To the East Coast of Sardinia

On Thursday, we had several lectures, and then Professor Aldo came and talked to us about his research (and he brought homemade tiramisu--yum!). I found his research very interesting--his research was investigating into harvesting of hydrogen from anaerobic digestion. Hydrogen could be a potential fuel of the potential, so "freeing" the hydrogen is a focus of a lot of research groups across the country. 

The next day, we woke up bright and early and travelled to Nuoro, where we visited a costume museum of people in Sardinia. Our guide, Paula, talked about the culture and festivals that still prevail today, including one were people become their "opposite". For example, people that are shepherds then become the sheep. The picture below on the right exemplifies one of the costumes that people would wear on the days of the ceremonies. They would have 85 lbs of bells on the backs--ouch! I really enjoyed seeing the attire of people in the 1800's. The costumes were meticulously preserved, and the jewelry was very intricately designed. 

The festival outfits with one featuring a chiseled jawbone. 

Up next, we went to "The Church of Solitude" were Grazia Deladda was buried. She was a famous Sardinia author, and was the first French women to win the Nobel Peace Prize.  

The Church of Solitude and the impressive door to enter the church.

After visiting the Church of Solitude, we went and had lunch with the shepherds. The lunch consisted of yummy bread, salami, cheese, potatoes (which you had to eat with your hands!), and suckling pig. Afterwards, all the older women flocked around the guys in our group, demanding to take a photo with them! Next, the shepherds sang a song depicting a story (no idea what the story was about, it was all in Italian). 

Pictures featuring the suckling pigs and singing shepherds. 

Next, we went to Orgosolo, a city famous for it's political graffiti. The graffiti, or "murals" were amazing--some were painted in very fine detail.  

These pictures are some of the murals

Next, we arrived at our hotel. Our hotel was against the edge of some cliffs, so we climbed up one of the peaks, which was a steep hike consisting of several switch backs. At the end of the hike, you had to rock climb up some precarious rocks to the top; the view after climbing was spectacular. 

On the way up and the view.

The next day, we went on a boat cruise! We started of by visiting the monk seal cave, which were amazing--one of my favorite parts of the day. The cave is over 8 km long, but we just went into the section where the fresh water meets the salt water. Where these two different types of water conjoined was very picturesque. Next, we visited two difference beaches, both which were amazingly beautiful.

On the way over to the Monk Seal Caves

Monk Seal Caves

At the first beach we visited

At the second beach

This beach was truly spectacular. Couldn't stop taking photos.

On the way back to the mainland

On our free day, me and Divya went to the Archeology museum. This museum was very extensive--had artifacts from the Nuraghe period, the Punic period, the Phoenician period, and the Roman era in Sardinia. 

 

Some pottery and jewelry from the Archeology museum

 

Nuraghe statues and figurines

Next, we climbed the highest tower in the extensive Castello in Cagliari. The 360 degree views were amazing--you could see everything!

On top of the tower!

The view from the tower

Next, we went to the Kings palace. This was a small intricate building that features many elaborate rooms. There were several portraits of all the kings--very stately!

Main meeting room in the King's Palace

A beautiful church outside of the King's palace

Landfill Round 2

On Monday, we had a guest speaker come and talk to the class about mining waste and how to effectively use all components when mining. We learned that while mining, usually only 50% can be used as slabs, were you need to find alternative uses for the other 50%. This alternative methods include artificial reefs, furniture components, but mostly being used as crushed material for civil engineering (i.e. foundation layers) and in ceramic and glass industries. The guest speaker talked about different methods of extracting various chemicals, and the efficiency of each methods. He also had a very deep voice and reminded me of my freshman humanities teacher! 

The next day, we woke up bright and early to go to a Serdiana Landfill. This landfill has gone through quite the transformation since 2006 when it was denied the permit to continue accepting organic waste from the city. Now, only one landfill in Sardinia accepts organic waste. This landfill mainly accepts ash and bottom ash from incinerators. Since the 1990's, this landfill started extracting the biogas when it was still receiving MSW (one of the first landfills in Italy to do so). The electricity extracted from the biogas generates 3 MW. In their landfills, they have both horizontal and vertical gas collection vents.   

This picture above shows the leachate collection tanks, which collects the horizontal drainage system that is gravity feed from the landfill. This leachate is then sent to a waste water treatment plant. 

