[Scpg] Innovator Finds Clever Way to Wash Water, Dean Cameron, (Australia Permie)

[Wesley Roe and Santa Barbara Permaculture Network]

Innovator Finds Clever Way to Wash Water
Cameron Stumbles
On Organic Method
To Treat Solid Waste

By JEREMY WAGSTAFF
SPECIAL TO THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
November 14, 2007

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119498201350991670.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Like many innovators, Dean Cameron has an 
eclectic background, a desire to prove the 
experts wrong and, most importantly, a readiness 
to see that when experiments go awry, you may be 
staring innovation in the face.

In the case of Mr. Cameron, winner of this year's 
Asian Innovation Awards for his Biowater 
water-treatment system, what was staring back was 
a flush toilet. Trying to produce methane by 
leeching organic acids from human waste, he 
couldn't understand why the process wasn't 
working. The process is anaerobic, meaning it 
excludes oxygen, and Mr. Cameron thought his 
system was airtight. The container was welded 
down; there was no oxygen leaking in as far as he 
could see; but there wasn't enough methane being 
produced to even combust.READ MORE




When he looked more closely, he found enough air 
embedded in the waste to keep the system 
partially aerobic. And while that prevented 
methane from being produced, Mr. Cameron says his 
interest was piqued by the aerobic organisms like 
beetles and fly larvae he observed.

"Whenever you find something surprising like 
that," he says, "it's worth thinking it over, 
because it's outside your expectation and 
therefore [there is] something really important you might learn from it."

Mr. Cameron, in his words, was ready for this 
moment. His father had been a civil engineer and 
earth mover, and Mr. Cameron had memories of his 
father putting in sewage and water systems. After 
leaving school, Mr. Cameron dabbled in theology 
before moving on to horticulture, botany and 
ecology and then environmental science. At one 
job, he realized he needed to study more about 
making things, and in the 1980s he says he 
invented a flashing LED bicycle light (though he didn't patent it).

After that, he developed an interest in 
permaculture -- artificial ecosystems aimed at 
satisfying the requirements of inhabitants 
through renewable resources -- and bought a place 
in Queensland where he could experiment. From 
there, he says, "evolved a chain of events, some 
of which were fortuitous." When the problem of 
methane production hit, he says, it was a matter 
of "chance favoring the prepared mind."

Instead of being discouraged, Mr. Cameron started 
asking himself what would happen if he went in 
the other direction, if he made the process even 
more aerobic by introducing worms and air. "The 
very first experiment I did along those lines 
worked brilliantly," he says, "and it was 
completely against the conventional wisdom that 
worms won't handle high moisture content." Mr. 
Cameron was on his way to creating "Biowater."

Mr. Cameron's water-treatment system moves human 
and other waste through a multilayered tank in a composting
process that uses worms, beetles and billions of 
microscopic organisms to break up the material 
naturally until water emerges at the bottom, 
ready to be used for irrigation. The system, Mr. 
Cameron says, uses 90% less energy than 
conventional sewage systems and costs half as much to run.

His company, Biolytix Water Pty. Ltd., has 
installed Biowater tanks in nearly 3,000 homes, 
projects and businesses across the Pacific and 
plans to launch in Asia, the U.S. and Europe next year.

The key to the system is the worms. What Mr. 
Cameron realized from his failed methane 
experiment was that the fastest decomposition was 
occurring not in water, as may be found in most 
conventional systems such as septic tanks, but in 
the moist world where soil meets water. He 
realized this breakdown happens much more quickly 
in the presence of air and soil organisms.

These organisms digest the waste that is pumped 
into the top of the tank and create humus, a 
living, self-regenerating matrix that looks like 
soil but is 90% water and serves as a filter. The 
treated water isn't suitable for drinking, but is 
good for soil since it contains "organic material 
that actually enhances the growth of the plant," Mr. Cameron says.

What is clever about this is that it turns a 
problem -- waste -- into a solution, by creating 
out of the waste a living organic filter that 
cleans the water. This organic mass is the 
"densest population of critters on the planet," 
Mr. Cameron says. "There are one billion 
organisms in one gram of humus. It's a staggering number."

These organisms vary little in type whether in 
the Scottish Highlands or the tropics. Some 
establish themselves naturally; others are 
introduced deliberately; but each serves a 
purpose: Creatures that have adapted to feeding 
on litter break up the larger material, 
dramatically increasing the waste's surface area 
and speeding decomposition. The worms, beetles 
and mites, meanwhile, drill tiny channels through 
the humus, allowing air to diffuse into the 
filter and preventing water from getting blocked.

