RAW sewage flushed from homes in a British town is being converted into gas and piped back to the area in a first for the UK.
Households in Didcot, Oxfordshire, central England, will welcome back some of their sewage in the form of biomethane to fuel their boilers and stoves.
The £2.5 million ($4.14 million) project, with hundreds more planned for sewage farms across the country, will reduce emissions by making use of gas that is normally burnt off and wasted.
The sewage and waste water arriving at the Didcot works for treatment is separated into sludge and liquid with bacteria breaking down the biodegradable material to create gas.
The process takes around 20 days and partners British Gas and Thames Water say that customers will not notice any difference.
Kathryn Rushton, a mother of two who lives 800m from the sewage works, welcomed the scheme.
“My 14-year-old daughter wrinkled her nose up a bit when I told her, but she soon understood that it’s just like water recycling, with the water we use eventually ending up back in our taps,” she said.
“I worry about the future for my children, who may not enjoy the same freedom just to switch things on. It makes sense to make ourselves more energy-secure in this way.”
The Didcot plant will supply enough gas for 200 homes and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 350 tons a year, the equivalent of taking 130 cars off the road.
The UK National Grid estimates that by 2020 at least 15 per cent of the domestic gas market could be supplied by renewable gas from various sources, including sewage, cattle manure and food waste.
Chris Huhne, Britain’s Energy and Climate Change Secretary, said, “For the first time ever in the UK, people can cook and heat their homes with gas generated from sewage. This is an historic day. It is just the start of a new era of renewable energy.”
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Nice to see some development on other alternative fuels – it makes sense to concentrate on this kind of biogas – it works out cheaper, and is obviously a lot more energy efficient. Bravo Didcot!
And of course the solid residue is often incinerated and used to generate electricity – sewage is the future!