The Alfa: A Cost-Efficient Cardboard Bike

SpiroFlo shares on Israeli inventor Izhar Gafni’s cardboard bike: the Alfa.  

When I heard Izhar Gafni had designed a cardboard bike, the first image I had in my head was that of a bike on fire—because let’s face it: setting stuff on fire always pops up first—then that of a bike warping in the rain. Well, turns out Gafni thought of that, as the bike is both fire- and waterproof.

Dubbed “the Alfa,” Gafni spent three years perfecting the design. First off, he needed to make it functional. In the same way that paper folded over several times can be quite strong, the bike—made mostly of cardboard folded over repeatedly—can hold up to 485 pounds. After getting basic functionality out of the way, Gafni needed to improve the bike’s looks, as early designs looked like a cardboard box on wheels. Finally, some comfort tweaks were clearly in order, as a cardboard seat doesn’t sound appealing at first thought.

With the design basics out the way, Gafni is now looking towards mass production. Depending on subsidies—and you know what a mess that can be—initial estimates could put the sales price as low as $9. If it does go big, I expect some parent to threaten their kid with, “Mouth off to me again and I shove your bike in a wood chipper.”

For now, you can learn more about the Alfa bike by watching the video below:

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Colin McKay Miller is the VP of Marketing for the SpiroFlo Holdings group of companies:

-SpiroFlo for residential hot water savings (delivered 35% faster with up to a 5% volume savings on every hot water outlet in the home) and industrial water purification (biofilm removal).

-Vortex Tools for extending the life of oil and gas wells (recovering up to 10 times more NGLs, reducing flowback startup times, replacing VRUs, eliminating paraffin and freezing in winter, etc.).

-Ecotech for cost-effective non-thermal drying (for biosolids, sugar beets, etc.) and safe movement of materials (including potash and soda ash).

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Pee Power

Ecotechnology, Ltd. (Ecotech Systems) reports on a generator that can convert urine to electricity.

While I don’t mean to make a lot of Ecotech posts about bodily functions (see here, here and here), as the non-thermal drying of biosolids is one of our key markets, that type of green slant gets placed in this area.

Also, while I still hope that one day I’ll be able to pee out a valuable fuel—minus the unfortunate side effects of a burning sensation and the likelihood of setting a toilet on fire once every three months—someone’s out there bridging the gap:

Today’s step of progress: Four African high school girls have developed a generator that turns a liter of urine into six hours of electricity.

Technology journalist Emil Protalinski broke down the process (source):

• Urine is put into an electrolytic cell, which cracks the urea into nitrogen, water, and hydrogen.
• The hydrogen goes into a water filter for purification, which then gets pushed into the gas cylinder.
• The gas cylinder pushes hydrogen into a cylinder of liquid borax, which is used to remove the moisture from the hydrogen gas.
• This purified hydrogen gas is pushed into the generator.

When asked for comment by NBC News, Gerardine Botte, the chemical engineer who invented the process, stated, “What these kids are doing is taking urea electrolysis and making hydrogen and then using that hydrogen to make electricity.” Although Botte said that the project is “empowering” for the students, she also swatted down some of the fanaticism over the project, stating, “It is a high school project, so don’t take it (so seriously).”

That’s the thing: Often times the green community is willing to excessively root for something before it’s had any real mass implementation. Throw in a couple of underdog factors like youth and it coming from a third world country—or really from anyone save big bad corporations in the western world—and some will cheer it more. Additionally, the details are a little slim as to what exactly gets fueled for six hours.

Here’s what we do know: Like biosolids, this human waste is a worldwide problem. Unlike biosolids, it gets somewhat of a free pass on the yuck factor. Regardless, this is a creative solution that—barring the impending doom of the apocalypse—will have raw material available. The biggest gimme is the wastewater treatment plants themselves. They’re already getting too much fuel delivered to them already; they should convert it to power their own facility.

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Colin McKay Miller is the VP of Marketing for the SpiroFlo Holdings group of companies:

-SpiroFlo for residential hot water savings (delivered 35% faster with up to a 5% volume savings on every hot water outlet in the home) and industrial water purification (biofilm removal).