Millions of tiny Proturans, Collembolans and 
beetle mites graze over the wet surface and suck 
or scrape up what Mr. Cameron calls "the 
microbial biofilm soup." This teeming mass 
continuously consumes and digests matter, which 
is eroded by the flowing waste water. Tiny 
organisms called rotifers and copepods, 
meanwhile, consume bacteria, cleaning out 
pathogens like salmonella. All this activity 
reduces the size of particles until it creates a humus.

The beauty is that all this can work on a very 
small scale, and cheaply. Mr. Cameron's company 
has developed a proof-of-concept version of the 
system that could cost as little as A$200 
(US$175) for four people. And the system uses 
little or no energy: The Biolytix BF6 model uses 
a five-watt air pump. That is less than it takes 
to pump out a septic tank once every five years. 
And some models require no power at all.

"The end point of what we're trying to do is to 
break down the material," Mr. Cameron says. "If 
you can avoid putting a whole lot of energy in, 
then that's what you should do."

Mr. Cameron sees waste treatment as historically 
flawed, almost from the start. "The way evolution 
of technology takes place," he says, "people look 
at what's happening and make incremental improvements."

Things started to go wrong, he says, during the 
Industrial Revolution. People early on realized 
that contact with sewage produced diseases, so 
they put drains underground. This, he says, was 
"the first step where engineers went wrong." 
Doing this deprived the waste of the oxygen that 
would break it down quickly -- 20% of air is 
oxygen, but there are only seven parts per 
million in water. When the volume got too big, it 
was too much for nature to replenish the oxygen 
in the water. "They never thought" about what 
they were doing, he says. "Their first step was just to take it away."

Ever since then, he says, incremental 
improvements have focused on better ways to pump 
oxygen into the water, a wasteful process that 
accounts for much of the 5% of a grid's 
electricity that is used to treat waste.

"It's completely unnecessary if you do what we've 
done," he says. "We've developed [the system] so 
[the aerobic process] works completely passively. 
The only energy needed is to pump out to 
irrigate." Mr. Cameron says it has been hard to 
convince an industry so entrenched in its methods 
and to capture the imagination of investors. But 
with 2.5 billion people without proper 
sanitation, he believes his vision, which began 
at the bottom of a toilet bowl, is coming true.

"Our technology," he says, "is the most adaptable 
technology to provide for that massive need."
* * *

THE AWARDS, IN THEIR 10TH YEAR
Gold : Innovator Finds Clever Way to Wash Water
• Silver Winner: Creating Empowerment Through Cow Dung
• Bronze Winner: Rickshaws Drive Entrepreneurship
• GES Winner Stifles Bollywood Piracy
• The Awards, in Their 10th Year

This year's winners of the Asian Innovation 
Awards are improving people's lives and the environment.

 From a system for converting wastewater into 
clean water for irrigating fruit trees, to a 
microcredit program that starts with cow manure 
and uses small generators to help families 
preserve fruits and vegetables, to one that 
finances rickshaw pullers in India, this year's 
winners represent the spirit of Asian innovation and creativity.

The Wall Street Journal Asia presents the awards 
in association with Global Entrepolis at Singapore. 
The international networking event is taking 
place in Singapore this week, with more than 
10,000 participants expected to attend 40 
business conferences, industry seminars and entrepreneur workshops.

The Asian Innovation Awards, now in their 10th 
year, honor individuals or companies that improve 
the quality of life or the environment, or boost 
productivity. This year, the Journal received a 
record 265 entries from 16 countries and 
territories, an increase of 18% over last year. 
They came from fields including medicine, 
biotechnology, transport, logistics, engineering, 
information technology and waste management. With 
so many strong entries, we decided this year to 
also give two honorable mentions.

The Journal also presents the Global 
Entrepolis at Singapore award, which honors an 
emerging company on the basis of innovation, 
technology and the commercial potential of its 
proposal. The Journal presents the GES Award in 
association with Singapore's Economic Development Board.

The Journal selected 12 finalists for the AIA 
awards and six for the single GES award. It then 
presented them to an independent panel of judges 
for selection of the winners. The winners were 
profiled in The Wall Street Journal Asia on Nov. 5.

The judges for the awards were:

Steven J. DeKrey, associate dean of the Hong Kong 
University of Science and Technology Business 
School and founding director of the Kellogg-HKUST Executive M.B.A. program.

Anil K. Gupta, Kasturbhai Lalbhai Chair professor 
of entrepreneurship at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

Rosemary Tan, chief executive officer of Veredus 
Laboratories Pte. Ltd. in Singapore, and winner 
of last year's Asian Innovation Awards Gold medal.

Kenny Tang, founder and chief executive officer 
of Oxbridge Capital Ltd., London.