June 19 – July 18: Nepal… the third month
Please see my full year trip log Sept. 2022 – Sept. 2023
Monday, June 19, 2023
Jeevan and Sapan joined me at the Factory. We started making another ISECooker, with a few improvements, incorporating 0.3 mm (extra thin) stainless steel sheet. We also tested again the two ISECookers already made. Jeevan brought a circuit that attenuates AC by phase shifting. This allowed us to change the power without changing the heater. We made a reasonable estimation that to keep the ISECooker at 185 C, we would need (or are dissipating) 100 W… which actually falls pretty nicely on the Monday, June 12… after the meltdown…. although those data were intended for the other (aluminium) ISECooker.
Tuesday, June 20, 2023
Head cold and sore throat… Spent only the morning at NYSE factory, frustrated by not being able to find simple things like a drill bit and a barrel crimp…. an electricity outage. We are assembling a new ISECooker with more insulation and lower power. The insulation is better because the basins are a little bigger, and the stainless steel sheets are 40% thinner.
Thursday, June 22, 2023
Past two days, we built a new ISECooker out of slightly larger tubs and extra thin (0.3 mm) stainless steel sheet. It should have better insulation, so we made it only 200 W, and expect the same maximum operating temperature of 300 C – 350 C. We also made a better closing mechanism by using a door hinge and two bicycle spokes to restrain the lid from opening all the way. As much as I find the clam shell design very cute, I think we be better off going with the slightly more expensive aluminium base because it is sturdier and probably easier to construct… I don’t think we’ll need to have a recessed top. We met with RERL today. We agreed to produce 7 more (200 W) ISECookers – 5 grid-connected Load Shifting Insulated Cookers (ILSEcookers), and 2 more solar powered ISECookers.
Back in California, Marcorios and Ropa are working on a new PWM (pulse width modulation) mechanism to optimize power drawn from the solar panel. The decreased current from the solar panel under decreased solar intensity will also decrease the voltage across the resistor unless the resistance is increased. However, the resistance can functionally be increased by pulsing the current on and off.
Saturday, June 24, 2023
Spent the morning preparing my presentations for the workshop tomorrow at St. Xavier’s. Then we hashed a has in the North. I drove in a car this time, and so I ran the full 10 km or whatever it was, up and down the terraced rice paddies, and through the forest. The women plant rice (I’m told the men prepare the terraces) and always invite you to plant with them, in good humor. I was so tempted to plant instead of run… As we went by, I think they were finishing up and feeling playful… and they broke out into some mud wrestling chaos.
They say leeches don’t bother you, they just take your blood. I’m the only one there who bothered killing them. The sit on the path curled up with their head moving in wide circles… trying to catch a ride. They say you can’t feel them bite, but it feels like a mosquito bite to me… and I go to slap it and there’s a “worm” on my sock! And so when I get home, I have bleeding wounds on my ankle, but there are no holes in my sock… go figure.
Sunday, June 25, 2023
I gave a full day workshop for science teachers and students at St. Xavier’s (K-12) school.
Monday, June 26, 2023
I fainted last night for the first time in my life. Working on my computer sitting in bed, I noticed a mosquito on the ceiling above me. I got a towel to mush it and stood up on the bed. The mosquito got blurry… but I committed to mush it, and then fell onto the bed… kind of lucky.
I’ve been exhausted. The hash on Saturday was beautiful but grueling, and the day at St. Xavier’s with the students and teachers exhausted me. It’s hot an humid all the time now… waiting for the monsoons to cool things down.
Nevertheless, I got up, walked to St. Xavier’s to get my bike. I had to take a taxi back to the factory with the three ISECookers yesterday after the presentation. I rode to Tribhuvan University to meet with Mahabir and Mahip at the NIC. I will work with Mahip’s team. Mahip is an expert in circuitry and automation. The NIC is going to get a circuit board manufacturing device, and therefor is a perfectly suited to build the circuitry for the ISECookers – in particular the solar power optimization circuit…. as soon as we’ve developed it. Then I rode to NYSE factory. I had lunch at both places and was still hungry. Dinner at the top of Durbar Square, practicing guitar while I waited. I can sometimes convince myself I’m pretty good.
