A potential panacea for the development problems of power, and clean water supply to rural India (and indeed the whole world) is lean and green! Treatment of Waste water and power generation accomplished in one shot! Granted – the technology is still immature, costly (I’ll come to this a little later), and more work has to be done to substitute laboratory solutions for sewage water, field run-offs, industrial effluents, saline wells/marine water and the like; but the crux of the matter is that the technology is simple.
‘Simple’ almost always emerges triumphant.
First the image that’s worth most of the words in the article
However, this, unfortunately, is one of the hordes of new ideas that are sentenced never to bask in the light of day; condemned to remaining conceptual (or if lucky, as working laboratory prototypes) due to their “economic non-viability”. That, ladies and gentlemen is always a fault of our policies (in this case, those that deal with capital allocation for energy and resources); and NEVER that of the technology involved. Think about this for a minute.
If all supermarkets started levying a surcharge of Rs. 5/- for every plastic bag that you used to pack your shopping, then those cloth and jute bags (which cost about Rs. 50/- maximum) wouldn’t seem all that costly, inconvenient or remain as easily forgotten at home now, would they? Special Economic Zones (SEZs) - sharpening of political sabres, incrementing the backlog of the judiciary by a couple more PILs, sparks careening among the government, opposition and the people. Instead of burdening the state exchequer with the responsibility of covering the sops given to a new coal plant on an SEZ, subsidizing a newer, leaner, greener and grassroots technology provider is definitely a better path to both development, as well as tackling climate change. Best of all, being grassroots technologies, they involve those that they are going to help – inspiring them to care. The scientists and us engineers have been, are, and will do everything – squeezing every drop of ingenuity to come up with solutions to mop up what is the people’s and our mess; but it’s time that business and political establishments and ideologies gave us some backing.
The GREEN IDOL campaign is a concrete start – to equipping ourselves with the necessary tools to bring about change. A relatively conflict-free past, and the best environs the earth has to offer has probably seduced us, as a nation, into protecting ourselves, and our pale, blue, fragile and the most important of our interests through the drafting of impotent laws. 26/11 brought home the erstwhile far away struggles with terrorism. Thankfully, we seem to have woken up to that danger. But climate change won’t affect only Mumbai, Kashmir, India, the world, or even just humans. It’s targeting life itself. A la Bill Pullman, from the movie ‘Independence Day’ – “We’re fighting for our right to live, to exist.” WE need to adapt, not Earth, because we’re the only species on the planet with the power to save all others.
Our nation is evidence of people power – from the fight for independence, up until today – the largest functioning democracy in the world. The sons of India have always been big boys – but now it’s time to act tough as well. Join the campaign and petition for some measurable changes, and tougher legislation.
American humourist Frank McKinney Hubard said, ‘I haven’t heard of anybody who wants to stop living on account of the cost’, and he’d definitely be surprised at how close he is to being wrong.
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This was the fourth post I wrote for my blog at http://greenidol.in/blog/50422, as part of the Green Idol campaign. (The third post was just - "What you can do to minimise your adverse effect on the climate" - Reducing your vehicles' carbon footprint - http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Reduce_your_vehicle%27s_carbon_footprint )
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Just in case you’re not able to access the link
ReplyDeletePlugging into the power of sewage
- 19:00, 10 March 2004 by Celeste Biever , NEW SCIENTIST
The waste you flush down the toilet could one day power the lights in your home. So say researchers at Pennsylvania State University who last week revealed they have developed an electricity generator fuelled by sewage.
Even better, the device breaks down the harmful organic matter as it generates the electricity, so it does the job of a sewage-treatment plant at the same time. Penn State's microbial fuel cell (MFC) harnesses chemical techniques similar to those the body uses to break down food - but diverts the electrons liberated in the reactions to produce electrical energy.
"There are extraordinary benefits if this technology can be made to work," comments Bruce Rittmann, an environmental engineer at Northwestern University in Illinois.
Many developing countries urgently need sewage processing plants, for example, but they are prohibitively expensive, largely because they use so much power. Offsetting this cost by producing electricity at the same time could make all the difference, says Bruce Logan, who led the development team at Penn State.
Slurry of bacteria
Sewage contains a slurry of bacteria and undigested food, consisting of organic matter such as carbohydrates, proteins and lipids. The bacteria found in sewage treatment works use enzymes to oxidise organic matter, in a process that releases electrons.
Normally the electrons power respiratory reactions in the bacterial cells, and are eventually combined with oxygen molecules. However, by depriving the bacteria of oxygen on one side of the MFC, the electrons can be wrested from them and used to power a circuit.
The MFC comprises a sealed 15-centimetre-long can with a central cathode rod surrounded by a proton exchange membrane (PEM), which is permeable only to protons. Eight anodes are arranged around the cathode (see graphic).
Bacteria cluster around the anodes and break down the organic waste as it is pumped in, releasing electrons and protons. With no oxygen to help mop up the electrons, the bacteria's enzymes transfer them to the anodes, while the protons migrate through the water to the central cathode.
Polarised molecules on the PEM encourage the protons to pass through to the cathode. There they combine with oxygen from the air and electrons from the cathode to produce water. It this transfer of electrons at the electrodes that sets up the voltage between them, enabling the cell to power an external circuit.
Glucose solutions
The Penn State team's device is the first MFC that is specifically designed to produce electricity by processing human waste. Previous designs have only run on glucose solutions.
As yet his design is only producing a tenth of what he calculates its potential power output could be. Even so, if scaled up, this system would produce 51 kilowatts on the waste from 100,000 people, Logan says. He hopes to be able to boost its efficiency by increasing the surface area of the anodes or by finding more efficient anode material.
Microbiologist Derek Lovley of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst believes the most elegant aspect of Logan's MFC is its single-chamber design, which makes it very easy to scale up. Most glucose-powered MFCs comprise two anode and cathode chambers, separated by a PEM.
However, Lovley believes generating power from waste water on a large scale is a long way off: "One way to think of this technology is that it is currently at the state of development that solar power was 20 to 30 years ago - the principle has been shown, but there is a lot of work to do before this is widely used."