Mercy Students Cook With Gas Produced From Kitchen Scraps

Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. – May 14, 2013– Mercy College visiting faculty researcher Dr. Thomas (Taha) Rassam Culhane and members of Mercy College’s club ENVISAJ (The Mercy College Environmental Sustainability and Justice Club) will be showcasing the College’s biodigesters at Sunplugged-on-Hudson May 18, 2013.

SunPlugged-on-Hudson
Saturday, May 18, 2013 12:00 pm
2 River Street Hastings on Hudson, NY

Sunplugged-on-Hudson is a solar powered concert that features local solutions to climate challenges. Along with live music, there will be exhibits on solar cooking, composting, bio-gas and recycling. A biodigester is an oxygen free tank which digests kitchen scraps using the microbes found in animal waste or lake mud. Inside the digester, the scraps and waste decompose without oxygen producing an environmentally friendly bio-methane gas. This bio-gas, can be used in normal gas appliances with slight modifications for cooking, lighting and heating.

Students at Mercy College are researching the household-scale biodigester. Mercy College has two household-scale biodigesters under the supervision of Dr. Culhane. Dr. Culhane says ENVISAJ Club is planning a barbeque at Sunplugged-on-Hudson and the gas for the fire to cook will be created by the College’s biodigesters. Dr. Culhane says, "What we are researching [at Mercy College] is the efficient, low cost, decentralized production of truly ‘natural gas.’ It’s a safe and clean burning renewable energy source that anybody can make anywhere in the world using nothing more than kitchen garbage processed by microbes found everywhere including horse manure and even your own gut.”

Mercy College student Jarrod Britt, who works with Dr. Culhane on the biodigesters, says, "What can be better than cooking your food today on your food scraps from yesterday?"

Dr. Culhane, who has a joint appointment in Mercy College’s School of Social and Behavioral Sciences and the School of Health and Natural Sciences, was named one of National Geographic’s Emerging Explorers for 2009 for his work in the area of Renewable Energy. He is a noted urban planner whose organization, Solar CITIES, teaches residents in some of the poorest neighborhoods in the world how to build and install rooftop solar water heaters and other renewable energy, water and waste management systems. Culhane graduated from Harvard University with honors, earning a bachelor's degree in biological anthropology. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of California, Los Angeles.