Abandonment anxiety: a short time after making plans with someone… or even while making plans, I grow anxious that I’ll never hear from them again. And so I have fear that they will disappear or seemingly forget that there was a plan. And that I’ll never understand the context… never understand what really happened. It happens all the time professionally and in personal interactions. Hypothetically: I talk with three masters students who are excited to make ISECooker production their thesis project, and I am thinking we’ll follow up the next day or so. I don’t hear from them and then press one for an answer a few days later. He responds that they took a different project because the example I tossed out wasn’t what they wanted to do. But they didn’t ask me about it, they just chose a different project. It’s fair to say that I thought we were having a discussion, but they were evaluating something I didn’t mean to imply was set in stone. However, the student said he wanted to meet with me regarding future collaboration. I asked when we might meet. He didn’t say. He showed up at the factory one day unannounced, smiled at me, gave me a container of local curd (like yogurt) and rode away on his motorscooter…. culture shock?
When I look at the last year and even the last three years, I find adequate examples that would justify this anxiety. I could identify the source to be cultural differences and the unique sense of accountability one finds in Africa and especially in Nepal. However, that would be a simplification. I have this experience with Americans… and maybe it’s just I’m quick to build expectations of commitment.
Tuesday, June 27, 2023
I visited AHA, the pot makers, and spoke with Pranish. I enjoy talking to him because he argues with me and considers what I say. He let’s me into his factory and we discuss options and solicit Arun’s (impressive pot spinner) insight. I’ve been organizing the purchasing to build the ISECookers and GILSECookers. At first I thought I should just purchase this stuff, but then realized that it’s important that NYSE does all the purchasing, to establish the model they will follow for future manufacturing. Bikram and Suman are on board with this idea.
I ate dinner on yet another rooftop last night. There was only one other table occupied at this luxurious restaurant (more than $5 per dinner). I heard them say something about a “university engineering department” and interrupted their discussion. Then there was like more than an hour of geek talk over beer. It really filled a need for me of companionship. I gave them my contact, and they said they were interested to work together… I haven’t heard anything from them since. Strangely, it was the best night’s sleep I’ve had in a long time.
Wednesday, June 28, 2023
Strangely overcome by emotion this morning. Whether I’m falling apart emotionally, or just becoming aware of the reality, fragility, and brevity of my existence remains to be seen… if those two things are distinguishable. The news brought me to tears as I waited for breakfast and bade the little girl off to preschool… It was all such good news, between the Supreme Court upholding our constitution to ensure fair voting, and the obscenely touching story of the fans singing ‘Someone you love” for Lewes Capaldi as he is overcome by Tourette’s Syndrome.
In the afternoon, I presented at the Seminar for STEAM Education: A Progressive Approach to Education, hosted by the Department of STEAM Education in Kathmandu’s School of Education. Folks expressed appreciation for my presentation about Parallel Pedagogy … Likely because I try to model student centered discussion as opposed to lecturing, demanding participation from everyone.
OK, but something heavy happened for me that the STEAM conference when the alarm went off signaling the end of Purushottam Ghimire’s talk (from the Curriculum Development Center). He completely ignored the woman responsible for keeping the schedule… as if she’d not said anything. He continued on despite her efforts to stop him… He finally stopped when I flagged him down. However, someone from the audience started talking, describing their experiences, and he responded… then another participant… and then another… all men. The moderator and the next speaker (a woman) looked on with apparent resignation. I managed a violent inner dialogue of wanting to stop them… to ask, “is what your saying more important that what Teena is going to present… or what I’m going to present?… because we are going to be cut out of the schedule.”… but I reminded myself that I’d likely already said too much, and as a foreign visitor, my roll is to listen and learn.
