Making every toilet flush count—creating electricity from sewage

Treating sewage takes a lot of energy, but in the face of rising energy costs, creating electricity from wastewater is a near-ideal renewable energy option.

“Wastewater operators are asking themselves how to maximise energy recovery from wastewater treatment as well as minimising energy consumption in the treatment process,” Dr Greenfield says.

Dr Greenfield, chair of the Australian Nuclear Science & Technology Organisation, is addressing an international water congress in Korea next week about achieving improved sustainabilty in the urban water sector.

He says the two most valuable products from wastewater treatment are energy and clean water.

“As the price of energy goes up, that will encourage wastewater treatment operators to become more energy efficient and look for more efficient ways of generating energy from the wastewater processing.”

Sewage, or wastewater, needs to be cleaned of chemicals, organic matter, bacteria and viruses—and part of the process to achieve this clean-up can be used to generate electricity, fuel, heat, biogas and more.

Treatment plant operators are increasingly interested in using methane generated from wastewater to power their plants and, in some cases, feed electricity back to the grid.

The main drivers for mining energy from wastewater are rising electricity costs and, similarly, carbon prices in countries that have pollution taxes in place such as Europe and Australia. Modern cities are also turning to greener design and innovation.

Dr Greenfield points out that, with time, “there will be different ways of collecting water—recycled, rainwater, stormwater, desalination, reservoirs—and a myriad of uses—industry, agriculture, developing and old areas,” he says.

“We will end up with much more complex systems than we currently have, and see great advances in technology. Operators will certainly want to recover energy, because energy costs are only going to go one way in future.”

The International Water Association’s World Water Congress and Exhibition, in Busan (Korea), runs 16–21 September 2012.
 

ENDS

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For interview and/or photos:
Dr Paul Greenfield, Chair of the Australian Nuclear Science & Technology Organisation; International Water Centre, Queensland, Australia
Phone: +61 7 3014 0200 Email: p.greenfield@watercentre.org

For media assistance:
Alison Binney, Econnect Communication, Australia
Phone: +61 7 3846 7111 Mobile: +61 (0)428 900 450 Email: alison@econnect.com.au
Jenni Metcalfe, Econnect Communication, Australia
Phone: +61 7 3846 7111 Mobile: +61 (0)408 551 866 Email: jenni@econnect.com.au


Further information:
IWA Congress & Exhibition website: http://www.iwa2012busan.org/
Event hashtag #iwa2012busan

 


Major sponsors of the IWA World Water Congress & Exhibition are:

• SUEZ ENVIRONNEMENT
• Xylem
• Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction
• Samsung Engineering
• The Ministry of Environment
• Busan Metropolitan City
• GS E&C Corporation
• Veolia Water

http://www.wsscc.org/media/wash-media-awards/2011-2012

The WASH Media Awards initiative recognizes and supports the crucial role of the media in raising awareness of the importance of water, sanitation, and hygiene services.

It aims to help improve access to these services by having a positive influence on politicians, business persons, civil society representatives, and individual citizens.

The initiative, first launched in 2002, is open to journalists who write or broadcast original investigative reports on WASH issues.

WSSCC seeks to use the WASH Media Awards as part of the broader goals of fostering sustainable relations with journalists in developing and developed nations, and increasing media coverage of WASH issues. The WASH Media Awards, now in their third edition, also intend to provide recognition to those journalists who make public awareness of water, sanitation and hygiene, and their related development issues a priority.
Journalists have a perfect profile for WASH advocates since they communicate messages in a concrete way which reflects the 'WASH on the ground' reality. Therefore, a media network is a valuable asset to further create a valued platform for advocacy and influence in the water supply and sanitation sectors.

The winners from the first three editions of the Awards have taken up their newly acquired role as WASH advocates and became involved in global and regional WASH related events. In June 2011, WSSCC will announce the details for the next round of competition. Journalists interested in being informed about the competition should join the WSSCC press list via the "Media" tab in the menu above.

