Nov. 11 – Dec. 13: Togo and the ISECooker Workshop
Please see my full year trip log Sept. 2022 – Sept. 2023
Friday ~ 11 AM , Nov. 11, 2022: I arrive in Accra,
It seemed every official in Accra Airport knew who I was. I was picked up by Osei (Martin’s father) and Bismark. I stayed with Osei on his family’s compound, and everyone was very nice.
Saturday, Nov 12, 2022
Osei and I visit Nasam (Bismark’s) factory where they make cookstoves (Charcoal and gas) and have been working on ISECookers… There, I meet Bismark, Salifu (a skilled technical worker), and Otoo, a physicist/innovator turned businessman…. With whom I share many characteristics and interests.
Nasam has been constructing ISECookers with erythritol phase change thermal storage, and have been having some difficulty. I think Salifu is disappointed to hear that we’ve moved on from erythritol to solid aluminium thermal storage… they still have at least 50 kg of erythritol from a past purchase… but we recover and move onto new ideas. Atoo has many technical questions, and it’s exciting that Otoo has all the conceptual background to brainstorm ideas, and is also able to explain to the others in Twee. We agree on a few things: The domain name for SolCook is already taken by the AllSeason’s Cooker… AND “ISEC” is an acronym for a number of other things, which confuses web searches. We decide on ISECook for the domain name and company name for the Ghana LLC… although we could also dissolve SolCook and wrap it into Nasam.
Sunday, Nov 13, 2022
I accompany Osei to church… 3 hours! (See pictures from last Friday). The mass was in English. I still don’t understand everything. But the passionate devotions are punctuated by incredible music. At one processional to make donations, a section erupted in song, drums and trumpet. A set of women queued to the donation box were line dancing. Otoo picked me up from church and Osei went to a community meeting. He has experimentally innovated his home… differently but in the same spirit as my 20 years of domestic innovation. He is off grid with solar power and recycles all the waste, including urine for plants.
There is considerable unemployment in Ghana… not as bad as in Malawi, but considerable. For example Osei’s nephew received a certificate in computer science three years ago, but hasn’t been able to find a job… I ask Otoo if my plan to start solar electric technology programs in Malawi, would only transformed the uneducated unemployed into educated unemployed. He agreed that technical education alone will not result in employment…. That the programs have to be about problem solving and seeing opportunity in problems. The conversation transforms my vision of the programs at LTC and Kindle.
Monday, Nov 14, 2022
Otoo, Bismark, and I visit a ceramics factory and charcoal cookstove factory, as well as Bismark’s house. Otoo’s MO is to partner with businesses. The daily processes are run by the original owner, but Otoo restructures the management and incorporates the business into his network. The ceramics shop is producing insulated ceramic liners for charcoal stoves… the process is quick and inexpensive, and could likely produce insulated ceramic liners for ISECookers. Atoo, Osei, Bismark, and Salifu plan to come to Salma’s workshop Nov 25 – Nov 30 in Togo. I anticipate a dynamic atmosphere of learning.
Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2022
Atoo picks me up and drops me at the Accra bus station with Osei and Bismark. We find a car to the Togo boarder… About $10 for the three-hour drive. There’s the usual processing and visa procurement and paying… along with a group of Togo customs looking forward to Trump being the next US president because he is the “president of peace”. It is good to finally be with Salma, who I’ve communicated with for three years via video conferencing and Email. Salma sleeps on a sponge on the floor of his shop. He got me a hotel room with a fan… but no mosquito net or place to hang mine. I pass out around 7:00 PM, but wake and put on DEET. I’d started myself on Doxycycline Thursday night after speaking with some travelers, discovering that there is a particularly deadly strain of malaria in West Africa… encephalitis.
Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2022
I find it hard to communicate with the USA because there is no direct texting, so I can’t verify who I am for the bank, etc. I am trying to transfer funds to Salma so he can buy things for our conference, and I find that I am only able to take cash from the ATM and hand it to him. It works, for only 300,000 CFA (West African Franc) at a time… ~ $475.
Thursday, Nov. 17, 2022
The workshop is going to be 3 hours to the north in Atakpame, central Togo… on a plateau, maybe a little cooler there?
We were supposed to go yesterday, but it got late with errands and planning. So, we were going to go today, but that was kind of long ago too, so it looks like we’ll try to leave for Atakpame first thing in the morning.
Viviane, Salma’s shop assistant was busy today demonstrating ISECooking in front of the shop with two ISECookers. She cooked rice in one ISECooker and friend vegetables in the other, adding fish after a time.
Today, we investigated Salma’s ISECookers and why the delivered power was a fifth of the capacity of the solar panels. We discovered there was a bad mismatch between the resistance of the ISECooker and the resistance corresponding to the solar panel’s maximum power point, as investigated in (way too much) depth in our “Hot Diodes!” paper. The problem was partially alleviated by inserting a boost convertor between the solar panels and the ISECooker, but ultimately will require us to reduce the resistance of the ISECooker’s heater.
