Cornell CIRENAS Anaerobic Digestors

CIRENAS is an eco-lodge in Costa Rica that aims to educate people about sustainable development and environmental conservation by allowing visitors to experience their sustainable ways of living. One of CIRENAS's practices is collecting wastewater in a large tank and using it as fertilizer. CIRENAS is interested in turning this system into one that produces methane via anaerobic digestion to power their kitchen, and they report that there is currently no methane being produced despite the system being closed off to the atmosphere. Our team's goal is to analyze the feasibility of successfully anaerobically digesting CIRENAS's wastewater, and to explore possible problems that could be inhibiting the production of methane. This project will (hopefully) culminate into an on-site visit to CIRENAS during which our team members can investigate what is causing CIRENAS's anaerobic digestion to fail by running tests which we'll design beforehand. Afterwards, we'll report our findings to CIRENAS and propose solutions to increase their methane yield.