poop power: Ghana turning human waste into energy
scrapes 2
Summary:
Fredrik Sunesson, a Swedish-born Sunesson moved to Ghana six years ago with World Vision Canada. Discovered that for the past 20 years, 150 dump trucks, each full of human waste from Ghana’s capital city, and has been unloaded there every day. Also that the sewage goes directly into the ocean, which is bad. So this is the process that he came up with. To get trucks to collect waste from around Accra — from public toilets, homes, hotels and businesses. Half is unloaded into holding tanks at Sunesson’s site, the rest is dumped into the ocean at Lavender Hill. Sunesson’s containers act as sieves, separating the soiled garbage that people flush down toilets from the liquid waste. The liquid waste is sent through a pump containing five liters of polymer for every 9,995 liters of water. The polymer “dewaters” the waste. Like a magnet, it separates the feces from the fluid. The filtered water is recycled back into the ocean, although potential partners are now testing it for fish farming and drinking water conversion. Following Sunesson, Prof. Kartik Chandran of New York’s Columbia University is creating biodiesel and other chemicals from fecal matter. He found a way to extract methane from sludge and chemically convert it to methanol. But Chandran’s method is anaerobic; no additional resources are needed to manipulate the sludge. The technology can fit in the basement of a multi-storey building, he says, reducing the need for large treatment plants.
Reflection:
I chose the article because I thought it was interesting how our waste products were so beneficial to us. How awesome that we can use something that is basically would be useless and harmful to the ecosystem would have the ability to be turned in fertilizer, biofuel and biodiesel, a few of many things that are useful to us. More people should do this because we need a place for our fecal maters to go anyways, might as well put it to good use. It's a win-win situation.
Fredrik Sunesson, a Swedish-born Sunesson moved to Ghana six years ago with World Vision Canada. Discovered that for the past 20 years, 150 dump trucks, each full of human waste from Ghana’s capital city, and has been unloaded there every day. Also that the sewage goes directly into the ocean, which is bad. So this is the process that he came up with. To get trucks to collect waste from around Accra — from public toilets, homes, hotels and businesses. Half is unloaded into holding tanks at Sunesson’s site, the rest is dumped into the ocean at Lavender Hill. Sunesson’s containers act as sieves, separating the soiled garbage that people flush down toilets from the liquid waste. The liquid waste is sent through a pump containing five liters of polymer for every 9,995 liters of water. The polymer “dewaters” the waste. Like a magnet, it separates the feces from the fluid. The filtered water is recycled back into the ocean, although potential partners are now testing it for fish farming and drinking water conversion. Following Sunesson, Prof. Kartik Chandran of New York’s Columbia University is creating biodiesel and other chemicals from fecal matter. He found a way to extract methane from sludge and chemically convert it to methanol. But Chandran’s method is anaerobic; no additional resources are needed to manipulate the sludge. The technology can fit in the basement of a multi-storey building, he says, reducing the need for large treatment plants.
Reflection:
I chose the article because I thought it was interesting how our waste products were so beneficial to us. How awesome that we can use something that is basically would be useless and harmful to the ecosystem would have the ability to be turned in fertilizer, biofuel and biodiesel, a few of many things that are useful to us. More people should do this because we need a place for our fecal maters to go anyways, might as well put it to good use. It's a win-win situation.