-Vortex Tools for extending the life of oil and gas wells (recovering up to 10 times more NGLs, reducing flowback startup times, replacing VRUs, eliminating paraffin and freezing in winter, etc.).

-Ecotech for cost-effective non-thermal drying (for biosolids, sugar beets, etc.) and safe movement of materials (including potash and soda ash).

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Yes, Sweden Wants Your Trash

SpiroFlo looks at Sweden’s success in recycling and how that success has created a shortfall of trash for burnable waste.

Sweden: Land of neutral diplomacy, equal pay, and the top recyclers on earth (though it turns out that bit about them all being blonde haired and blue eyed is a myth).

While the rest of Europe wastes an average of 38% of their household trash in landfills, Sweden wastes only 4%, instead recycling or composting most of it. When that doesn’t happen, they also have high standards for their Waste-to-Energy program, where they burn trash to provide 20% of their district heating and electricity to 250,000 homes.

There’s just one problem: Sweden ran out of trash.

Sure, people are throwing things away every day, but Sweden is far enough behind that they’re importing trash from other countries. They’re looking for 800,000 tons a year from Europe. Right now, most of that comes from Norway; though Sweden is already eyeballing glorious trash piles in Bulgaria, Italy and Romania.

As much as I’d like to set up a catapult to fling trash at other countries, there are far more logical rules and tradeoffs:

• For Norway, exporting their excess trash is cheaper than burning it (and landills are running out of space).
• For Sweden, they get to return the toxic waste ashes (and the harder-to-treat-yet-easy-to-pollute dioxins) to Norway, thereby remaining all the more sparkly and clean.

Dioxins are nasty business (Agent Orange contained dioxins). Highly toxic, they’re established as a carcinogen that can mess with tooth and sexual development.

Yeah, not so sure if that trade is so great now…

However, some have already figured out that as the world continues to improve its recycling, the laws of supply and demand could push the value of trash up:

“Earlier this year, Catarina Ostlund, a senior advisor for the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, said that in the future, waste will be valued even more. ‘Maybe you could sell your waste because there will be a shortage of resources within the world,’ Ostlund said.”

As of 2010, the U.S. only recycled 34.1% of its trash. I’ll see you at the catapult.

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SpiroFlo wishes you all a happy Thanksgiving.

Colin McKay Miller is the VP of Marketing for the SpiroFlo Holdings group of companies:

-SpiroFlo for residential hot water savings (delivered 35% faster with up to a 5% volume savings on every hot water outlet in the home) and industrial water purification (biofilm removal).

-Vortex Tools for extending the life of oil and gas wells (recovering up to 10 times more NGLs, reducing flowback startup times, replacing VRUs, eliminating paraffin and freezing in winter, etc.).

-Ecotech for cost-effective non-thermal drying (for biosolids, sugar beets, etc.) and safe movement of materials (including potash and soda ash).

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Research Finds That Living Alone is Worse for the Environment

SpiroFlo looks at a recent journal that suggests those who live alone waste far more than those who live with others.

In today’s obvious news: Living alone is worse for the environment than if you live with 4+ people.

According to Environment, Development and Sustainability research,  in households of four or more people, each person produces 2,200 pounds of  waste annually, compared to 3,500 pounds of annual waste from those living alone. In addition, those living alone consume 38% more products, 42% more packaging, 55% more electricity and 61% more gas per capita than  four-person households.

It makes sense: When you live with others, you share your home, light bulbs, heating, etc. I’ll also assume that houses with four or more people involve more spouses (who share driving and energy/waste responsibilities) and kids (who don’t drive and have their waste/energy managed to a degree). I’ll also assume that those living alone are adults who have no one to share their waste/energy use and view convenience (not conservation) as a premium.

Also, when you live with others, they’ll shame you out of certain activities. No, you won’t eat that entire carton of ice cream. No, you won’t take apart your bike and roast a pig on the living room floor. No, you won’t watch “Weekend at Bernie’s 2.” And so on and so forth (all the way down to environmental issues). Caring what other people think has its perks.

Inevitably, it’s still going to depend on the people involved. A single person from the hardcore green crowd will be less wasteful than a guy with 16 brothers who’s got a predilection for gas guzzlers and nuclear weaponry. Maybe that will get a follow-up article.