After a break, it was announced that all talks would be cut from 20 minutes to 10 minutes, with no questions. By and large, the women presented for 10 minutes, the men took the full 20 minutes. I was half way through my talk when the alarm went off… “holey shit, is my time up?” It was. I moved to close my computer, and people protested that I should finish: I should finish the talk in one minute. I responded that I could not finish the talk in 1 minute. I was asked to finish my talk. I did… taking the full time. The conference and dinner went way over the scheduled time.
I wrote a note expressing my concerns and Emailed “reply all” to Binod and all the presenters. Binod sent a polite response that to me did not indicate he had heard my concern, so I sent this clarification..
Thursday, June 29, 2023
Visited Sanskriti K-12 school with Krishna to celebrate the opening of their FabLab.
Friday, June 30, 2023
Visited AHA to discover they’d made 7 sets of pots for me, and I’d given them the wrong dimensions… managing feelings of self-loathing.
Visited the foundry to discover we might be able to pour an aluminium STS onto the bottom of an iron or steel pot. This also changes the geometry that is needed for the pots, so even if I’d have given AHA the right measurements, things will likely be different.
Saturday, July 1, 2023
Walkathon for Teach for Nepal, and subsequent dance party in the mud. The crowd was surprised by the appearance of two of Nepal’s most popular bands.
White Shirts: Participants
Red Shirts: Volunteers
Blue Shirts: Teach for Nepal administrators
Sunday, July 2, 2023
Jayanti (Teach for Nepal trainer) and Mosharrof (Bangledesh Clean Cooking) visit NYSE. We visit AHA pot manufactures and Buddha Metals. We discover that an aluminium STS can be poured directly onto the bottom of a steel or iron cook pot if steel bolts are first welded to the bottom of the cook pot. Actually, the process is actually upside down: They pour the aluminium in the indentation in the casting sand and then float the pot on top of it, welded bolts down into the molten aluminium. Why they put their bare feet on the pouring surface (every time), I don’t know.
Monday, July 3, 2023
Heating the STS/iron pot inside the green plastic clam shell GILSECooker to do a boiling test. I want to see how thermally connected the STS is to the iron pot… actually to the water in the iron pot. The results were excellent: the water boiled in about 47 seconds, indicating an average power of 7.5 kW, and continued boiling for about 20 minutes, boiling away most of the water (about 800 mL). Given that we spent 270 minutes heating the water with 1.1 – 1.2 A of current at 225 V, the thermal efficiency of the ISECooker was about 52%… not bad. Full disclosure. I forgot to unplug the power before the test. I unplugged it maybe 5 minutes after the water was poured in. I made a video of the process.
Tuesday, July 4, 2023
We welded strips of stainless steel to the bottom of a stainless steel pot. I took the pot to the foundry to have them place it into an aluminium STS. I also brought an aluminium “nest” pot that we’d been using to use as a template for the STS puck.
Wednesday, July 5, 2023
I picked up the stainless steel pot with thermal storage (above, right) to find, first, that they poured 10 kg of aluminium as a base rather than the 5 kg I asked for… and they charge 500 NRs per kg… they cut me a deal at 4000 NRs. The bigger surprise was that the bottom of the SS pot warped. They said it was from the heat, but I think it was from the tension on the SS straps welded to the bottom as the aluminium cooled and contracted. Nevertheless, I put the pot in the green ISECooker after they cut a cm off the top of the rim – because with the extra large STS, the pot couldn’t fit in the ISECooker.
Then, we welded some stainless steel straps onto the bottom of a stainless steel pot with a heavy bottom. But what is in that heavy bottom?
Bummer… the double bottom de-laminated, and it seems there’s a thin slab of aluminium between the two pieces of stainless steel… likely to evenly distribute heat, preventing hot spots. It was still in one piece when I got it back to NYSE, but you could see the opening fissure. We finished the job off with a chisel.
I’m curious and it’s important to understand what’s causing the warping of the metal. As the aluminium solidifies and cools, it shrinks, and this must be bending the steel pot that is connected to it by the pieces of steel welded to the bottom of the pot. What if we put water in the pot… besides boiling violently, it may allow the aluminium to solidify from the top down. That may reduces warping. I met Cathy and Ronah for dinner… two hairstylists fresh off the plan from Uganda. I was like, “I’m a local, can help you adjust.” I showed them how to get a taxi (download InDrive), and argue about prices; and we talked about what Nepal is like.
