Green Generation is the name of our engineering senior design team at Calvin College in Grand Rapids Michigan. The focus of our project in the 2006-2007 school year is to design a power system for Asia International University a Christian University under development in Siem Reap Cambodia.

The goal of this project is to design a source of electrical power for the university that is simple sustainable and environmentally friendly while minimizing dependance on outside resources. Since rice is such a major part of the Cambodian economy our team has decided to determine the feasibility of producing power from the unused rice straw.

In order to make this process as environmentally beneficial as possible the rice straw will be converted to methane through anaerobic digestion and the methane will be used to produce power. Not only does this process release fewer particulate into the air improving the health of the locals, the digestion process breaks down the plant matter in such a way as to make its nutrients more readily available to soil microbes resulting in a high quality fertilizer.

Finally by removing stalks from the field we minimize the release of methane that naturally occurs in the anaerobic conditions of the flooded rice paddies. This is beneficial because methane is at least ten times more effective at increasing global warming than the carbon dioxide that is formed after it is combusted.