Sludge Watch ==> Niagara Region - Shrinking Sludge in Greenhouse with Sludge 'Mole'

[maureen.reilly at sympatico.ca]

Sludgewatch Admin:

Hmmmm....this sounds exactly like the german 'sludge drying pig' from an 
earlier Sludge Watch post.
So the sludge will get dryer...but in Canada will the sun dry it down to 
less than 1,000 fecal coliform per gram and no salmonella?  That would be 
part of the Federal Fertilizer requirement if such a material were to be 
saleable.  It would have to maintain pathogen reduction through storage and 
delivery.  That would also be difficult.  If it is dry enough to maintain 
pathogen reduction, it may also be material that goes into spontaneous 
combustion...just like Toronto's unhappy sewage sludge pellets 
(remember..the ones the City turned out until the pelletizer burned down?  
Remember?  Both of Ontario's pelletizers burned down..both Toronto and 
Windsor).

.......................................................


The Standard
St. Catharines, Ontario

June 24, 2006

Region shrinking sludge in greenhouse

MATTHEW VAN DONGEN


It's a greenhouse specializing in shrinking, not growing.

It's nature-friendly, but certainly won't smell like flowers.


It's a hothouse full of sludge and it's poised to revolutionize how Niagara 
Region deals with the odoriferous after-math of sewage treatment.
Niagara will be the first region in Canada to pilot the Automated Solar 
Drying Project for Biosolids, said project manager Deanna Barrow.

"It's a simple technology, but it could save us money and give us an 
environmentally-friendly product," said Barrow. "That's big potential."

The premise is certainly simpler than the name.
A greenhouse will use the sun's energy to dry sewage sludge, the watery muck 
leftover at the Region's sewage treatment plants.

Evaporation will suck out most of the water, shrinking the overall volume of 
sludge needing disposal.
The nutrient-rich sludge is normally put on farmers' fields as fertilizer, 
Barrow said. It's a provincially-regulated practice.

But the optics - never mind the smell - of spreading sewage byproducts on 
fields have never been good.

The Region also produces too much sludge to handle cheaply, about 375,000 
cubic metres, or enough to fill 120 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

"At this point, we're trucking about half of it to landfills," Barrow said.
"That's not cost effective."

The solar project, by contrast, will reduce the volume of sludge and, 
therefore, the cost.
The Region smells other benefits.

For one, it's environmentally friendly. A sunlight-sucking greenhouse equals 
free, clean energy, Barrow noted.

Shrinking the amount of sludge radically reduces the number of fossil-fueled 
truck trips to a landfill.
It's also hi-tech and, supposedly, healthy.

The facility boasts a sludge-stirring robot, dubbed the "electric mole," 
that scurries around in the muck, exposing nasty bacteria to the air

The process is supposed to produce a virtually pathogen-free end product, 
Barrow said. In theory, the newly-dried, nutrient-rich sludge should be a 
marketable, safe fertilizer.

If the dried sludge passes federal safety tests, it could be used in public 
parks or even sold in pellet form to the agricultural community.

All these claims have yet to be tested in a Canadian climate, Barrow warned.
The technology was pioneered in Germany, but most users are in the U.S., 
Australia and South America.

And of course, there's the smell
.
Confined in the greenhouse with an industrious electric mole doing its 
thing, odour is expected to be minimal, Barrow said.

"From the outside, you're not supposed to be able to smell it at all," 
Barrow said. "That's one of the things we'll have to test."

To do that, the Region will set up an "odour panel" of committed folks to 
"sniff test" the facility.
The 12-by-30 metre greenhouse will be built at an existing sludge- holding 
facility in Niagara Falls on Garner Road.

To start, Barrow said the pilot project will process only a small percentage 
of the Region's sludge, around 3,600 cu-bic metres in a year.

That will give staff time to measure the facility's success and olfactory 
effects.
Niagara Region isn't the only level of government excited about the project. 
Half of the $700,000 cost is being cov-ered by a federal grant.

The province and Region of Waterloo are also pitching in, leaving Niagara to 
pay $212,000.
Construction is scheduled to begin in August.

mvandongen at stcatharinesstandard.ca