Yes, Even Cleaning Sewage

July 1st 2013, 05:34 pm

Hello!

If you’re in the USA, you’re likely gearing up for a long 4th of July weekend… but not so fast! Here’s a quick update.

Electricity in the City of Light

Team OriginOil is in Paris, installing the latest version of our technology: EWS Waste.

Here’s a photo of the prototype on its way to Paris recently:

What is EWS?

EWS is short for our core technology, Electro Water Separation™. So this new system will clean waste water. OK, to be very clear, it’s human waste — sewage from toilets.

Remember our urban algae startup, Ennesys? Here’s that Reuters report on the launch last year of their building-mounted algae system.

Well, the whole point of growing algae around buildings is so that you can make energy and purify the water too!

Synergy of algae and waste

Here’s how it works:

Separate waste solids from liquid.
Sanitize liquid and turn it into nitrogen-rich water.
Feed algae with the water.
Algae gets turned into energy on-site.

That’s some very elegant synergy.

So far, Ennesys has the algae growing facilities, and harvests it using EWS. Now, we are installing EWS Waste to take care of steps 1-3.

This will complete the technology development of our urban algae technology — but more significantly, it will be our first system handling human waste, another vast and (very) water-intensive challenge.

The Sustainia 100

The whole idea is powerful enough to have made the Sustainia 100:

An annual guide to 100 innovative solutions from around the world that presents readily available projects, initiatives and technologies at the forefront of sustainable transformation.

Here’s the page from Sustainia 100. Click on the image to read it better. You can read the entire original online here.