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Colin McKay Miller is the Marketing Manager for the SpiroFlo Holdings group of companies:

-SpiroFlo for residential hot water savings (delivered 35% faster with up to a 5% volume savings on every hot water outlet in the home) and industrial water purification (biofilm removal).

-Vortex Tools for extending the life of oil and gas wells (recovering up to 10 times more NGLs, reducing flowback startup times, replacing VRUs, eliminating paraffin and freezing in winter, etc.).

-Ecotech for cost-effective non-thermal drying (for biosolids, sugar beets, etc.) and safe movement of materials (including potash and soda ash).

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Elementary Kids Urge Crayola to Recycle Plastic Markers

SpiroFlo looks at elementary kids in California who want Crayola to take back and recycle their used markers. 

Although it seems like many have gotten the memo to not use kids to heavily push their agenda, the hardcore green crowd still seems set on convincing families from the youngest on up. So when I came across this story about a “Green Team” of students from Sun Valley elementary school in San Rafael, California, petitioning Crayola to take back and recycle used markers, it was impossible not to hear the grown up agenda put into the kids’ mouths.

According to the online petition, the kids are “asking Crayola to make sure these markers don’t end up in our landfills, incinerators and oceans.”

Now you tell me, when was the last time you heard an elementary kid casually throw around the term “incinerators”? What I can believe is many of the kids saying that they like markers, but they don’t like the idea of hurting Earth.

Although the kids are (as of this date) close to nailing their goal of 75,000 signatures, according to MSNBC, Crayola has already stated that it is unlikely to change:

Crayola acknowledged the good intentions but said that, for now at least, there’s no practical way to take back and recycle entire markers.

“We value and encourage children to share their ideas and appreciate the suggestion that the students of Sun Valley brought to our attention,” Crayola spokeswoman Stacy Gabrielle told msnbc.com. “At this time, we do not have the facilities or a process that will enable us to offer a take back program.”

In describing Crayola’s environmental initiatives, Gabrielle did note that the caps on each marker can be recycled at centers that take polypropylene, one of the least recyclable plastics.

Inevitably, there is actually a legitimate issue buried beneath the kid manipulation tactics: Crayola makes 500 million markers each year — enough to circle (and perhaps doodle) the earth three times over. That’s an awful lot of waste from a product that is only partially recyclable as is.

I still don’t see this elementary school Green Team boycotting Crayola any time soon. Maybe by the time they get to middle school, Xcel Energy will have stopped exaggerating their savings numbers in their LivingWise kit, too, but I’m not holding my breath.

As for the Crayola issue, here’s the students video (I’ll admit my jealousy over the one girl’s birthday hat):

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Colin McKay Miller is the Marketing Manager for the SpiroFlo Holdings group of companies:

-SpiroFlo for residential hot water savings (delivered 35% faster with up to a 5% volume savings on every hot water outlet in the home) and industrial water purification (biofilm removal).

-Vortex Tools for extending the life of oil and gas wells (recovering up to 10 times more NGLs, reducing flowback startup times, replacing VRUs, eliminating paraffin and freezing in winter, etc.).

-Ecotech for cost-effective non-thermal drying (for biosolids, sugar beets, etc.) and safe movement of materials (including potash and soda ash).

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The Story Of Stuff Project: Bottled Water

SpiroFlo looks at a video on bottled water from the Story of Stuff Project (providing information “about the way we make, use and throw away Stuff”).

This video starts off obnoxiously heavy-handed, but it’s amusing and informative, especially on the notion of manufactured demand for bottled water. Try not to get distracted by Annie Leonard‘s nonstop hands:

 

Thoughts:

1. Although I’ve mentioned how 80-90% of bottles from bottled water are thrown away (since they actually shouldn’t be reused), the point about the mountains of water bottles in India is quite damning.
2. Can’t say I’ve ever been “seduced” by a mountain stream, but I get what she’s saying about bottled water ads pretending that bottled water has flowed down like liquid manna from God. (I once met a successful advertising executive who said the key to marketing is to make people feel dissatisfied.) The bogus statements from Nestle and PepsiCo don’t help. That said, I still don’t see people spitting out bottled water like the cartoon characters do.
3. Investing in public infrastructure is an interesting thought, but many recognize how bloated their spending is, too.
4. And then, of course, since environmentalists often can’t make a fair point with any form of subtlety, this gem comes out towards the end:  ”Carrying bottled water is on its way to being as cool as smoking while pregnant.”

