Using treated and disinfected wastewater to grow biofuel plants on barren lands

The discharge of treated and disinfected wastewater from municipal and private treatment plants to receiving waters, be they groundwater or surface waters, is increasingly unacceptable due to the presence of man-made chemicals and pharmaceuticals.  The use of wastewater to grow valuable plants safely for biofuels is the highest use for the nutrients, organics, and water in what used to be called ‘wastewater’.  This new Green Paradigm combines pollution prevention, economic savings, and energy production in one innovative concept.

Content Table

A new model is offered

This is the new Green Paradigm©, a model that calls for using the resource productively instead of improving disposal.  Growing away our wastewater can reduce or eliminate the purchase of imported fossil natural gas and petroleum within the next few growing seasons by growing oils, algae as well as short-rotation crops such as shrub willows, grains and grasses that can be processed to replace imported petroleum (Del Porto 2005 and 2007).

Too valuable to waste

Wastewater's content of nutrients, organics, and a large volume of water makes it an ideal and valuable resource for growing plants.  If those plants are not to be eaten, then the wastewater does not have to be treated to potable quality.  These point to an opportunity, as laws require cleaner discharges to lakes, rivers, oceans and for indirect potable reuse

No upgrading treatment plants

We can avoid upgrading to advanced tertiary treatment of wastewater if we direct wastewater treated only to advanced primary or secondary standards to nearby barren lands to grow non-edible oil plants for refinery or cellulosic grasses for ethanol.

Use barren land unfit for human food agriculture

Instead of investing billions of dollars in wastewater pollution prevention and remediation, we can invest in the distribution system necessary to transport wastewater from existing treatment plants and animal feedlots to arid farmlands, deserts, and polluted brownfields to grow biologically based petroleum alternatives on land marginal for food crops.  Because the nutrients and organics will be used by energy plants, the wastewater does not have to be treated to tertiary standards.  There are hundreds of millions of acres of unusable land in the world that could be farmed to grow petroleum alternatives crops with the water and nutrients in wastewater.  The Government owned barren land managed by The Bureau of Land Management has more than 258 million acres that could be used to grow biofuels with wastewater from nearby treatment plants.  (BLM 2009)

Wastewater-to-Biomass economics

A study analyzing the costs and benefits of harvesting willow for biomass grown with wastewater established that the production costs were negative when costs were off-set by the economic value of environmental services (no conventional wastewater treatment, no fertilizer or irrigation water was required) were compared to the costs associated with willow cultivation.  (Borjesson, P. and Goran, B., 2006)

Extrapolating from that study, we estimate that the life-cycle cost of this ecological approach will be low compared to conventional water reuse technology.  The primary reason is that the ecological approach has few parts that need to be replaced unlike more complex systems such as membrane filtration technology.  In addition, other issues that lower the life-cycle costs (Steinfeld and Del Porto, 2008) include (Hopkinson, 2007):

Factoring in the avoided costs of pollution prevention, such as pumping holding tanks where the land cannot be used for soil absorption systems, is the most significant savings factor

The harvesting of solar energy from greenhouses through the sale of marketable plants for uses such as energy production may offset some or all of the operation and maintenance costs.  Why is it important to use treated and disinfected sewage to grow biofuels?  There is a growing need to protect receiving waters, mitigate effects on the economy, promote energy independence, reduce air pollution from power plants, minimize fertilizer use (through maximum efficiency), create new jobs for farmers, and substitute plant derived chemicals for petroleum derived chemicals.  For example:

Avoided Environmental Impacts

Wastewater from Las Vegas, Nevada is currently being dumped into Lake Mead, Nevada, which flows into the Colorado River and then through Phoenix, Arizona;, San Diego, California and on to Mexico.  Lake Mead and the Colorado River are drinking water sources for millions of people.  The Mohave Daily News (2008) recently wrote “the Clean Water Coalition proposed (and is now planning) to dump more than 180 million gallons of wastewater each day to the bottom of Lake Mead near Hoover Dam.  The Clean Water Coalition consists of the Clark County Water Reclamation District and the cities of Las Vegas and Henderson.  The population of Las Vegas is projected to be more than 3.1 million by 2035.  By 2050, more than 400 million gallons of wastewater could be dumped each day into Lake Mead from Las Vegas.  Arguments against the project claim the treated wastewater containing pharmaceutical drugs would go through Hoover Dam and contaminate the (Colorado) river downstream”.

In 2005, a preliminary estimate suggested that the wastewater from Reno and Las Vegas Nevada could produce more than 10 million barrels of palm oil per year.  It would be piped to nearby barren lands instead of disposed into sensitive surface waters.  (Del Porto, 2005).  Based on the Las Vegas population projections, it should yield significantly more biofuel by the year 2050.

Farmers are in need of new crops to replace tobacco and other crops that compete with foreign imports.  Many farmers are paid via government subsidies to not grow crops at all.  Growing petroleum alternatives creates more jobs in areas where employment is needed without threatening existing farming communities (Karg, 2000).

