A 17-year-old student from Kenya has devised a waste bioreactor (HWB) capable of producing biogas within his school solving many problems for his community
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves him
These are the stories we most like to tell you. Leroy Mwasaru is a 17-year-old student di Maseno, the oldest English language school in Kenya which houses 720 students. In January 2013 the building was equipped with a new dormitory but a significant problem was immediately highlighted: the malfunctioning of the sewers and the consequent fetid odor that spread also in the surrounding areas.
The school also had another problem: it was used for cooking wood but obviously, burning it in the school kitchen represented a serious risk to the health of his students but especially for those who were in charge of preparing the food. Also to get wood, they had to be cut many trees of the area and the surrounding forest began to run out of resources so much that the local community was organizing in protests against the school.
Leroy, together with some companions, then had a brilliant idea: that of exploit the solid needs of students but also cow dung and organic waste who came from the kitchen to do something useful, create clean energy and thus solve both problems of the structure.
What the young Kenyan student has achieved is essentially a waste bioreactor (HWB) capable of producing biogas. All the raw material is stored in an underground chamber of the structure which, thanks to the fermentation carried out by microorganisms, releases biogas, a renewable energy source composed mainly of methane. The gas is collected in the bioreactor and immediately becomes ready for use as a fuel.
In this way there are no more bad smells in the dorms, fumes from burning wood in the kitchen, cooks are no longer risking their health and relations with the local community have improved. Big obviously also the benefit for the environment, as trees no longer have to be cut down.
With this project, Leroy participated and won at theInnovate Kenya challenge a competition run by a non-profit organization that helps teenagers in Kenya, South Africa, and Sierra Leone develop creative projects to address the social problems of their communities. And it is thanks to this victory that the bioreactor was able to become fully functional in the Maseno school.
But Leroy's projects don't stop there now the boy wants to form a company that can improve the prototype already made. We wish him all the luck and success he deserves!
Read also:
Organic waste: 5 projects to transform human waste into energy
Convertor of Pet Waste: the device that transforms dog poop into compost
