas would eventually be distributed, free-of-cost, with community members bringing waste from their own homes/farms to the digester as a contribution.
Right now, however, the gas can only be utilized locally, without a means for transportation. This leads to the focus of our academic year, which is to design and test a manually-powered compression system for the biogas that can be utilized in the absence of electricity. We implemented the system in about two weeks, it was not possible to build a deep relationship with our University partners in-country. Due to this, the project has not been well-maintained following the close of our trip to Liberia.

Partnership

We would like to partner with a branch of your organization in a country that has demostrated both a significant need and interest for biogas-powered cookstoves. We have discovered that initiatives are difficult to implement remotely and that building relationships and partnering with village leaders is the® most® effective way to not only ensure the effectiveness of a health intervention, but also its sustainability.®

Thus, we are hoping to shift our focus away from Liberia to a region that has strong representatives from the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves who would be willing to partner with our organization to help implement our technology, or at least pilot it in order to see whether its long-term implementation is feasible.®

We truly believe that our organization's aims align well with those of the Global Alliance and that partnering them would enable the success of our project and, more importantly, positive health outcomes for target communities.®

Regions Operating In

Sub-Saharan Africa

Country Based In

United States

Address

507 GLEN CT
APT 3
Ann Arbor , 48104

Website

https://bluelab.engin.umich.edu/projects/biogas

Primary Point of Contact

Name: Ms. Anitha Menon

Title: Student

Email: avmenon@umich.edu

Phone: 6163289893

Secondary Point of Contact

Name: Ms. Anisha Gupta