Obstacles to Biomass Agriculture

One of the obstacles to growing petroleum alternatives is the cost of fertilizer, which requires a natural gas and petroleum to produce.  According to John Sawyer, associate professor of agronomy at Iowa State University, the majority of nitrogen fertilizer sold in the Midwest is either anhydrous ammonia, or products made from anhydrous ammonia (urea, ammonium nitrate, and urea-ammonium nitrate solutions) (Sawyer 2005).  Natural gas is a major component of ammonia production for both energy and supply of hydrogen (H) in ammonia (NH3).  Therefore, the ammonia production cost is closely tied to the price of natural gas.  Natural gas accounts for more than 85 percent of the total ammonia production cost.  When the price of natural gas increased in 2004, the cost of nitrogen fertilizer also increased dramatically (Sawyer, 2005).  Treated and disinfected wastewater has the necessary fertilizers, nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, and micronutrients to grow the biofuel crops on barren land.

Salt Accumulation and Removal

There has been concern that when wastewater is evapo-transpired, salts, especially sodium chloride, will remain in the bed and become toxic (O’Leary, 1984).  To resolve this problem we specify the inclusion of excretive halophytes in the planting plan.  Excretive halophytes transport the sodium and chloride ions to special glands in the leaves and there excrete the salt as a solid.  Removing the leaves has the effect of mining the salt from the bed.  Ion excretors include:

Saltwater cord grass (Spartina), Amshot grass (Echinochloa stagnina), Salt bush (Atriplex), Salt cedar (Tamarix L.), Suaeda vera Forsk (Suaeda fruticosa), Goosefoot (Chenopodium spp), Summer Cyprus (Kochia spp), Saltwort (Salicornia spp), Russian Thistle (Salsola spp), Sea Blite (Suaeda spp).

Leaf area matters

While certain plants such as Salix spp (Willow) have a reputation for large ET rates, typically it is the leaf area index plus heat and humidity that are the primary variables in evapotranspiration.  When large plants such as willows, poplars, and bamboo are used, the aim is to move as much water through them as possible so that they take up as much of the contaminants as possible.  In 1991 the  reported that a single large weeping willow tree transpired over 19 cubic meters of water (5,000 gallons) on a hot summer day.  One hectare of the herbaceous halophyte plant Spartina alterniflora (saltwater cord grass) evapotranspires up to 80 cubic meters (21,000 gallons) of water per day.  (Henchman et al, 1998).

Background

Engineers have not yet utilized large trees in these systems but rather shrubs and vines as most of these systems to date have been residential or commercial.  Engineers are presently designing a system to productively utilize the filtrate from a biogas facility in Canada. One crop that will be used is the willow shrub Salix viminalis L., as it has been very successful in Denmark removing (evapo-transpiring) all the sewage from many residences (Gregersen, 2001 and Brix (2004).  The harvested willow will be chipped and used for fuel.

Recycling is not enough

Arid regions are increasingly looking to wastewater recycling as the answer to a secure water supply.  While recycling wastewater is an important step in the conservation of fresh water, it is technologically complex, expensive, and unacceptable to many communities.  As with desalinization, it is expensive and energy intensive to remove vast amounts of minute particles and bacteria from enormous volumes of wastewater so that it is safe for direct human contact.  The practice of centrally collecting combined effluents—including excreta, toxics, pharmaceuticals and heavy metals—from a wide variety of sources, and then treating them with end-of-pipe solutions with advanced ultra filtration will not be feasible for many cities, especially those in developing countries.  This approach has evolved to avoid the complexity of using many smaller, more local and effluent-specific strategies.  Yet nature’s model shows us that local complexity is the best way to manage resources.  The principle objective of this technology is the utilization of water and nutrients by plants i.e. bio-mimicry.  (Del Porto, 2006).

Resources

This article was authored by:

David Del Porto

Principal and senior designer of Ecological Engineering Group, which specializes in advanced and ecological wastewater systems.

Since 1972, David Del Porto has been a practitioner and advocate of building integrated water efficiency and pollution prevention using the ecological paradigm as a template.
He developed the patented technology for the on-site utilization of wastewater for growing valuable plants in a zero-discharge system now trademarked as the EcocyclET™ for more see:http://www.watersheds.ca/whatwedo/wwg.html

Del Porto is a guest lecturer at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the University of Minnesota, Milwaukee
School of Engineering and other institutions of higher learning.

In 2002, Del Porto founded the Ecological Engineering Group which incorporates planning, engineering, architecture, construction management and operation services
under one corporate roof. Among many on-site systems, EEG has completed the design and construction of a 27,500-gallon-per-day Solar Aquatic System, a
greenhouse-based advanced tertiary wastewater treatment for ground water discharge. For more see: www.ecological-engineering.com

Del Porto serves on the NSF International Joint Committee on Wastewater Technology Committee of with whom he co-authors performance standards for wastewater
treatment technologies. He also serves on the Massachusetts Water Resource Authority’s Citizen Advisory Committee. For more see:
http://www.nsf.org/business/wastewater/index.asp?program=WastewaterServices

He has been published in numerous conferences and hearing proceedings, books, professional journals, environmental encyclopedias and government publications, and
has written a definitive reference book on ecological sanitation and gray water use. His latest published works are the chapter “Urban and Industrial Watersheds and Ecological
Sanitation- Two sustainable strategies for on-site urban water management,” Rogers, P., Llamas, R., Martinez-Cortina, L., Ed., Water Crisis – Myth or Reality, Taylor & Francis/Balkema plc, London, UK 2006 and Reusing the Resource – Adventures in ecological wastewater recycling, Steinfeld, C and Del Porto, D, Ecowaters Books,
Concord, Massachusetts, 2008.