Friday, July 7, 2023
I spent most of the day doing an analysis of what needs to be done before we have a manufacturable product.
Saturday, July 8, 2023
I had breakfast with Aru, and spent most of the day at home writing and planning. In the evening, I was invited out by Bashraj (see June 4) to hang in Durbar square with his classmates. It was really great bantering about politics and economics and bitching about corruption and the international bullying of the USA and India. It reminded me of the camaraderie I felt with my Masaai brothers (Malawi and Tanzania).
Everyone is so interested in what I have to say… we were talking about international development efforts and its pertinence to Nepal…. random people stopped, listened and sometimes participated.
Sunday, July 9, 2023
Nepali professionals do a lot of communication via LinkedIn, so I decided to update my LinkedIn Account. I was amused to see myself identified as Pete Schwartz from Guateca… evidently, I hadn’t looked at the account in well over a decade.
Monday, July 10, 2023
Spent the morning playing in the sand,…good day?
It didn’t start out so well… I went to the foundry to discover they’d destroyed the sand mold I’d worked so hard on Friday… that they were supposed to pour into. I was so mad… frustrated… communication difficulty, and feeling of helplessness… Unfortunately, I’m sure he understands the the meaning of a shouted F***… even if it’s only English word he knows. I calmed down, and remade the shape in a about 15 minutes … that took me over an hour the first time… learning curve. The idea is to pour aluminium all the way around a SS pot. The aluminium will shrink around the pot and pressure fit it, making a good thermal connection… Coefficient of thermal expansion:
Aluminium: 23 E-6 / C
Stainless Steel: 16 E-6 / C
The final product looks awful. I used too much water because the water makes for a better sand surface… but it results in lots of boiling, producing bubbles in the aluminium. But no matter – it worked. The SS pot is really pressed into the aluminiujm, so it is ready for a boiling test.
Then I made a pure aluminium STS about 7 kg that is also a pot, 13 cm deep. It’s made with the same shape we’ve been using for pots, so it is contoured to both fit into the heated nest, resting on the heater, and to accept an aluminium pot. I took well over an hour to make the shapes as the others worked around me and sometimes came to watch what I was doing… and offered advice. Near the end, I knew they understood what I was going to do, and they took over and poured the aluminium… like immediately. I wondered where the mosquitos came from that were biting my legs… I found larvae in the water used to keep the sand wet. No malaria in Nepal (yet), but dengue fever can kill you too.
The cast didn’t come out too well. My calculations gave me a wall thickness of 4.5 mm… pretty safe, but I was off by about 1 mm, and then the guys were off by 1-2 mm when they centered the molds… bummer, but it was good enough to run the test. Also, I didn’t put a top on the mold, which would define the bottom of the pot, so all the impurities and water vapor bubbled up to the bottom of the pot… and we had to do a lot of processing to cut it off.
Tuesday, July 11, 2023
I did boiling tests on each of the casts from yesterday. Both tests were done with the thermal cover closed:
The stainless steel pot pressure fit into the aluminium STS (3.9 kg) boiled in about 6 minutes, corresponding to a thermal flux of 1000 W. The boiling initiated at the top of the water because the aluminium was pressured up against the sides of the stainless steel pot. The bottom of the pot was a little rippled. Likely there was poor thermal connection on the bottom. I think this performance can be improved with a round-bottomed SS pot, because, it being relatively isotropic, may not ripple.
The aluminium pot in the (6.3 kg) contoured STS boiled in 12 minutes, corresponding to 500 W of thermal power. This can be improved:
– with a better fit.
– if the bottom surface is not so rough, so there is more surface contact.
– if the cast comes out correctly, completely covering the walls of the pot
– if the whole pot is deeper in an ISECooker, like the first batch will be.
– if the surfaces are smoother, allowing for better contact.
– if there is a little cooking oil between the pot and the contoured STS.
