Dispose of your waste water
and save money doing it!
Date: 2004-05-02 09:31:00
Dispose of your waste water and save money doing
it!
SRC upbeat about biodigester septic tank
technology
By Petre Williams Observer staff reporter
Sunday, May 02, 2004
BARNETT... we have seen a resurgence of interest
in our BSTs
In the 1970s when the Germans introduced
biodigester septic tank (BST) technology - a
money-saving way to solve the acute waste water
disposal practices in Jamaica - it was an idea
whose time had not yet come.
Three decades later, the state-run Scientific
Research Council (SRC) is getting ready to embark
on an aggressive promotion of its biodigester
septic tank system, hoping to cash in on the many
spin-off benefits.
SRC executive director, Dr Audia Barnett, is
enthusiastic about the technology: ".You are
treating your waste water. You are getting gas,
which you can use for cooking. You are getting
water you can use for irrigation and you are
getting literally no waste," she told the
Sunday Observer.
"Theres practically no (need for)
maintenance. Its a system that my staff likes to
call set it and forget it. Its not like the septic
tank that you have to be pumping every now and
again," Barnett said.
The SRC is reporting that there has been renewed
interest in BSTs, as they are called. "We
have seen a resurgence... of interest in our BSTs,
both at the residential level and at the
industrial level," said Barnett.
Biodigester septic tanks under construction.
It is interest that Barnett hopes to take
advantage of over the next couple of months as her
agency tackles the islands capacity to properly
dispose of waste water while increasing the
financial earnings of the SRC.
"We are going to be going through a
significant promotion and marketing campaign this
year for our hotel industry and our developers to
sensitise them to the benefits of the anaerobic
(without air condition) technology," she
disclosed.
In addition, she said, the SRC marketers would
target players within the islands manufacturing
industry, stressing that it was increasingly
important to achieve greener production,
especially if they were to succeed in
international trade.
"We want the manufacturing industry, and
especially the food industry, to be able to put in
these units and enable us to be more green in our
production," she said. "When you are
exporting products, one of the criteria that the
international market is looking for is how green
is your production, how environmentally-friendly
it was produced. So, we feel we are on to a good
thing in terms of serving various people,"
Barnett continued.
The BST is an on-site sanitation unit that
utilises anaerobic technology that facilitates the
disposal of waste water without the use of oxygen.
The unit - which costs between $150,500 and $1.5
million to construct - disposes of toilet (black)
waste water, in addition to kitchen and bathroom (grey)
water, within a closed system.
Desmond Clarke, the chief public health inspector
for St James, said Jamaicans had a problem with
how they disposed of waste water, and he indicated
that the BST was among the alternatives open to
them to achieve improvements in this area.
"The truth of the matter is that if we manage
the thing properly it wouldn't be a problem.
But... we have waste coming from properties onto
the street... We are very concerned about
that," Clarke told the newspaper.
Clarke said that even when waste water was
contained within premises, which was desirable,
there was still the potential problem of
contaminating or polluting the ground water table,
depending on the permeability of the soil (how
rapidly water goes through it). This posed serious
health risks.
The choice, Clarke added, was either to hook up to
the municipal water supply system or to adopt a
biodigester septic tank. "The ideal thing is
to get it into the municipality waste system where
it can be properly harnessed and treated... Based
on information I have received on the biodigester,
we have a lot to gain when we go that route
because we solve one problem, and in the process,
save some money," argued the chief public
health inspector.
The real saving to households and businesses comes
with the elimination of the repeated maintenance
costs associated with traditional waste water
treatment methods like the septic tank soak-away
system commonly used. Further, there are a range
of bi-products like biogas that are produced.
Biogas can be used in place of the expensive
liquid petroleum gas (LPG).
Several countries in Europe and Latin America
utilise the technology for their
environmentally-friendly disposal of waste, and
for irrigation. In addition, the process generates
organic fertiliser and biogas by allowing
naturally occurring bacteria to break down solid
waste.
The potential for using the system in Jamaica is
huge, as there are only just over a dozen
biodigesters installed in the island, with several
reported success cases. These include the John
Bascoe Boys Home at Hatfield in Manchester. There,
food crops are produced from treated organic
waste, treated waste water is used for irrigation
and biogas is used to cook meals and for other
energy-related purposes.
The SRC has also applied the technology at its own
food technology unit where it has met with
success, Barnett said.
"We found that we were calling the septic
tank people once a month to empty it (our old
tank). Since we have put in our variation to the
BST, we have found that there is practically no
maintainance," she said.
Only recently, she said, one was constructed by
the SRC at the Caribbean Cement Company at
Rockfort in east Kingston.
Barnett, making a sales pitch, said: "At the
end of the day, there are a range of benefits to
be derived, in addition to the fact that the unit
itself is not difficult to construct. They are
built on site, depending on the space available
and the average size of the household or
commercial entity."
Source: The
Jamaica Observer
Copyright: The Jamaica Observer 2004
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