April Blog
May 3, 2024
As I write this month’s news letter I’m sitting in a bus heading from Project Canaan to the Johannesburg airport. This was not a planned
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(Ross MacPherson is our Africa co-Field Director in Eswatini, and also head of maintenance at Project Canaan, the mission base operated by our ministry partner Heart for Africa. Each month Ross will be giving up updates on his work with our students, and also how things are progressing for the Lusito Training Center, the new trade school being built at Project Canaan.)
The Ross Report, September 2023
Sanibonani! Greetings from Lusito Mechanic Shop.
It has been another busy month here at Project Canaan where we are trying to get the vehicles into a service rotation before the hot weather hits us full blast.
The addition of Dudley Venner as head of procurement has made a huge difference in our ability to source parts in a timely fashion. I am extremely thankful for his input into our sourcing as it removes a huge amount of time that I was spending on the phone and on websites looking for parts that never seemed to be there. His connections with outside suppliers is proving to be very valuable. Dudley is also in charge of the kitchen and is responsible for the fantastic celebration cakes that we share.
The new shop is progressing very well and we are looking forward to completion by end of November. The trusses went up over the body shop and mechanical shop and have arrived for the classroom and reception area. The floors are being poured in all areas and walls are being plastered as an army of workers attack this building each day.
Our online training has taken a bit of a hit due to unstable internet slowing down our delivery, but there is a promise of StarLink coming here by the end of the year. Currently we are able to print off the lessons and at least use some of the material even if it is just us talking about what we have seen on a day to day basis and how it relates.
The guys are great to work with as a team, and to problem-solve issues that arise. The favourite saying is “Make a plan!” which is something that we can all do when faced with a problem.
The housing project is looking good for an end of November completion as well, with floors and ring beam poured, trusses up and windows going in. Laurie has been picking finishes from a distance of thirteen thousand kilometres, just so we have a woman’s touch. She is still trying to sell our Canadian home and get on over here but the timing is in God’s hands not ours so we rest knowing that His ways are Higher and His plans are Greater.
We have been working on a project of making Black Diesel which is a way of using waste motor oil as a fuel for diesel engines. The subject of Black Diesel came up one evening around a meal with Arlyn Koopmans and Rhynardt Steenkamp as they were discussing the high cost of diesel fuel and what could be done to make driving less expensive. Biodiesel was discussed and considered but then one of these men struck on using waste oil as a fuel. We had just drained about one hundred liters of contaminated hydraulic fluid that we needed to dispose of, so……
After much research into how to do it, they tasked me to do some testing on filtration and mixing of waste oil and diesel.
We use a substantial amount of diesel fuel and we generate a large amount of waste oil. Together this could be a win-win. The average heavy equipment piece – depending on how hard it is being driven – can burn between fifteen to forty liters per hour according to industry standards, and passenger vehicles average between seven to twelve litres per hundred kilometres under normal driving conditions.
After some testing and filtering we settled on an eighty percent waste/twenty percent virgin mixture. This has been running in the JMC bakkie for three weeks with no adverse reactions. The drivers say starting is good, power is good, smoke is non-existent and that they really can’t tell they are using black diesel.
The next step would be to get a centrifuge, which is being researched, and filter the oil better so that it could be adapted to common rail diesel systems used on newer vehicles, and also to filter out waste vegetable oil and create Bio diesel.
Looking forward to testing more vehicles and creating a cheaper fuel source!
Ross MacPherson, Africa Co-Field Director
Mercy Tech Mission
As I write this month’s news letter I’m sitting in a bus heading from Project Canaan to the Johannesburg airport. This was not a planned
Most days the Lusito shop is running at full capacity! What a blessing this fantastic facility is to our work here at Project Canaan. Days
We all know how fast lightning hits, then is over. So did February here. In a flash we are already into March moving forward