14 June 9, 2011TH E E VA NG E L I S T

GRADUATION 2011

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Serving the Capital District for over 57 Years

BY ANGELA CAVES T A F F W R I T E R

After weeks of hearing powertools buzz through steel in anAlbany backyard last summer,Katie Picchione’s neighborsgrew slightly irritated. Whenshe moved her science projectto the garage, its rotten-eggstench irritated her family, too.

Even Katie, a junior at theAcademy of the Holy Names inAlbany, sometimes questionedher homemade biogas digester:Was she using the right materi-als? Would her hundreds ofhours of manual labor, designwork and supply shopping payoff? Was it worth it to heat thedigester in the garage, to venti-late the area so methane gasdidn’t seep into the house andto “feed” her new “pet” everyday?

“There were times when I wasready to turn it off,” she told TheEvangelist.

Then, at 11 p.m. on a schoolnight, the digester’s flame finallylit: Katie had successfully creat-ed usable energy out of foodscraps and lawn clippings.

“The fact that it worked was

really fulfilling,” Katie said excit-edly.

This spring, her experimentwon first place at the GreaterCapital Region Science andEngineering Fair. She alsoreceived a $40,000 scholarshipto attend Rensselaer Polytech-nic Institute in Troy, a cash prize,a magazine subscription and atrip to the Intel InternationalScience and Engineering Fair inLos Angeles.

The trip was “phenomenal,”she said. “You could walk aroundand hear people speaking fivedifferent languages. Everybody[there] has this universal fascina-tion with science. It made meactually see my science researchin a different way.”

Katie thinks she won the localcompetition “because I’m soexcited about it — and the factthat I can bring it down to a levelthat my [nine-year-old] brothercould understand.”

Katie’s passion for biogasbloomed after she attended atalk featuring Gregory Bell, con-sultant to BioEnergies of theAmericas in Albany. Mr. Belllater became her mentor andpartner.

“On a community scale, Ithink biogas is a very real possi-bility,” Katie said, explaining thatcafeteria leftovers, landfill gasand grass clippings can fuel cars.“We have the potential to use theenergy all around us — andinstead of digging for fossil fuels,we can just use the things wehave.”

Mr. Bell has never actuallybuilt a digester. “It was really heridea,” he said. “I never really hadin mind to do a backyard versionof this anywhere.”

According to Mr. Bell, thereare 4,500 digesters in Germany,3,500 in other European coun-tries and only 150 in America.Seventeen of those are locatedin New York State.

Katie’s research showed thatfamilies in developing countriesuse digesters to heat homes andcook food, but the gas isn’t fullycompressed and stored, and themethane sometimes causesexplosions.

“I wasn’t able to find a safe wayin my research, so I set out tofind a safe way,” she explained.

Katie applied for a permitfrom the Department ofEnvironmental Conservation

and consulted with engineersabout safety before starting con-struction.

The project exceeded simplymaking a digester. Katie createdfilters to clean corrosive impuri-ties found in raw biogas andbuilt compression and storagesystems to make the contraptionsafe and simple enough to useon small scales.

She’s not done yet: She andMr. Bell will design and build anew digester that will be energy-independent and use materialsless vulnerable to corrosion.

The Picchiones attend AllSaints parish in Albany, whereKatie was recently confirmedand commissioned as a

eucharistic minister. She saysshe expresses her faith throughher environmental stewardship.

This summer, Katie will writecollege essays. She’s consideringRPI, but seems to favor OlinCollege of Engineering in Mass-achusetts.

She said she wants to be aninventor, “but since collegesdon’t offer that as a major, engi-neering will do pretty well. Iknow that wherever I’m sup-posed to be, whatever God hasin store for me, I’m going to endup there.”

(To view a video on Katie’sproject, see www.Facebook.com/evangelist.albany).

ENVIRONMENT

Biogas project wins prizes

KATIE AND HER biogas digester. Three out of the four scholarships awardedat the fair went to AHN students: Juniors Maura Desharnais and AislynDiRisio won $20,000 scholarships to Albany College of Pharmacy.