Everything cooked in a little over an hour, so we were pleased. However, the fish were the boniest I’ve ever experienced. It was painfully slow sorting through the barbs, shards, daggers, and thorny plates. I was amazed at how much faster Viviane could navigate them than I.
Viviane confessed that she also did not eat the bones, pointing to the fish bones on the sidewalk in front of her. I responded, “yes, I see two fish bones in front of you, and 200 in front of me.” She laughed and said they taste nice. REALLY? But after a little practice, and managing a gag reflex, I finished my fish at an increasing rate sans ejected waste. “This is Togo…”
Friday, Nov. 18, 2022
We drive the three hours to Atakpame and are greeted by a hug from Salma’s son, Ovoid (4). In the house also live Salma’s wife Beatrice, Beatrice’s mother, Beatrice’s niece (Ivette), and Gortane (2).
Saturday, Nov. 19, 2022
We spend the day at Salma’s shop, cleaning and organizing for the workshop.
We built and tested an ISECooker with the solar panels on the shop’s roof.
There was a plug hanging from the ceiling that Salma said wasn’t connected to anything. I shorted it for a moment with a knife, producing a massive spark and a welding mark on the knife. It was connected to line voltage, 240 V / 50 Hz… lethal… ad the height of a 3 year old. The electrician Salma had hired clearly didn’t know what he was doing. When innovating electrical systems, it’s crucially important to verify the system yourself because it’s outside the box of professional protocol.
Sunday, Nov. 20, 2022
We verified how the solar panels are arranged and heated some water in an ISECooker. We are modifying the design.
Salma and I discussed a lot of ISECooker theory.
We visited a very basic hotel… double bed rooms for $16 a night. We hope our workshop patrons don’t mind sharing a bed!
Monday, Nov. 21, 2022
Shop work, and workshop curriculum planning… Fond memories of the Hot Diodes! paper, assembling and testing a diode chain. Instead of just a diode chain, I added four PTC thermistors in parallel, corresponding to about 2 Ohms, that increases to 100 Ohms at 220 C, cutting off the power at this high temperature. The system worked better than I’d hoped.
I wanted an aluminum pot with a base 5 cm thick, having the thermal storage capacity to (when heated to 250C) boil two kg of water. We went to a man who casts aluminum in sand. I brought a stainless steel pot to use as a template, so both pots would have the same outer dimensions. Just as Salma predicted, he smiled and shook his head. He’d never made anything novel before. Through Salma’s interpretation, I explained that he could, but he laughed and shook his head. He said the wall thickness of the SS pot was just too thin. It was going no where… then I threw the contents of my SS pot on the ground and filled the pot with sand. He immediately packed it down and turned it upside down, producing the inner contour. Then I shaved off the inner contour with the pot, demonstrating how to increase the wall thickness. He kept laughing, but he wasn’t shaking his head anymore. In the evening, we had our pot… 5 kg of solid thermal storage, yeah, baby! enough thermal storage to boil 2 liters of water…. notice he central picture below: The stainless steel pot on the left is nested into what will be the heater; and the pot on the right has a base 5 cm thick… about $50. Salma said that the color of my skin prevented us from getting a better price. In the US, I paid over $400 for an aluminum puck necessary to machine the same pot.
Salma had been melting holes in the plastic bucket with a solder iron that could no longer solder because the burnt plastic had destroyed the surface of the tip. We decided to buy a drill. The experience in the shop was likely the most surreal I’ve had in Africa. A young man helped us. Salma spoke to him, “I don’t speak French, I’m from Ghana…” We found several drills – cordless and corded. He asked me which one I wanted to buy. I asked how much they were. He said he had to ask the boss, who would look up the price on the internet. He was gone a long time. The drill we wanted, the least expensive only had a box. They looked for close to half an hour to see where the actual drill was. Our Ghanaian friend told me that the boss was on the phone… we could see that. We would have to wait. He asked again which one I wanted, so he could ask the boss the price. I again said that I couldn’t tell him until I knew the price.
I managed my impatience and frustration over the inefficiency of the business while the boss spoke on the phone in front of us. Finally, I spoke loudly, “s’il vous plaît, we want to buy this and go.” no response. I slapped the counter between us firmly. He looked up surprised as if he’d not noticed us before. We finished the purchase and left.
As we walked home, Salma observed that I navigate like an “Ice Breaker” and said he would try to also be more like an ice breaker. I responded that it worked… and it seems I didn’t offend anyone this time, but the same technique can get you kicked out of a business.
Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2022
I opened the drill to find that the drill we purchased had only one of the two batteries enclosed… I hear Viviane’s sweet voice, “This is Togo.” Note to self for future… always check. We hired two motorcycles into town and traded for a compete drill.