Ugh. Sometimes there’s a reason why it’s only the choir you’re preaching to.

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Colin McKay Miller is the Marketing Manager for the SpiroFlo Holdings group of companies:

-SpiroFlo for residential hot water savings (delivered 35% faster with up to a 5% volume savings on every hot water outlet in the home) and industrial water purification (biofilm removal).

-Vortex Tools for extending the life of oil and gas wells (recovering up to 10 times more NGLs, reducing flowback startup times, replacing VRUs, eliminating paraffin and freezing in winter, etc.).

-Ecotech for cost-effective non-thermal drying (for biosolids, sugar beets, etc.) and safe movement of materials (including potash and soda ash).

Read Full Post »

Denver Zoo Launches Poo-Powered Vehicle

Ecotech Systems looks at the Denver Zoo’s new waste-powered rickshaw.

While I’ve said before that you can fuel a car with just about anything (regardless of how inefficient and unsustainable it is), the Denver Zoo is now running a motorized rickshaw on zoo waste. This zoo waste includes patron trash and yes, the monstrous amounts of animal feces they’ve got lying around. Now, instead of getting slung as ammunition from monkeys you dared showed your teeth to, this 20-year-old, three-wheeled ride was reconfigured with a $50,000 complex propulsion system to go a blazing 10 mph. It may not be American made (the rickshaw was imported from Thailand), but it’s American fueled.

tuk-tuk: the version that costs $50,000 less

Not impressed? What if I told you that despite its low speed, the tuk-tuk (a slang name for the rickshaw based on the noise it makes) went on a zoo tour, even to zoos out of state? No? What if I told you the patented propulsion system converts the waste into syngas — a fuel made mostly of carbon monoxide and hydrogen — which then generates electricity to fuel a battery to power the tuk-tuk? Nah, didn’t think so.

The thing is, even the Denver Zoo is aware that this crappy novelty doesn’t shine so bright as is. This poo-powered mobile is a merely a gimmick to promote the end goal of the technology: fuel for the 10-acre Toyota Elephant Passage that opens June 1st, 2012. According to their press release:

Denver Zoo is seeking LEED® certification for Toyota Elephant Passage at the platinum level, the highest level, from the U.S. Green Building Council. The program recognizes sustainable and green building practices. This includes the use of biomass gasification technology, which will convert more than 90 percent of the zoo’s waste into usable energy to power the exhibit, eliminating 1.5 million pounds of trash currently going to landfills annually. Other methods include recycling most of the 1.1 million gallons of water running through the exhibit, utilizing natural daylight to provide natural, clean light and retaining heat at lower elevations through the use of radiant heating floor systems.

Well, they’re not the first ones to believe that elephant dung is good business. That said, I still don’t see human waste alternate energy projects catching on any time soon. For whatever reason, animal waste still has less of a yuck factor. We’ve been trained to pick up dog poop and clean out cat litter boxes, but no one wants to take care of what some drunk guy just left in a potted plant of a bank lobby.

Anyway, according to the Denver Post, this process could wind up saving as much as $150,000 per year on hauling costs. However, as usual, the italicized part of that last sentence leads me to believe that the savings will be much lower, although as landfills become less of an option (due to less space and higher costs) these numbers might not be that far off.

In the mean time, enjoy this teeny Denver Post video.

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Colin McKay Miller is the Marketing Manager for the SpiroFlo Holdings group of companies:

-SpiroFlo for residential hot water savings (delivered 35% faster with up to a 5% volume savings on every hot water outlet in the home) and industrial water purification (biofilm removal).

-Vortex Tools for extending the life of oil and gas wells (recovering up to 10 times more NGLs, reducing flowback startup times, replacing VRUs, eliminating paraffin and freezing in winter, etc.).

-Ecotech for cost-effective non-thermal drying (for biosolids, sugar beets, etc.) and safe movement of materials (including potash and soda ash).

Read Full Post »

Bottled Water Factors

Although the perception of bottled water is shifting, SpiroFlo explores why its use is still on the rise. One of the main culprits: The perception of the safety of local groundwater.