– if we decide to make the pot a little too big and then quickly place it into the very hot STS, pressure fitting the two together.
– if we put some brazing material between them like Zinc or Tin. Tin has a melting temperature of 231 C and so would melt at the high temperatures. However, it would not matter because it would stay in the STS, and tin is not toxic.
The last two conditions motivate some study at Cal Poly in the coming year.
Wednesday, July 12, 2023
I went back to AHA, and Arun spun me some special pots. I wanted some pots just a little bit larger to use as a template to make the sand mold for casting. He spun a pot on the die, all the way up to the end of the die. Then he spun another pot on that pot, and then a third pot on the second pot. I was very pleased with the pots he made. He’s such a badass.
I went to the foundry to make the sand molds, but they are not running today, so I’ll do it tomorrow.
I finished the heaters that Samjana and I started yesterday. We received 8 clay heater slabs that were “leather-hard”… and some extra clay. Except Hari did not provide the extra clay, so we cut some from the sides of the slabs. Then we made the coils and sealed the coils into the heater with more clay. The last picture (right) is just a 14 cm square that I bent into an “L” shape to put under the heated nest to support the cooking assembly… so it doesn’t sag into the soft insulation. I calculated the amount of power lost through this piece of ceramic to be on the order of 1 W.
The heaters with different degrees of closure are shown below. Some of them are turned over on the right exposing the heater bottom. Note upper left, the heater (shown in the making above) is completely sealed, with a small hole in each side to allow air to escape.
The NiCr wire should be fine at firing temperatures. My recollection is that at the SLO Makerspace, we heat the kilns with NiCr wire… I also looked up the temperatures:
NiCr melting point: about 1400 C
Modern firing temperatures: 1100 C – 1200 C
OK, so we’re getting close to a temperature that could damage the heater coil… but I don’t think their kiln will approach this temperature. Tribal earthenware is fired below 800 C. We will see how it turns out.
For the solar ISEC, we used 0.034″ diameter NiCr wire, I think 20/80. You can look it up online to see this is likely 20 gauge of resistivity 2.1 Ohms/m, requiring about 3.8 m of wire to achieve 8 Ohm resistance.
Thursday, July 13, 2023
I get up early to do yoga, have breakfast, and hit the foundry with my new aluminium templates to make the contoured STS!
Nope… psych!… I show up and the foundry and they’re brushing their teeth in their underwear… shaking their heads… WHAT? Not starting the furnace today? Damn… the bosses TOLD me to show up and do work today… good thing I didn’t show up at 6 AM like he recommended. Then the foreman cames in and says a bunch of stuff in Nepali… and then says “light”… and I realize that there’s no electricity today… can’t drive the blowers to heat the fire to melt the aluminium… not his fault. I came home… siting on my bed working on computer… with the fan on – WE have electricity in my neighborhood….
Maybe just as well. I can use a nap. didn’t sleep much last night. But I got some work done and texted with Tekuru for maybe 2 hours. It was fun.
Friday, July 14, 2023
The factory district had electricity and the foundry was running. A worker and I together built a near perfect contoured STS, with the exception of a misalignment of the two sand molds defining the top and bottom of the STS… resulting in a wall that is 1 cm on one side, and doesn’t exist on the other. We heard that Hari is again in the hospital and won’t receive the ceramic pieces I was to send to him, so I took them out of the shipping pot and put them in front of a fan to dry.
I was called back to the foundry later for a discussion with a visitor who would make a wooden frame to align the two sand molds… at one point, amid the flurry of hand-waving, drawing, and articulating in languages that were not understood by the listeners, he shoved two pieces of corrugated cardboard between the two pots and they fell together… perfectly symmetrically. Less than an hour later, we had a symmetric, contoured STS. – about $25 for a day’s work, and the visitor claimed I owed him nothing for the consultation. For some reason, there was a little aluminium slop on the inside surface preventing the proper fit of the aluminium pot. Note the perfect inside surface quality and prefect fit of the aluminium pot on the asymmetric STS above, while the “perfect” STS below had to be hollowed out with a lathe to fit the pot… something to take up with the foundry Monday… after a few boiling tests.