Wednesday, Nov. 23, 2022
Workshop guests arrive tomorrow… expecting over 20. I almost lost my mind over our three guests from East Africa: Nicolas and Victor from Malawi, and Goytom from Ethiopia. The grant money hasn’t cleared yet, so I’m fronting the travel expenses… but I’m in Togo and can’t receive telephone calls, so the credit card was denied. A true American Boy still at heart, I asked my mama…. somethings never change? We got the tickets Monday after spending an hour on WhatsApp with my mama with her on the phone with her credit card company. Victor’s passport was completed yesterday… but Bismark needed to get the visa agreement from Ghana’s immigration authority so they can board the plane for Accra… Remember two weeks ago, when they didn’t let me on the plane without it?… Bismark’s network was out… the visas came through as passengers started boarding. Wow.
I’ve been working on an improved heater for the ISECooker with the 5 kg of aluminum thermal storage. I’m thinking for two 100 W solar panels in series; 36 V. i explained the chain I made on Monday. I had an easy time soldering the diode junctions. I just cooked the chain to two solar panels in series, and when the temperature of the diodes rose to 200 C, I just painted the leads with solder. Interestingly, the solder will melt every time the heater is used, but the solder sticks to the twisted pair of wires. In order to make sure the junctions do not short to the aluminum heater plates, I hung the heater chain and painted the twisted wires with high temperature epoxy or RTV glue. Then, I glued the diodes and PTCs under an aluminum plate (that will be the burner under the pot, and placed the plate it into a larger dished piece of aluminum that will take the heat from the bottom of the heater up around the pot.
Salma and I poured a concrete counter top for an ISECooker facility, reinforcing it with steel screening, kind of like we did in Uganda. I used 1.5 parts sand for 1 part cement and 1/2 part water. We did two mixes, throwing out the first one… I used it to patch a section in the road… I’ll be interested to see how it turns out. After 2 hours, I began watering the counter top (and the road patches) and covered it with a large plastic sheet to keep it wet. Oh, to be a more patient man! It’s sitting there upside down, curing. Concrete cures over time, and reaches 90% of its maximum strength after 20 days…. but I want to see it NOW…. results? see three days ahead – that’s as long as I was willing to wait.
Wednesday, November 24, 2022
My birthday fell on Thanksgiving this year. But instead of turkey and cake, I prepared to welcome 25 creative colleagues from all across Africa. I couldn’t imagine a better way to celebrate these occasions on the same day… although I’d like to give Tekuru and Neil a big hug.
While I play with my experiments, Salma is feverishly busting out a few various of his standard ISECooker to use as a workshop demonstration model.
In the afternoon, we loaded all the workshop materials onto the deck for transportation by motor tricycle to the open area by the hotel where the workshop guests are staying. After we’d gotten the materials organized on the deck, the moving process went surprisingly fast… we got everything over there in two trips.
Friday, November 25, 2022
The first day of the workshop went off with a number of difficulties one might have expected. Many attendees thought it would take place in Lome, on the Ghana boarder, rather than an additional three-hour drive north to Atakpame in a public taxi. The Ghana team, crossed the boarder at noon, but beset with problems including two blown tires, landed at the hotel at 4:00 AM. The language barrier doubles the time for discussion and there is a wide range of technical understanding. Imagine discussing the subtleties of the solar panel I-V curve with someone who’s never seen V = I R. Also, I didn’t know until a few days ago that this was actually TWO workshops: ISECooking AND Aquaculture, led by Juid from Nigeria.
Yet, there was also so much that went right. We had 19 people on the first day. They split into three groups: two French and one English-speaking. It took a little while to establish a protocol where I say two or three sentences, and then Matt translates to French. After three or four sentences and a drawing, I pose a question or problem and give the groups 5 minutes to discuss the material and see if they can answer the question. We started only a half hour late, and we got through about half the material I’d expected… standard university work in my opinion. Attendees were exceedingly enthusiastic – especially considering some hadn’t slept. They gave me considerable feedback about how to work with them. For instance, they would not think about getting breakfast until everyone had introduced themselves.
In the evening, I stumbled into town looking for cooking materials with Team Ghana, as they are taking the first round for the ISECooking competition, and we gave them about $20 to buy food to cook. Wow… I realized the lack of variety… there was a half mile of roadside stands with bananas, pineapples, and root crops of all sorts and in all forms… fresh, dried, cooked. But a bell pepper? tomato? cooking oil? Of course it didn’t help that I was the only one with an active cell phone (because the others had just come from Ghana), and I’d left my phone behind… imagine trying to convey you wanted everything you need to cook chicken and vegetables to people who only speak French (and some local language as well). Finally a man took us down the road to a shop with dozens of chickens in cages… In the end, we managed.
Saturday, November 26, 2022
Another excruciating day… but today the magic happened! Salma presented his ISECooker model, and I provided a (possibly too?) long presentation/discussion about materials… rigidity, insulation,… and options. Then the questions started, “why don’t we do it this other way?”… and I presented that we don’t have an ISECooker that is ready for the market, and all variations should be on the table.