I’m pretty sure by now you’ve gotten the memo: The plastic used for bottled water won’t decompose for a loooooong time, and since 80-90% of these bottles are thrown away, there’ll be enough of them sitting around in a landfill for your great, great  grandkids to not care that their great, great grandkids will still have them around then, too. Admittedly, when I hear that something won’t decompose for a thousand years, I wonder if we’ll have some amazing technology by then to take care of the problem. I mean, who needs to worry about recycling when you can create a black hole to suck it all away?

But then I snap out of my wishful thinking for apocalyptic technology and remember some basic “statistics” (I’ll get to the quote marks in a moment):

• Bottled water produces up to 1.5 million tons of plastic waste annually.
• The production of the plastic requires up to 47 million gallons of oil annually.

Of course, some of these numbers are inflated (as the term “up to” leaves a lot of possibility). Another source cites only 1.5 million gallons of annual oil use oil for bottled water production (enough to run 100,000 cars for a whole year), as opposed to 47 million. While that 47 million gallons number might include all the transportation costs, that 45.5 million gallon discrepancy is a little tough to swallow. Regardless:

• Bottled water use is still increasing 10% every year worldwide.
• The U.S. is still the number one consumer of bottled water.

The University of Idaho conducted a study on bottled water use  from 2004 to 2009, and while I don’t believe the sample size– 5,823 people from 21 states–is valid for an accurate picture of the entire U.S., one key part hints at one of the main reasons as to why bottled water use is on the rise: “Compared to people who believe their home drinking water is safe, those who do not trust their home drinking water are 4.8 times more likely to use bottled water as a primary source.”

I’m guessing now is a bad time to point out that while U.S. tap water falls under the purview of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 70% of bottled water never crosses state lines for sale, making it exempt from Food and Drug Administration (FDA) oversight. In essence, this makes U.S. tap water more regulated than bottled water. After that, we can get into the moral issue of charging for something that’s necessary for survival, and how consumers willingly paying for it probably doesn’t help.

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Colin McKay Miller is the Marketing Manager for the SpiroFlo Holdings group of companies:

-SpiroFlo for residential hot water savings (delivered 35% faster with up to a 5% volume savings on every hot water outlet in the home) and industrial water purification (biofilm removal).

-Vortex Tools for extending the life of oil and gas wells (recovering up to 10 times more NGLs, reducing flowback startup times, replacing VRUs, eliminating paraffin and freezing in winter, etc.).

-Ecotech for cost-effective non-thermal drying (for biosolids, sugar beets, etc.) and safe movement of materials (including potash and soda ash).

Read Full Post »

How Much Do We Really Recycle?

Last week, SpiroFlo had a graphic on why you should care about water conservation. This time, we’re looking at what we recycle, what we throw away, and how long it’ll take for all of it to decompose:

So this means skinny people are less wasteful? Something like that, right?

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Colin McKay Miller is the Marketing Manager for the SpiroFlo Holdings group of companies:

-SpiroFlo for residential hot water savings (delivered 35% faster with up to a 5% volume savings on every hot water outlet in the home) and industrial water purification (biofilm removal).

-Vortex Tools for extending the life of oil and gas wells (recovering up to 10 times more NGLs, reducing flowback startup times, replacing VRUs, eliminating paraffin and freezing in winter, etc.).

-Ecotech for cost-effective non-thermal drying (for biosolids, sugar beets, etc.) 

 

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Buzzwords: Biosolids 101

Ecotechnology, Ltd. (Ecotech Systems) analyzes the terms that make up the world—the cliché, the misunderstood, and the “don’t tell your mama” variety—and how they play in today’s society. Today’s word is the product of an image makeover, but when you find out the truth, you may wish you’d not eaten already.

What comes to mind when you think of biosolids?

If you’re like most people, the answer is nothing, and that blank slate is exactly what proponents of biosolids want you to have in mind, because the last name brought up all kinds of negative connotations. That term? Sewage sludge.

That’s right, biosolids are human fecal matter mixed with everything else that goes from a household water line to the wastewater treatment plant. Granted, biosolids are treated to varying degrees (and therefore changed), but sometimes you can’t shake the yuck factor. Thus far, it seems biosolids can’t get away from their origin to become the great sustainable energy resource some think they should be.

