{"id":1274,"date":"2022-10-13T10:10:04","date_gmt":"2022-10-13T07:10:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gdc.co.ke\/blog\/?p=1274"},"modified":"2023-04-12T09:02:24","modified_gmt":"2023-04-12T06:02:24","slug":"djiboutians-came-calling-and-were-wowed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gdc.co.ke\/blog\/djiboutians-came-calling-and-were-wowed\/","title":{"rendered":"Djiboutians came calling and were wowed"},"content":{"rendered":"

“I want to be a great driller,” Aden Kanil sparks charmingly. “My dream is to see Djibouti producing a lot of geothermal power like you guys in Kenya,” he enthuses. We’re at the Menengai Geothermal Project’s drilling<\/a> rig simulator. One of the 20 trainees from Djibouti, Kanil is here to hone his skills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the simulator room, he sits appropriately at the console. This is a semi-circle table full of knobs and
control buttons. Kanil’s colleagues sit at the back of the console. They follow pre-recorded instructions keenly, taking notes here and there. He presses a button, and then the speakers on either side of a seven-foot-high 3D screen boom: “Error. The command you have entered is incorrect…”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His colleagues look at each other. Startled. The GDC instructor fixes the error. Kanil smiles. His colleagues chuckle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It’s thrilling. It’s like real,” Kanil flashes the “V” sign after his moment of fame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Kenya is really advanced,” he says. “No need to go far for training. You have it all. And by the way, your instructors are friendly and sharp.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the geophysics<\/a> lab, we catch up with Ibado Moustapha. She’s aggressively jotting as Joseph Gichira, the GDC geophysics<\/a> trainer explains a point about earth resistivity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since its inception, GDC has cut a niche as the go-to training centre on geothermal technology. The company’s cutting-edge infrastructure, like the venerated rig simulator and geoscientific labs, are peerless. Add pedigree expertise and you have an unparalleled centre of geothermal excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a hot July day, we’re at the Direct Use<\/a> project site. This place is like a Cathedral of sorts. A visit to Menengai is incomplete without a pilgrimage here. It’s the place where Eng. Martha Mburu and her team are mining direct heat from geothermal steam<\/a> for various enterprises like heating greenhouses, drying cereals and milk pasteurisation. It’s GDC’s propensity of stretching the limits of imagination that is now set to give Kenya its first truly geothermal resource<\/a> heat park. On fruition, the heat park will transform how we produce and consume heat. But that’s a story for another day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Save for the occasional chirp of a bird, today Menengai is quiet. Still. Sultry. The sky is vivid blue. The sprawling geothermal complex is punctuated by towering drilling<\/a> rigs that dwarf shrubs and thickets. A geothermal well gushes silverish steam<\/a> that swirls and then vanishes up in the sapphire. Beneath our feet is a reservoir copious with geothermal steam<\/a>, the elixir, trapped between hot volcanic rocks. It’s the super-heated steam<\/a> that GDC is masterfully tapping and promises to power the country’s economy and help to tame a climate going amok. The caldera<\/a> is entwined by a network of gigantic green pipelines
that collect steam<\/a> from wells to power plants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At about 1400 hours, a GDC truck rolls into the compound. Some Djibouti students (all female) disembark chaperoned by GDC’s Esther Nyambura.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“They need to see what we’re doing here,” Esther offers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ladies are curious. They probe. They snap. At the heat exchanger<\/a>, they’re clearly hypnotised. This is a
bath where hot geothermal fluid is channelled. Inside the bath is an aluminium coil that fresh cold water runs through. The hot geothermal water heats the freshwater inside the coil. The heated fresh water is then circulated for heating various projects. The heat exchanger<\/a> is the nerve centre of operations here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ladies hold their hands aloft to feel the heat in the steam<\/a>. “It’s like a jacuzzi,” one shouts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it’s the geothermal milk pasteuriser that thrills the ladies most. Japheth Towett and the team have just completed pasteurising milk as the Djiboutians arrive. It explains the “Wow! Wow!” and “Oohs,” from the group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“All the milk was processed by geothermal heat?” marvels Isnino Moussa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Yes,” Japheth chips in proudly. “You can take a sip,” he offers. Moussa grabs a glass to tap from the pasteuriser. Full, she sips, pauses, then sips again savouring every drop. “Aah! nice, very nice,” she beams delightfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Story originally published in Steam Edition 15<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since its inception, GDC has cut a niche as the to-go-to training centre on geothermal technology. The company’s cutting-edge infrastructure, like the venerated rig simulator and geoscientific labs, are peerless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1278,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,181],"tags":[93,100,16],"class_list":["post-1274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-contributions","category-steam","tag-djibouti","tag-geothermal-development-company","tag-menengai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gdc.co.ke\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gdc.co.ke\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gdc.co.ke\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gdc.co.ke\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gdc.co.ke\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1274"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.gdc.co.ke\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1279,"href":"https:\/\/www.gdc.co.ke\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1274\/revisions\/1279"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gdc.co.ke\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gdc.co.ke\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gdc.co.ke\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gdc.co.ke\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}