I’m so grateful for Matt, a big Togolese with a broad smile and eager to help… AND is fluent in English and French. He is at the center of every meaningful bilingual discussion… he knows the most about everyone’s life here!
Team Ghana set the bar high as they kicked off the ISECooking competition with spicy Ghanaian jollof rice with chicken… And they made a horrendous amount… filling both ISECookers twice. Beatrice, Ivette, and a helper came in the evening with an exquisite dinner of fried sweet potatoes, fish, and sautéed veggies… and no one could eat anything. We explained the situation and agreed to communicate in real time to anticipate what the need will be in future dinners.
And TODAY! I turned over my concrete counter top and it seems to look and function great.
Otoo and Bismark claim they can do the same with ceramics… fast and easy. AND they will make the entire outer casing from ceramics. Salma, who only uses plastic tubs consented the people devalue plastic, and that ceramics would be much better received in the Togo market.
After the afternoon aquaculture talk, I invited everyone to start building, setting off a creative flurry as everyone gets materials and argues over calculations of optimal resistance, heater options, and other variations.
Sunday, November 27, 2022
More of the same… extraordinary heat, and demanding activity… learning and arguing and laughing. I try to spend time with everyone, but I gravitate to Team Ghana as that’s the only group that speaks English.
Monday, November 28, 2022
We demonstrated the prototype we’ve been working on for the past week (but thinking about for the past month… year). Team Ghana put a 300 W heater on the 5 kg aluminum pot we had had casted (see Monday, Nov. 21), and built the insulated housing from the concrete cooktop I made earlier (see pictures from Saturday’s post). We heated it to 250 C in about an hour of sunlight, and dumped 1 kg (liter) of water in it. the contact sizzling made it hard to estimate exactly when exactly it started boiling, but by 2 seconds, there was a full boil, corresponding to about 100 kW… or about 100 times the power of a microwave oven. By the time we had emptied the water, about a quarter liter had boiled away. In an hour, the pot was back up to 250 C, and this time we dumped in a little more than 1 kg of veggies and cooking oil… stirring vigorously, we had a finished stir fry in 1 minutes…. sure, I wouldn’t believe me either. Please check out this short video, starring all the major players!
This demo coincided with my presentation/discussion about thermal storage. After the demo, I went back to the dry-erase board to finish the discussion…. but I stopped and said, “I just need to sit down and come to terms with what just happened.” I sat down, we took an hour break.
Doing some math:
- It takes a 100 W panel about an hour to bring a kg of water to a boil, corresponding to 0.1 kWh. Thus the power flow if this happens in 2 seconds is 100 * 3600 W*s / 2s = 180,000 W
- A microwave oven can boil a liter of water in what? About 5 minutes…. That’s 300 seconds. Thus, taking 1/100th that time means the aluminum storage delivered 100 times the power of a microwave oven.
- still hard to believe…. we can also calculate the same answer from a simple thermal flow model looking at the surface area and temperature difference. It takes about 0.1 kWh of energy to raise the temperature of 2.5 kg of aluminum from 100 C to 250 C. Our puck is 5 kg, so we had enough energy to actually boil 2 kg, although it might have been rather slow near the end, as the puck and the water would be near the same temperature. Estimating the average temperature difference between the center of the aluminum base and the water to be 150 C, I get about 50,000 W.
There’s a few other attributes about the ISECooker we prototyped – in particular, the concrete counter top.
- It’s strong.
- Even with the cookpot at 250 C, the outside of the plastic housing was not very warm, so it insulates pretty well.
- We spilled some food on it, and wiped it clean.
- While concrete is not recommended for kiln temperatures, concrete shows no sign of degradation below 400 C, so it should work fine for even high temperature thermal storage.
This concrete cooktop is thus way better than the materials we’ve used in the past: fiberglass fabric, Teflon fabric, metal.
On Thursday, Dec. 1, we had a SuperGroup meeting, Crevan asked how we could slow cook, like beans
for instance. I answered that this was the easy challenge: how to slow the transfer of thermal energy. We could put a pot inside the cookpot, and the metal metal interface would greatly reduce the heat flow. To slow it more, we could put something like a wire or a few pebbles between the two metal surfaces. However, this was only half the answer. The real answer in my opinion is that if you are slow cooking you should be using the beans themselves as thermal storage, by heating the beans during the day rather than heating the aluminium cookpot. This is why I proposed the “two seater” with a heater on one side and just an insulated berth on the other side.
After the workshop, I came to Salma’s home and filed an application for a provisional patent. I’ve had horrendous experiences with patents and it’s very unlikely I’ll follow this up… BUT for now, it explains the technology reasonably well.
Tuesday, November 29, 2022
We demonstrated the prototype
Wednesday, November 30, 2022
We ended the workshop last night and the flurry of activities and throughs slowly fades. The last day was alive with discussion and planning. There was also vibrant discord caused entirely by my interruptions, disagreements, and obstruction. And, as I reflect, it’s hard to know if my actions were a good idea, and what would have happened if I’d been complacent. I find myself balancing respect for people, the culture with a feeling of being responsible for the event and outcome. It beacons the questions: “is the process and result of the workshop (or anything else) my responsibility?” and “is it for me to judge what is a good process and result?”
