Designing Ecological Habitats - Gaia Education

150 Designing ecological Habitats
Appropriate village
scale technology:
Proud owners of a
new batch of Lucia
Stoves.
inorganic waste materials which otherwise could have been segregated and
used for productive purposes.
Lessons Learned
Oftentimes, it is the economic challenges in the developing world that
determine if a technology is readily adaptable and usable for the general
public. The downdraft gasifier and the Lucia Stove are both based on the
technology of pyrolysis but vary in their application of scale.
Climatic conditions also determine the success of adapting technology
to new settings. Most of the fuel material testing for the GEK gasifier was
done using walnut shells, peanuts, and wood chips at the Berkeley, California
test site. Implicit in the cost of importing the technology is the necessity
of determining the suitability of other regional materials as alternative
fuel sources. In fact, it was through our test runs in the Philippines that
we determined the suitability of available materials and in the process
discovered the optimum fuel for this unit. This fuel, created by a local
Filipino government unit, is called ‘basuling’ – a perfect 2 inch sphere made
from carbonized solid waste. This material was successfully tested in our
trials and offers a potential resource that can close the energy loop process.
The gasifier and the Lucia Stove are both ‘open-source’ technologies;
they offer room for continuous improvement over time by being tested in
multiple regional applications, thus providing ongoing back-end technical
support. It is these considerations that helped us to see the educational