In October of 2009 TH Culhane, Mike Rimoin and Hanna Fathy of Solar CITIES converted a 6.5 HP 2 KW engine on Hanna Fathy's roof in the Zabaleen garbage community to run on biogas. We used the tri-fuel conversion kit from US Carburetion (a simple mount of a venturi adapter to the carburetor that took about 20 minutes to do) and then ran biogas made from kitchen garbage into the supplied regulator. At first we had a very hard time getting ignition -- water vapor in the line made sparking impossible. Then we ran regular butagas (bottled propane) into the generator until we got it to run, then reconnected the hose to the biogas digester with about 20 bricks on it for pressure. After many pulls and much gas lost to experimentation, the generator finally sprang to life, and we were able to run it for five minutes until the gas was depleted. With a full tank we should get more than a half an hour. Unfortunately the next time we went to try the generator we broke the pull-start spring from repeated use. Next time we need to get an automatic start generator and create a vapor trap to dry the fuel.
Keywords: electricity from biogas, Zabaleen, Cairo Egypt, renewable energy, Solar CITIES
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