I spoke with Matt again last night… he acknowledged that my interruptions and arguments surprised people. But what he said really surprised people, is that I reflected about the conflicts with the group, thanked them for being patient with my impatience, and asked how they felt. He said no one had ever seen anything like that. We reflected on Matt’s transformation in 5 days from an attendee to the translator, to the central communications person, to a group leader… and where/how our relationship will continue.
I’m terrified on the back of the motorcycle… every day. Are you kidding? The Chaos! but they wear helmets!… well, just the drivers.
I bought 3 bicycle helmets on the roadside for about $12, and …call me dorky, I’m wearing it. Ovoid was all about it. I gave him the smallest, synching down the straps. But he was just walking to school. His dad said he’d get in trouble wearing it… creating a stir with the other kids. He cried as Ivette took it off him.
Salma’s dad was killed in a motorcycle accident when Salma was 6. My dad left us when I was 56…. I suggested to Salma that a boy can learn a lot from his father in 50 years. I took one helmet and left the other two.
Returning to Lome
Otoo, always the innovator, set up a forced air stove in Little Ghana complete with a computer fan he found at the workshop. Team Ghana had built their own heater with a resistive coil Goytom brought from Ethiopia in a dish they casted from plaster of Paris.
~5:40 PM. I came back to the shop with some of our materials alone while Salma went to a meeting. A woman set up a boutique in front of the shop. Salma’s assistant, Victoria was at the shop, but left an hour ago, and now three guys came in asking all kinds of questions… in French. We figured it out, and Salma came back at 6:00. Salma and I went out for dinner… we had pizza! My first American food in 3 months. Commentary: OK. Salma had one piece and then we went to a local place for him to have some Togolese food.
Thursday, December 1, 2022
Salma and I continue to unpack the emotional production of the workshop, and learn. I’m too direct? In Togo, people are very uncomfortable when I start with the issue at hand?… Like when I get up and say, “We are going to talk about diodes and how they optimize power delivery from the solar panel.” So, how can we develop a functional education model? If you have to spend a half hour getting to the point, how can we openly share ideas? AND how do I not lose my fucking mind when I’m watching Salma manage something I think I’m also responsible for? Additionally, I feel kind of helpless with the language barrier around me and being out of my culture and area that I can navigate. Salma and I value each other and what we can accomplish working together, so we engage in the problem solving of our relationship. The conflict comes for me when have anxiety about managing something Salma is doing because I think it’s go badly. The anxiety builds. When it boils over I interrupt… obstruct. Although displeased, he responds patiently and later we discuss… there is some value to be gained from my interruption, but is there a better way? What we are trying now is that when I feel anxiety and want to manage, I immediately tell him before it gets too big. He can respond as he sees appropriate: tell me I’m out of line, let me manage, ask for time, reach a compromise, answer a question. We tried this out today!
We went to a designer, who might help improve the ISECooker aesthetics. The place was awful… next door was an unofficial gas station: someone purchased containers of gas and poured it into bottles for sale. I also hear a glass break… but there was an overwhelming stench of gasoline. It didn’t feel healthy. We spoke with the designer and Salma translated some for me. The designer worked in steel, and it seemed that this was not an appropriate match… but we had brought two solar panels and a few ISECookers in the taxi. At one point, I told Salma I was having that feeling and asked when we could talk or leave. He responded, “5 minutes.” I set my stop watch and after 5 minutes we left and talked about other options.
We returned the objects to Salma’s office, hashed out new ideas, and went out to visit an aluminum foundry. Our timing was perfect, as we arrived just before he poured. Also, Ben was the most interested to communicate with us. He invited us to watch the pour.
After he freed the pot, Ben put some fresh aluminium on the fire and we sat down and talked about making pots for the ISECooker.
Doris’s boutique is doing a good business. She’s sold both dresses in Wednesday’s picture, and she’s often engaged in hair weaves and pedicures…. men, women, and children. As night falls, the boutique is a social hot spot. Doris stays open until 9:00 PM. She doesn’t pay rent, and in fact, has some storage space with the landlord, and uses the front light on Salma’s electrical bill. I think she’s great for business…. I don’t know if the adjacent mosque agrees.
Friday, December 2, 2022
I woke up with an idea to make a heater plate that wrapped around the cookpot using two layers of aluminium: one taking heat from the top of the heater, and another taking heat from the bottom. If it works, we don’t need to have specialty pots made by Ben. Salma and I returned to the Lome central market for another grueling day of shopping. It was the Muslim holey day, Friday, so there was no boutique activity out front. Instead, in the afternoon, there were a mass of motorcycles as folks filled the mosque adjacent to Salma’s shop.