References

Borjesson, P. and Goran, B. (2006) “The prospects for willow plantations for wastewater treatment in Sweden” Biomass and Bioenergy, Volume 30, Issue 5, pp 428-438.

Brix, H., (2004) “Danish Guidelines for small-scale constructed wetland systems for onsite treatment of domestic sewage” Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Wetland Systems for Water Pollution Control, Avignon, France, 26-30th September 2004.  Pages 1-8.

Bureau of Land Management web site http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/info/About_BLM.html

Del Porto, D. (2008) “Ecological – The new green paradigm (2008) Australian Water Association, Proceedings of the Onsite and Decentralized Sewage and Recycling Conference, Benalla, Australia, October 2008.

Del Porto, D. (1990). “Rhizospherics” Concord, Massachusetts.

Del Porto, D. (2005).  Plant Ecophysiological Issues for Wastewater Utilization” Ecological Engineering, Concord, Massachusetts.

Del Porto, D. (2005)“Phytoremediation”, First published in the “Dictionary of the Environment”, Gale Publishing, Newton, Massachusetts 1997 and reprinted in Steinfeld, C and Del Porto, D (2008) “Reusing the Resource”, Ecowaters Books, Concord, Massachusetts.

Del Porto, D. (2006).  “Urban and Industrial Watersheds” in “Water Crisis: Myth or Reality”, Taylor & Francis Group, New York.

Del Porto, D. “(2005).  “The Green Paradigm”, Concord, Massachusetts and reprinted in Steinfeld, C and Del Porto, D (2008) “Reusing the Resource”, Ecowaters Books, Concord, Massachusetts.

Del Porto, David (2002).  “The physics of evapo-transpiration” Sustainable Strategies Publications, Concord, Massachusetts.

Gregersen, P., Brix, H. (2001).  “Zero-discharge of nutrients and water in a willow dominated constructed wetland” Water Science and Technology, Vol 44 No 11-12, IWA Publishing

Henchman, R, M. Negri, M and E. Gatliff, E. (1998).  “Phytoremediation using green plants to clean up contaminated soil, groundwater, and wastewater”, Argonne National Laboratory.

Hopkinson, G. (2007).  Personal communication with an Ecological owner, Dunstable, Massachusetts.

Karg, P (2000) “New Directions: Co-ops help tobacco farmers transition to new crops” http://www.rurdev.usda.gov/rbs/pub/sep00/direct.htm

Kumar, P. B. N. A., V. Dushenkov, B. D. Ensley, and I. Raskin.  (1995). The use of crop brassicas in phytoextraction: a subset of phytoremediation to remove toxic metals from soils.  In: Proceedings of Ninth International rapeseed congress: Rapeseed Today and Tomorrow.  D. Murphy (ed.) the Dorset Press, Dorchester, UK.  vol.3, pp. 753-756.

Larcher, Walter (1995).  Physiological Plant Ecology, 3rd Ed.  New York: Springer.

MADEP (2008).  Massachusetts Environmental Protection Agency Data gathered quarterly from several permitted residential sites (1995 to 2008).

Mohave Daily News (2008) “Final Lake Mead study backs wastewater plan” Seckler, J.

O'Leary, J. W. (1984).  “The role of halophytes in irrigated agriculture.  From Tolerance in plants: strategies for crop improvement”, ed. Staples, R. C.  New York: John Wiley & sons.

Orr, D. (2002).  “The Nature of Design: Ecology, Culture and Human Intention", Oxford University Press.

Sawyer, John.  (2003 and 2005).  “Natural gas prices impact nitrogen fertilizer costs” This article originally appeared on pages 32-33 of the IC-490 (4) 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April 14, 2003 issue.  Web-based PowerPoint can be seen at http://www.aceee.org/conf/af05/05agsawyerIIb.pdf

Steinfeld, C, and Del Porto, D (2008).  “Reusing the Resource”, Ecowaters Books, Concord, Massachusetts.

Thornburn, P. (1998).  “Groundwater uptake and salt accumulation by trees over shallow water tables” RIRDC, Australia http://www.rirdc.gov.au/pub/shortreps/sr40.html

US Patent and Trade Mark Office.  Year of registration 2008 “Life Informs Design” the registered trademark and the underlying patented technology is the property of David Del Porto who licenses the know-how and intellectual property to design and installation professionals.  See:www.ecological-engineering.com/delporto.pdf

USEPA (2002).  “Response to Congress on Use of Decentralized Wastewater Treatment Systems”.  USEPA Office of Wastewater Management, Washington, D.C., www.epa.gov/owmitnet/mab/smcomm.

Wisconsin Department of Commerce Product File Number: 20080446.

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