Could human waste provide clean energy to your future home?

The microbes could be used to help create biogas and provide power and reduce reliance on fossil fuels

When it comes to human waste, most of us can’t flush it away fast enough, but according to many researchers, it can be used to produce biogas, which can in turn be used as a source of clean energy to reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

Researchers have been examining ways to turn sewage into power

Among those researchers includes one in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada, which has been working both in a laboratory and at a massive Lulu Island 24-acre sewage treatment plant.  The research team from the University of British Columbia’s Life Sciences Institute has created a cutting-edge mini sewage digesting unit seeded with the microbial populations naturally occurring and that digests the organic matter in human waste.

The process leaves a byproduct behind, which is biogas.  Biogas is mainly carbon dioxide, methane, and to a much smaller extent, other substances such as nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide, and oxygen. Biogas can then be processed for use as a type of clean energy.

“We’re creating the right environment for them to grow and thrive,” said Lillian Zaremba, an engineer and program manager for collaborative innovation at a regional authority, Metro Vancouver.  That authority serves 21 municipalities in the Lower Mainland of the Canadian province.

The clean energy program is functioning within the Lulu Island sewage plant

The facility treats the sewage flushed by about 220,000 homes in the area. There, microbes are used to process the waste and produce biogas.

Stephen Hallam is a microbiology professor from the university.  Hallam points to the microbes as the core of the potential for the project.

“These invisible denizens that live inside of this human constructed, built environment, actually doing all the work, ultimately, that produces the resource, the renewable resource from the waste,” said Hallam. “It’s like a circular assembly line. It’s an ecosystem.”

Extracting power from wastewater

This clean energy process is drawing attention because it is based on wastewater that would previously have to be treated and then sent out to sea.  Instead, it offers the opportunity to obtain additional benefits from the treatment component that has to be completed anyway.