Saturday, December 3, 2022
We invite all to work with us in the shop developing the new ISECooker we are trying to build. Only Jacques comes, but it is fun. We are not so successful.
Around noon, Salma and I get a car to Lome market center to receive Flora and her friend, Molly, arriving from Lagos, Nigeria. We arrive a little early, so we walk the beach by a mass of boys bathing a pair of small ponies. I lament that I don’t have my bathing suit… and ask if it would be appropriate for me to swim in my boxers. Salma says no because he can’t swim, so he is unable to save me, and my safety is his responsibility. I explain that I am somewhere between a seal and porpoise as a marine mammal, and am more comfortable in the water than on land. He says he doesn’t believe me and he has to verify my safety. This, after being treated by him like a child for the past 10 days… and sometimes with good reason – making it all the more annoying. But something in this interaction triggered my inner asshole, or inner adolescent, and in a twinkling, I was running down the beach, and into the surf… and there was some waves! Out to the break, I actually caught a pretty good wave and body surfed it in, ran past the cheering boys, demanding a fist pump. So, we were a little late meeting Flora.
We had dinner at Matt-the-interpreter’s restaurant. They gave me the front half of the largest tilapia I’ve seen. It was the best piece of fish I’d ever tasted.
Sunday, December 4, 2022
We drive from Lome to Agou Nyogbo Agbédjikpo Salma’s family’s village (see arrows) nestled in a rather wet highland butting up onto the highest point in Togo, Moun Agou. We take a motorcycle excursion of farms to the north (red arrow in central map). The drive brought several innovations. The road from Agou to Notse is about 100 km of dirt. When we got to the intersection with the road to Lome, we were told that we’d take a 1.5 hour motocycle drive to Notse… no, thank you. There was an empty car there, and I suggested we take that car. Salma said he was going to Lome, I said he could go through Notse to Lome. Salma said he didn’t want to. I responded, “for $50 he’ll want to.” He said “no”, but didn’t drive away, there was much discussion… there always is. 5 minutes later Salma said he’d do it for 20,000 CFA (~ $33), and we’re in. I’m about to toss my pack in the “boot” and he raises the cost to 25,000 CFA, I go to the roadside and start flagging cars. The price reverted to 20,000 CFA. It would have been a lot cheaper and easier to drive through Lome, but we saved time.
Below from upper left to lower right: The trail was wet in parts and travel was sometimes difficult. Salma’s uncle has planted many palm oil trees on the land already, and there is also a forest of Teak. The palm oil fruit is a cluster of small balls that turn red when ripe. Salma’s uncle also planted mixed gardens with pineapple, tomatoes, and peppers. The termite mounds are impressive, but folks claim the termites destroy the crops.
Salma’s uncle has a farm higher on the mountain, where he grows coffee and cocoa in the understory of large jungle trees, as well as mangoes. He actually no longer works the garden or harvests himself at 62 years old. The northern regions are pretty try, getting closer to the Sahel… Sahara. The people of the northern regions then come down as migrant workers and work for people in these more fertile areas.
In the afternoon, we took a long long walk through the village, visiting Salma’s relatives. This was a surprise visit. No one knew we were coming. While this would be rude in the States, it’s really a considerate action here. Salma explained that if they’d known he was coming (for the first time in over a year), there’d be considerable protocol for everyone to deal with. Salma’s 86-year-old aunt was particularly thrilled… the blood orange was really sweet, and maybe more watery than what I’ve tasted in California.
So for the architectural engineer: Why do they go through such effort to support the (2nd story) flooring on bamboo rather than just anchor the horizontal boards at the ends on the concrete wall? I mean, in the end, the bamboo comes down anyway, and what is left to support the floor?
Answer from Cal Poly’s Architectural Engineer Craig Baltimore: “Basically, with the bamboo, there is zero deflection (in theory). To get similar stiffness would take very big members or members made of steel or aluminum, which I imagine all are not readily available.” They will lay a full slab with rebar across the exterior and interior walls, so the floor will be well supported.
Monday, December 5, 2022
Drive to Notse to see Novici, CEO of ARE Togo. I asked for something to drink (like water), Novici produced an array of fruit juices, fermented palm oil wine and distilled palm oil spirits – tastes like rum. Novici served each of us a shot after spilling a portion onto the ground “for the ancestors.” The spiced spirits were especially good… I took a dash over fresh pineapple.
We toured the facilities, visiting the classroom, nursery (germinating palm oil trees), food processing grounds and offices.
After we met with Novici, we took motorcycles back to the intersection to have dinner and spend the night in Atakpame with Beatrice, Ovoid and family. I was on the first motorcycle, and announced at the intersection in the melee that I needed four seats to Atakpame, and was scooped up by a car. When the others arrived, Salma rejected the car because it was too expensive. The response was hostile, as he claimed that he’d kicked several people out of his car to make room for us, but was demanding too much money. There is a fair price for the trip. We walked to find another car, while the driver followed us and yelled at Salma. Ultimately, we took the car…. I should make no deals unless I know all the details.