It’s hard to know for sure, but everyone seems to be thoroughly amused by my presence: The old white guy in shorts and a dress shirt, that takes off his shoes, climbs into the sand with them… while babbling things they don’t understand, insisting they do something they’ve never done before, and habitually photographing and videoing. I get smiles from everyone when I come in and they often drop what they’re doing to watch what happens while I’m there. Certainly they know that something different is going to happen. Maybe they sense the appreciation and respect that I have for the work they do… … and that I’m having so much fun… and that I like them.
Saturday, July 15, 2023
Lounging in bed, enjoying the second life of yesterday’s dinner, with some mango and banana thrown in. I’ve been asked to run a workshop on parallel pedagogy and student engagement for Teach for Nepal for the 25th. Educators here have expressed appreciation for my insights on getting away from lecturing and rote learning. The gig requires me to extend my visa. However, I think it’s just easier to overstay my visa and pay the fine at the airport… wish me luck. I’ll work today on a lesson plan.
Sunday, July 16, 2023
I visited AHA to have the pots smoothed out and the edges trimmed. The pot got stuck on the extra large die (that had one aluminium shell already over it)… and they worked very hard to get it off… then I realized I’d brought the wrong pots… many apologies followed… In the end, we got everything done.
I met Jayanti in the afternoon, and we went to the foundry. They don’t speak English so well… and when I try to talk to them, they listen quietly and then say, “where is SHE?” We learned that it would be an improvement if we glued together the two aluminium pots defining the STS mold, allowing it to act as one single pot…. they didn’t want me to fill it with concrete because that would make it too heavy.
Using the new symmetric STS that was machined on the lathe to accept the aluminium cook pot, we boiled 1 kg of water in about 6 minutes, corresponding to 1000 W of thermal power. This is twice the power for the previous STS, likely because the surfaces are smoother and make better thermal contact with the cook pot. During this time, the STS temperature dropped to about 210 C. We emptied the water and started heating the STS again for the next boiling test, which we did when the STS was at about 245 C because the shop was closing. Immediately after I put the water in the pot, I poured about 50 mL of cooking oil between the top and STS, completely filling the gap up to about 5 cm from the bottom. The water boiled much faster, and the boiling was VERY vigorous. Then I noticed that the cell phone camera was on “photo” instead of the “video” i used to measure time.
*** self loathing ***
However, from the time stamp of a picture, we can see that the water certainly boiled in less than 4 minutes, putting an estimate of power around 2 kW or higher. I estimate 3 kW from the way it boiled. I’ll repeat the experiment tomorrow.
Monday, July 17, 2023… and my visa has expired… I’m living on the lamb. Documentation claims it’s not a big problem. We will see.
At 9:30 AM, the STS is heating again at about 200 W after I cleaned all the cooking oil off. I notice that the different pots made from the same die have very different fits into the STS. This is a big deal, as we saw a doubling of power when I switched form a jagged STS to the smooth one we have now. The pot/STS interface greatly affects the thermal power flow. But this may be something to examine once we have the luxury to consider these details. We are gathering materials to start manufacturing.
What an awful day. ugh. I spent most of it bicycling to and from Teku to find epoxy, gasket maker (high temperature silicone adhesive), and 4 mm bolts and nuts for the cooker. The traffic is awful… I should probably take the alleyways next time because it feels pretty dangerous. And I definitely pissed some people off today – thinking I’m riding like a Nepali… In any case I’m back safely and they are too… as far as their interactions with me anyway.
I repeated the boiling test with 50 mL of cooking oil between the STS and cook pot, and it boiled in under 2 minutes. I’m estimating a power of 4 kW.
Tuesday, July 18, 2023
I glued the two aluminium pots together using a 24-hour epoxy to make the template that the foundry will use to for future aluminium STS production.
Suman and I visited AHA to define the order for future pots, nests, and outer shells. Suman had a quick meeting on the production floor with Asok, the foreman, setting the manufacturing wheels in motion.
