Yesterday we visited two digesters that were close to the faculty. One of them was not working properly anymore. To re-start the biogas plant it had to be emptied. Today, together with another intern from the faculty, we finished emptying the digester. This was not like your everyday cleaning of a bedroom. We had to put on our overalls and gumboots so we were ready to go into the digester.
As probably many of you know already, a digester is used to produce biogas and this is done with the manure of the animals that are around. So this means that we were scooping out pig dung from the digester. Our hands and overall were covered in dung, but we were able to see a digester from the inside. It was nice to see in real life, instead of on a YouTube video. We got to talk with the owner of the biogas plant and discuss with him what might be the reason behind the found problem. We also discussed a long time on how we might improve the functioning of the biogas plant. For now, we leave the digester be as it is, to find out if there are any possible leaks. Then next week we will come back to start the initial feeding of the digester!