As long as wastewater plants treat water, biosolids are an inevitable byproduct. After much of the water is separated, you’re still left with a semi-solid material (containing fats, oil and greases [FOG] — matter that is difficult to treat and the number one source of drain/pipe clogs). The main solutions for biosolids disposal are landfill (which is getting less prevalent and more expensive as they get full), heat treatment (which goes up to $250/dry ton for incineration), non-heat treatment (lime, aerobic and anaerobic digesters — $85/dry ton and up, though drying biosolids at a rate much slower than heat) and land application. Regardless of what you do with the biosolids, however, some level of drying (and therefore some level of energy expenditure) is required.

Amusingly enough, although green supporters love recycling, even they often oppose biosolids use. Thing is though, biosolids are readily available, and unless something radically evolves in the human gastrointestinal tract, they’re going to continue to be around (everyone poops indeed). Fear not; biosolids are not allowed for use with food growth applications (wouldn’t that be creepy?* might actually be — see the comments), but huge, multi-year papers have concluded that biosolids are sustainable and can improve soil and crops. That said, for every 20-year pro-biosolids study I find, there are just as many touting the harmful effects.

In 2006, a U.S. E. coli outbreak from spinach spread over 26 states, causing 206 illnesses and three deaths. Though the incident didn’t involve biosolids — the outbreak was attributed to irrigation water contaminated by (untreated) cattle feces — the damaging effects gave critics a close example of what could happen with improper use.

(I’m still waiting for the news story of the angry hippie defecating on a wastewater treatment plant’s lawn, pouring chemicals on the lot and screaming, “Here’s your biosolids!” before getting hauled off in cuffs. Thus far, my Google searches have come up empty… What I did hear of, however, is when my boss visited a local biosolids plant and was warned that if he fell off the narrow plank high above the large, aerobic digester and into the muck, no one would come get him out.

Death by biosolids — not the way you want to go.)

These bare-hands-holding-biosolids pics are common, but not enough to overcome the yuck factor

Here are the main regulations involving biosolids: In 1993, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) introduced the Clean Water Act. Part 503 of this regulation authorized the continued use of biosolids on land while addressing the public’s concerns with the reuse of human waste. The greatest potential health risk is pathogens—a disease-producing agent linked to E. coli, hepatitis A, salmonella, Giardia and parasitic worms—carried in untreated sewage. That said, pathogens are also an issue with other organic fertilizers.

Part 503 defined different types of treated biosolids: Class A biosolids contain no detectable levels of pathogens and can be applied to land the same way as fertilizers. Class B biosolids are treated, but still have detectable levels of pathogens. (There are restrictions on their use and availability to the public.) The main reason for these different standards is the efficiency of the treatment process versus the amount of time available. As wastewater volumes increase, there is not enough time to treat to class A standards. Since the Clean Water Act, an even higher standard of biosolids has come about — class A EQ (exceptional quality) — requiring lower metal counts.

Despite what you think of biosolid use, with FOG still an issue that needs to be dealt with at any stage, drying biosolids is an essential part of the process, regardless of where they end up. As a result of that, Ecotechnology Ltd. (Ecotech Systems) launched its patented drying system into the biosolids market. With a low-grade heat (~150 F) and a patented air flow, Ecotech is able to non-thermally dry biosolids for less than $1/ton. Considering the above ranges of $85-$250/ton, this is the value savings the biosolids industry is looking for.

More on that another time. Enjoy your dinner.

*EDIT: Corrections, chatter and linked-up responses (oh my!) in the comments.

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Colin McKay Miller is the Marketing Manager for the SpiroFlo Holdings group of companies:

-SpiroFlo for residential hot water savings (delivered 35% faster with a 3.5% volume savings on every hot water outlet in the home) and industrial water purification (biofilm removal).

-Vortex Tools for extending the life of oil and gas wells (recovering up to 10 times more NGLs, reducing flowback startup times, replacing VRUs, eliminating paraffin and freezing in winter, etc.).

-Ecotech for cost-effective non-thermal drying (for biosolids, sugar beets, etc.) and safe movement of materials (including potash and soda ash).

Read Full Post »