Here is a image of their current landfills. Because there is no organic waste, they will not be extracting biogas for electricity from this landfill. However, in their landfills that do extract biogas, they have 1 pump for the 3 biogas producing landfills. Within this system, there is a back up flare to burn off the methane gas. The landfill has a control system to measure the biogas to check the chemical composition. 

This is another view of their one active landfill. They are actually building this landfill on top of a closed MSW landfill. They do not have to cover this landfill daily though because there is no smell or odor to attract birds. 

Picture of the tractor moving and placing the ash. 

One and half miles away, there is the biogas converter. The pipes that run from the landfill are steel above ground, and PVC underground. The picture above shows the water vapor being separated from the biogas in a heat exchanger (the water will condense at the bottom). The gas is then sent directly to produce electricity from the excess heat. All the electricity generated is sold to the grid. Since they didn't receive the permit to continue accepting MSW, they built a solar farm. 

A little shout out to my next co-op for designing the system that converts the biogas to electricity!

On Thursday, we got the day off, so the dialogue group went to San Benedetto's market, one of the largest indoor markets in Europe. The amount of fresh vegetables, meats, cheese, bread, and wine made me wish I had a kitchen! I ended up buying a little wedge of parmesan (my favorite cheese), with great difficulty. I'm pretty sufficient ordering basic foods at restaurants, but when it comes to kilogram and unknown numbers spoken for prices, I was out of my element. I ended up with a lot more cherries and cheese then I needed! 

Later that day, me and my roommate went exploring in Cagliari, and saw the inside of this pretty church. 

The next day, we started off by Professor Onnis-Hayden giving us a lecture on waste characterization. This was before we had to enter a lab, and learn how to get a small sample of waste that was representative of the whole collection of waste. To do this, we would put the waste in a circle, divide it into quarters, and scoop alternating corners of the quarters into a bag, and then make a new circle with the remaining quarters left. We would then repeat this process until (theoretically) we got down to one gram of sample. However, this is a long and tedious process, so after we got the technique, we used machinery to generate a sample. Once we had the sample, we could look at the composition of the waste. We looked at ash, bottom ash, and the waste used for RDF. 

After lab, we had another lecture on waste collection, and then a guest speaker from a local waste collection came and answered all of our questions on collection. 

The next day, we woke up early to go to a Geomining park in the Sulcis region of Sardinia. The views were absolutely spectacular. 

We then explored the mining tunnels of Fort Flavia, a fort that sent out the precious metals to sea. Being trapped in a dark tunnel is definitely not my thing--I get very claustrophobic and would really not want to be a miner! I'm also paranoid of mining after watching a documentary on the Chilean miners that were trapped. 

Again, the views were amazing. 

Still beautiful! (Of course we had to climb on the rocks)

A cute little vespa! 

For our next stop, we went to a Nuraghe temple. It was interesting, as many different civilizations built temples on the same foundation. You could see all different types of stone where the archeologist had dug out the floor!

We finally headed to this adorable bed and breakfast for the night. 

 

The next day, we had a cooking class were we learned to make gnocchi! (Well, roll the gnocchi at least). You'd get a small piece of the dough, press it on this instrument to get the ridges, and then roll it off. The technique requires lots of practice, so none of us were very good at it! However, the pasta was amazing afterwards. 

 

At the villa, there were all sorts of animals, but the puppy was my clear favorite! Although the cat was really cute too. 

For the last part of excursion, we went to a beautiful beach with sand dunes (and of course I got burnt, despite the excess amount of sunscreen I put on). Tomorrow, we are presenting our first project, so I got to go work on that!

Trash Collection in Sardinia

For our photo assignment, we had to take pictures of the trash collection we see in Cagliari. Below is a collection of the pictures.

Common trash/recycling bins near the University of Cagliari. The brown bin is for organic waste collection and the green bin is for material collection.

This is representative of many of the trash cans in Cagliari.

A trash bin near University of Cagliari.

A Vetro bin, meaning glass in Italian. 

Several trash and recycling bins on the walk to the University of Cagliari.

Some trash outside of a gate.

The trash and recycling bins outside of our dorm.

A picture depicting where the trash goes after being collected.

Additional recycling and trash bins

A paper recycling bin.