Report to a moderator

I wish to report the following item:

Answers:

a) To Alex Hanganu
The system of Mr. Gerber is what I call "technologic brute force". A lot of energy is necessary to dry the biomass before it can be pyrolised, and the balance is not always neutral, sometmes you need to put more energy to dry, than what you actually get from the pyrolysis gas. Pyrolysis works well with relatively dry biomass. I have experimented myself with the so called "wet pyrolysis", but the research was aborted by lack of fonds. The result is something similar to crude oil.
Returning to Mr. Gerber's system: sludge from conventional wastewater treatment plants usually contains high amount of N. By pyrolysing it , or by burning the pyrolysis gas, it is probable that NO2 will be formed. NO2 has somehow like 290 times more greehouse effect power than CO2 and causes acid rains. Hence the technological complexity of systems handling these type of process is high.
My system has a "zen" approach: a longer path but with minimal energy. The AFADS is a 4 stage biologic process. See more details in www.sustainable-technologies.eu . In few words: the anaerobic digestion eliminates organic matter and produces methane, but does not eliminate N. The aerobic/phytdepuration eliminate N from the water which has little organic matter. At the same time , CO2 is converted to O2 by photosynthesis. Since all is placed inside a greenhouse, inevitably, water evaporates by the solar heating and condenses against the glass walls and roof. It is recovered as pure water , 3% of teh input (not much but just for free!). All you need for this plant is low tech components, a small amount of electricity and a good deal of mathematic ability to model the system for each climate. The mathematical model is non-linear to some extent. As per my calculations, it can work from the Equator to nearly 60º latitude. The further step will be producing biohydrogen instead of biogas.


b) To Clara Mota
I have developed 3 different ranges of AFADS system: low range for farms, middle range for industries and upper range for landfills and municipal wastwater plants. Since the UASB digester placed inside the AFADS works well only with very diluted waters, in order to digest also solids a co-digester is needed. I am negotiating with a landfill site near Barcelona to test a new type of co-digester called biomimetic . The biomimetic digester consists of neoprene tubes from dismissed pneumatic boats (a tough environmental problem, there are more than 1000 in Barcelona's port, and the projects intends to solve also this problem). The tubes are connected like a gut (hence the name biomimetic digester). Solids are input from one end ,advance by a peristaltic movemnet system and exit from the other end. The organic matter is continuously wetted with water coming form the AFADS and the leachate is circulated through its UASB digester , so the methanogenic bacteria are not lost and the required digestion times are hence shorter.

Thanks to everybody for the interest shown in my project.
The problem of CO2 elimination is not technical , but political. If somebody paid or gave a discount on tax for eliminating CO2, be sure everybody would be installing photobioreactors. Since it it not so, the only solution is the AFADS, which relies on biogas production , boosted by the codigestion of the algae, to yield carbon neutral energy and clean water.

by Mario Rosato