On Nov 30, 2011, at 5:49 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Harry Veeder <hveeder...@gmail.com> wrote:
Any thoughts how CF technology might affect city sewer services?
This is already being tried, but CF technology should make it even
more cost effective if excrement is processed close to its source
rather than conveyed through a vast system of underground pipes to a
central processing facility. There will be no point in rebuilding
aging sewer systems.
In chapter 13, I discuss an idea proposed by Arthur C. Clarke:
"Depolymerization machines may eventually be made fully automatic,
and reduced in size until they can be delivered in a single unit
that fits on the back of a truck. They might be mass-produced and
used for local sewage treatment in small communities. They would be
a great boon to Third World villages, where untreated sewage (human
and animal waste) is used for fertilizer, and drinking water and
rivers are heavily polluted. In the distant future, the plants may
be miniaturized until they are as small as an air-conditioning unit
or furnace, and they can be installed in the basements of houses
and apartment buildings. The toilet, shower, kitchen sink and
garbage disposal, and most trash will go down the drain into this
box, where the garbage and sewage would be treated immediately and
converted into pure water and a small volume of dry harmless
organic material, mostly carbon. The solid waste would
automatically be packaged in sealed plastic bags that are collected
and recycled once a month."
By the way, I think the best method of ensuring clean water now is
to pass a law saying that people in cities and factories much drink
their own waste water. That is to say, when they draw water from a
river, they must place the inlet pipe downstream of the outlet. I
believe this was first done in the UK.
I discussed desalination in the book. Actually, for many cities it
would make more sense to simply recycle waste water in a closed loop.
- Jed
When I worked for a big oil company in Anchorage I met an engineer
there who designed a water free toilet for use on the North Slope of
Alaska. It worked by boiling off everything and then heating the
remainder to incandescence, burning off everything oxidizable. It
worked well, and produced very little residue. I don't know if it is
still in use or not. It was definitely energy intensive, but the
Prudhoe oil fields were not short on energy.
Best regards,
Horace Heffner
http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