Water Hackathon

'WaterHackathon' to Find Technology Solutions to Global Water Challenges

WASHINGTON, October 20, 2011 - Computer programmers, designers, and other information technology specialists convened by the World Bank Group and technology partners at NASA, Google, Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, and Yahoo! will compete for 48 hours in cities around the world this weekend to develop new application software, or apps, that solve water and sanitation challenges in developing countries.

Water is essential to sustain life and economic development, yet the number of people without access to clean water and sanitation remains daunting.

- 2.6 billion people lack access to sanitation

- Nearly one billion live without access to safe drinking water

Lack of safe water and adequate sanitation is the worlds single largest cause of illness, responsible for two million deaths a year thats four people every minute most of them children. More children die of diarrhea than of AIDs, malaria, and TB combined.

The first ever global WaterHackathon follows the model set by Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK), a partnership among these same organizations, in which subject matter experts and local stakeholders submit problem definitions which are then tackled by volunteer software developers who use the latest technology tools to create innovative solutions. The first RHoK event in November 2009 gave rise to applications such as Im Ok! and Tweak the Tweet, which were used in emergency response operations following the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

The sustainable management of water resources has also acquired a new urgency in the face of a global population expected to reach 9 billion by 2050, increased food demands, and increased hydrological variability caused by climate change.

- Irrigation produces around half of the world's food and accounts for about three quarters of water withdrawals worldwide.

- Water scarcity will affect at least 30% of the world's population in 2050.

- Climate change exacerbates flood and drought challenges as it makes water resources harder to manage, and increases risk and uncertainty.

WaterHackathon will take place simultaneously in nine locations, including, among others, Bangalore, Lagos, Lima, Nairobi, and Washington, DC.

The general public is invited to follow the event live on Twitter at #waterhack.

Water is at the heart of some of the world's most pressing development challenges. At the intersection of technology and consumer-related data, we are seeing new opportunities to create and effectively use non-traditional solutions. Are we really taking full advantage of now-ubiquitous mobile phones, mobile internet access, and social media tools to transform inclusion, citizen participation, and transparency in water management and services? Are we using open data to full practical advantage? It is in search of such non-traditional solutions that the World Bank is launching the WaterHackathon," said Jose Luis Irigoyen, World Bank Director for Transport, Water, and Information and Communication Technologies.

"WaterHackathon represents a natural intersection of two focus areas of NASA's Open Government Initiative - open data and open source," said Nicholas Skytland, Program Manager of NASA's Open Government Initiative. "This collaborative project enables us to provide data resources to the water sector and the developer community as they create applications that address some of the world's most urgent water crises."

"HP is committed to applying our technology, expertise, and dedicated volunteers to support and contribute to the prosperity of people and communities around the world," said Marlon Evans, Office of Global Social Innovation, Hewlett-Packard Company. "We are proud to partner with the World Bank and Random Hacks of Kindness in their efforts to solve todays water problems."

"Microsoft is delighted to see the growth and continuation of the Random Hacks of Kindness model," said Patrick Svenburg, Director of Developer & Platform Evangelism at Microsoft. "The chance to bring together subject matter experts around water and sanitation with software developers from all around the world is a unique opportunity to create open solutions that will directly affect the quality of life of people, perhaps even safe lives."

"We are very excited to see the Water Hackathon taking off as one of the first Random Hacks of Kindness Community Events," said Christiaan Adams, a Developer Advocate with Google.org's Crisis Response Team.

Among the speakers at WaterHackathon is Jeff Martin, founder and CEO of Tribal Brands and Tribal Technologies, which created the first intelligent database behind mobile applications that predicts consumer behaviors and interactions. "Today, far more of the world's population has access to a cell signal than safe drinking water," he said. "What we need now is a marriage of digital convergence to solve this problem - where mobile phones and apps help bridge this incomprehensible gap in a way desktop computers never did."

Contacts:

In Washington: Karolina Ordon, +1 (202) 458-5971, kordon@worldbank.org

Christopher Walsh, (202) 473-4594, cwalsh@worldbank.org;

For Broadcast Requests: Natalia Cieslik, (202) 458-9369, ncieslik@worldbank.org

For more information, please visit: www.WaterHackathon.org

Visit us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/worldbank

Be updated via Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/wspworldbank

For our YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/watersanitation