Above, I stand at the bamboo podium in the classroom, we are given dried, sweetened ginger, and the effluent from cassava processing flows through the floor outside to be fermented to biogas, and the cassava skin is fed to goats. Our enthusiastic reception, homecoming to Atakpame.
Tuesday, December 6, 2022
We hung low today and caught up on correspondence and this blog. We went for a short walk in the afternoon, when things cooled down… which involved a 20 minute ride on a motorcycle.
Wednesday, December 7, 2022
We left Atakpame in the morning, arriving at 11:00 at Novici’s ARE Togo, compound, after encountering traffic jam because they are working on a bridge.
After breakfast, before we left, Flora asked to speak with me outside, with Beatrice… “am I in trouble?” is always in the back of my mind. Beatrice requested through Flora that I help her come to the USA to work to bring money back to her family… for her son… Ovoid is particularly creative and she wants to give him every advantage. I responded that I will not be in the USA for a year, and I have no mechanism to bring her over to the USA. At the same time, I know her and think she’s wonderful and will keep that in mind as I go through the world. I thought maybe as a governess…
So, there you go, Americans: Beatrice is awesome and wants to meet you. Let me know if I can set you up!
We talked some more. It’s hard for me to imagine wanting to leave her little paradise and her family. She expressed that the financial hardships warrant such a trip, adding that she doesn’t really live with Salma… if he’s going to be in Lome, she might as well be in the States? Flora explained that this is not unusual: matrimony is an economic/cultural union between the two families dedicated to heritage propagation. But the children, they need her, and the freedom and lessons she provides? If she goes to the States, her mother will raise the kids in her rural community, growing up with all the cousins…. can’t be bad, no? Grandparents often raise the children while the parents work to bring in resources.
We had to wait in Notse for several hours as Novici had been delayed with car trouble, but we got underway and visited his piece of land near the boarder with Benin by the largest river in Togo… 500 km long.
A Chance Encounter: As we left the forest, we met a man who had just started a farming business after taking a two-week course with ARE Togo… in French. A bunch of kids came by the car… mostly girls. They stopped cold in their tracks and stared at us… and stared more. They were so lovely, I wanted to take their picture, but considered that inappropriate. But then, a couple of them busted out cell phones and started taking pictures and videos of us. I posed gladly, and then approached them for a team selfie… they scattered. I wanted to shake their hand… or that of the boy. Turns out, they were from the northern region… Sahel. They are Arab, Muslim… the girls shouldn’t be near men.
But they said they would have their pictures taken with Flora… she walked up to them and turned around. I did the same. Novici approached them and they scattered. It turns out that they told him that he’s black and should stay away. Racism? Hard to say as there had been difficulty between their tribes and the local Togolese when the northerners, traditionally nomadic herdsmen, settled in this area and their cattle damaged crops. After way too many pictures, it got old and they continued to the river to fetch water.
NPR did a piece about taking selfies with children in low income communities. It didn’t say if it was OK if they started it first… but “they started it first” sounds rather 5-year-old mentality. I don’t know if this was irresponsible of me. I’m sure some of you will tell me.
The chief is wearing the blue striped shirt. Flora reported that he is skinny because… due to the conflict with the tribes from the North, he was forced to flee for some time to Ghana. When we got back to his village, his son came over and sat next to me… far right, with mama.
Thursday, December 8, 2022
Everything is broken… everything, all the time. You go to turn on the water, and the knob screws off and falls on the ground. Every taxi has a broken window and mirrors. Today was only a moderate example (at first) with the broken window, dangling review mirror and broken visor… it actually HAD a visor, and a choking stench of gasoline. I periodically looked into the back seat to verify that the other three were still alive. If something works, it barely works… well, for a while. The broken belt. The tricycle was actually going the opposite direction when they saw us on the roadside… big smiles; they turned around and drove us 8 km to the next city…. ~$3.
Midday we arrived at Salma’s Lome shop; Flora and Molly are off to Benin.
Saturday, December 10, 2022
Yesterday, we began building the next prototype, with a concrete counter top and nested heater for the cookpot. I’m wishing I looked as good as Crevan in my wire mesh hat yesterday (see Sunday, Oct. 2, 2022, Uganda), and today, we laid the concrete, while outside, they prepare for the holiday business.
Sunday, December 11, 2022
We did a pretty poor job on the concrete ISECooker top. It’s way too thick and the flat surface is separated at the metal mesh. In the future, I will pin the outter edge of the mesh to the bottom of the plastic mold that defines the outer boundary. The operative words “good” and “enough” come to mind. It will work to test our prototype, and we can work on making it thinner in the future.
Similarly, the heated nest is coming along. The diodes need to be glued twice – the first time to make an electrically insulating layer along the back, and a second time to glue them to the aluminum surface… although I’ve HEARD that we can buy already-insulated flat diodes, allowing us to just glue once.
Some diodes glued down wonderfully well, and others somehow had no downward force on them… thus, we might burn them out, but we can surely compare the temperature of a well-thermally-anchored diode to that of a poorly-glued diode. After they were glued down, I found a pretty good way to connect them. The long-nose pliers grabs the ends of leads to adjacent diodes and twists them once. Then a regular pliers gently twists the wires around each other.. not too many times!
I cut the bottom part of the heated nest from 0.7 mm aluminum sheeting, and “drill” a hole in it with a screwdriver and long-nose pliers. We successfully complete and test the heating circuit, although the fading sunlight prevented us from getting very hot. We are running all the wires (heating and thermocouple) through the hole in the bottom, so they don’t interfere with the thermal contact to the cookpot.
Monday, December 12, 2022
My last full day in Togo…. Our first data set! We carefully ran all the power and thermocouple wires through the heated nest’s bottom plate, the concrete cooker top, and through the insulation. We have our first data set, showing that we are not adequately cooling the PTC. The PTC thermistors are way hotter than the diodes, and the aluminum sheets they are cemented to. When the PTCs hit their transition temperature, their resistance jumps by more than a factor of 10, essentially cutting off the power to the heater…. as indicated by the abrupt drop in current when the PTC temperature approaches the transition temperature of 220 C.
The array of 3 PTC thermistors in parallel has a resistance of about 2 Ohms. With a current of 8 Amps, we have a total power dissipation of P = I2R = 128 W, about 40 W per PTC…. near the max rating of 50 W, so the circuit has been designed well. Given the dimensions of the 2.5 cm x 2 cm, at this boundary with a perimeter of 9 cm, we’d expect a temperature gradient of about 24 K/cm, through the 0.7 mm thick aluminum. We’re getting a little more than that it seems, but it’s close. For power loads less than 150 W, the present arrangement is fine. However, in order to get higher power from the system, we need to more effectively conduct heat away from the PTCs.
One solution is to have a thicker aluminum top plate, but for now, we will try to better thermally connect the PTC to the bottom plate by using the white thermal RTV glue we buy from China. As the bottom plate is about 50 C cooler than the top plate, we can cool the PTCs by thermally connecting them the bottom plate. It’s a relief that we don’t have to worry about the diodes. They are relatively cool… well below the 300 C required to destroy them, so this is good.
We took a 2 hour break to glue the bottom plate to the PTC heaters. After gluing the bottom plate to the PTCs, I expect the top and bottom plates of the heated nest to be closer in temperature and the equilibrated power (as measured by current) should increase. As we waited for the glue to cure, a young man entered the shop speaking English… from Nigeria, EE student looking for experience during vacation times. Well, just our luck, because (damn it!) there are data to be taken and we need graduate students. Thus, we engaged Vivian and Segun in the valuable intellectual experience of running the experiment, allowing us to direct our attention… to other concerns of dire importance.
We see that after gluing the bottom of the PTC to the bottom plate, the two plates have near the same temperature – we had to alternate between the two plates (green and yellow) because the thermal data logger only takes 4 inputs, and the current equilibrated at close to 4 A, rather than just under 3 A without the PTC glued to the bottom plate.
Tuesday, December 13, 2022
Getting ready to return to Accra, and heating my tea on the ISECooker we prototyped yesterday… woke up thinking about more design ideas…. Heating up the ISECooker as the sun comes up, we see a more exaggerated transition to maximum temperature at about 1400 s. There is a series circuit including all the diodes (“hot diode” and “cold diode”) and the parallel array of three PTC thermistors. Initially, all the components are nearly the same temperature. However, as we approach the transition temperature, the PTC resistance increases, with two effects:
1) There is a reduction in current, reducing the power to the diodes.
2) The voltage drop across the PTCs increases, increasing the power dissipated in the PTCs until the extreme rise in resistance reduces the current enough to decrease the PTC power. Look for this feature in the previous graphs.
Afterwards, we made a quick resistive heater from a 4 Ohm segment of an electric range heating element we’d cemented to high-temperature leads a la ASEI protocol. Hooked to the four, two-hundred-Watt solar panels (in parallel/series), it drew about 13 amps across 37 V, provided close to 500 W. We initially fried some onions and then made a load of popcorn… everyone was eating it. The heater basin is made from two left over planes cut from 0.4 mm aluminium sheet. The temperature between the two sheets rose only moderately to 200 C. The aluminium sheets conducted heat to the cookpot from beneath the heating element, which is great: reducing the external temperature of the heated nest reduces both the demand on external components (insulation, wires, etc… remember polyester insulation melts at 260 C) as well as heat loss. The popcorn came out perfect, as there was a constant temperature of about 200 C, which is not enough to burn popcorn…. as long as it didn’t fall directly onto the heater. Although the ISECooker performed wonderfully, it is probably best to not have the resistive heating element exposed because it starts fires if any food falls on it… just like it does on an electric range in the States.