Interview with Ebrahim Honar
Transcript
[Sheldon Young]
Welcome to No Footprints, a podcast brought to you by Alfa Laval. I’m Sheldon Young.
[Jason Moreau]
And I’m Jason Moreau.
[Sheldon Young]
And we’re here to talk about impact and to share the efforts and people behind making sustainability real. Jason, how real are you today?
Are you really there? Are you really in front of me in camera person?
[Jason Moreau]
I am. I’m super real. And, uh, I feel very fortunate that we’ve found time in both of our busy schedules to do this.
[Sheldon Young]
Yeah, I know. I think we were, we were just talking about this stuff where, you know, it is just one of those, it’s, I, we’re always busy, but this is feels like a super busy fall for like everyone, everyone we talked to, it just feels like it’s just extra busy. So hoping that, uh, that, uh, that chills out a little bit here as, as we move into the, into the fall and such, but, uh, anyway, so got a really interesting, fun episode.
Um, Jason, why don’t you kick us off with this a little bit of a fun, fun sustainability story in your life.
[Jason Moreau]
Okay. I will, but first a pop quiz. I think in today’s episode, you really sort of proved your, you know, bona as an engineer.
And so what the question is, what is an emulsifier?
[Sheldon Young]
Oh, it basically, it like, for example, you have something like oil and water, they don’t mix and emulsifier forces them to physically mix together. Right. It really, it blends it together.
It breaks the particles down small enough. So they actually will kind of make a cohesive mixture.
[Jason Moreau]
Absolutely. Right. It’s the ultimate peace broker between two materials that don’t want to be together.
That’s right. It’s used in everything from food, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, you name it. So I have one in my kitchen.
I beg medicine to mayonnaise. Yeah, it’s, it’s in everything. Uh, unfortunately it is a pretty carbon intensive for synthetic emulsifiers.
Interesting. Uh, and then you also have, uh, people or, and then your other batch is animal derived, right? So there’s a lot of work around finding plant-based emulsifier.
[Sheldon Young]
So you’re talking like the actual, like a chemical emulsifier, like an additive, the protein itself. Yeah, sometimes you can, sometimes you, you can do, you can emulsify with, by adding something, it will help emulsify, but sometimes you can physically force things together. Like with a colloid mill, it’s called, or something that’s like a, uh, you know, there’s different types of, uh, high sheer kind of things that will shear liquids and kind of force them together and do a lot with mayonnaise actually, like they’ll, they’ll take the, uh, the fats and stuff and kind of whip them together and they’ll stick to, they’ll stay together.
[Jason Moreau]
Oh, very cool. Yeah, no, this is more of like the compound itself, like a protein. So if it was, you know, like way or casein or something like that, if you were deriving it from dairy.
So out of the, uh, sunny nation of England, uh, the lead school of food sciences and nutrition, um, essentially are partnering and have created like an AI, they’ve trained an AI to identify plant-based proteins that could act as good emulsifiers, um, and essentially what this does is if you can imagine the world of plant proteins, tens of millions of potential candidates. So this has narrowed the search field to about 800, which still sounds like a lot, but it has reduced the time of good potential plant-based candidates. And, um, it’s really pretty cool because they’ve already tested a few.
Um, and where did they come from? Looking at my notes, um, they tested, uh, commercially available proteins and it found that the results match the models predictions. So that was an important step too.
So not just building the model, running it on the data set, but they’ve actually sort of shown that it was a two proteins, one from peas and one from potatoes proving very effective as a plant-based emulsifier. So I thought it was just a really cool story. Leveraging, um, science and what we know, but applying it to a sustainability problem.
[Sheldon Young]
So I like it. I like it.
[Jason Moreau]
Jason of emulsifiers, a little bit more sustainable.
[Sheldon Young]
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Uh, let’s see, what did I have with stories?
Well, um, let’s see, I’m going to jump to one here. Uh, I watch this show and if you’ve ever seen it before, uh, it’s called Clarkson’s Farm. You ever watch it?
[Jason Moreau]
No, I’ve heard of it though.
[Sheldon Young]
Okay. So Jeremy Clarkson is like, you may know him from like top gear.
It’s like a kind of a car show. Yeah. Yeah.
But anyways, it’s just like season five of the show. He has a farm in England and a really interesting show. I mean, look, of course it has the antics of him being a, uh, a non farmer that, that is into the farming world now.
And there’s a whole cast of characters that go with it, but he, what I really do love about the show, he really does like pull the curtain back on farming and how difficult it is, how challenging he’s actually done a lot to move the farming movement in England, uh, for sure. So I give him high kudos for that. Now you can say what you want about him.
I don’t know, no opinions outside of that, but watching that show, it’s entertaining. You also learn a lot. One of the things that’s been really fun to watch.
So, you know, throughout most of the season so far, he’s been very, it’s a very manual process to farm, right? You know, you go out there, you till the land, you plant the seeds, you fertilize, you do all that. It takes a lot of time and labor and, and, and, uh, you know, you’re kind of just doing your best and you’re often just getting it done and hoping for the yields and all the things that come with it, well, this, this season, they actually went over to, uh, uh, uh, Netherlands and they, uh, went to like a farm show and something like that.
And they met some people doing some, I’m gonna call it high tech farming. Uh, really is it? And they, and they brought it to his farm.
What it really was to me. It’s like, okay, sustainability takes many, many forms and technology can help push that forward. This was a perfect case.
It basically has this, it’s basically agro bots, right? Almost as big tractors that do it all. But what they do is they, they geo locate it, right?
It’s it measures to the centimeter, what it’s doing right with GPS. It knows exactly the soil quality. It knows exactly how much it needs to do all the processes.
Like how much does it tell? How much fertilizer does it need in this spot? How much, you know, how many, it puts a seed every 15 centimeters on the nose.
Right. And you know, when you look at it, it’s just all about, uh, it only run on solar, by the way, they have solar batteries. I think they may have backups as well, but they have solar panels that sit on top and just collect energy and harvest themselves.
Right. So they’ll run through the night. Um, but anyway, it’s about getting better yields.
They get, they save a ton of money because they only put exactly what that part of the soil needs. It knows exactly where it is. It says, okay, I know the numbers here.
I need this much of this. And so it uses exactly what it needs. It saves labor.
Now, all the labor is freed up to do other things, which he showed, they showed him doing like he’s now out doing this stuff. And it adds, so productivity is a sustainability, right? And so showing all that, it was just been really fascinating.
And you put a sustainability lens on it and you’re like, wow, that is just really interesting about how someone’s making sustainability real on the farm. Now, of course there was a big investment involved, but if you. I’m very, very, I love to see the numbers on that.
How did the ROI work out in terms of like using your labor for other things and productivity yields and improvements, I bet it’s amazing. I bet it really is. And so anyway, that’s my fun sustainability story.
[Jason Moreau]
So we randomly unplanned shows to sustainability stories about technology from England.
[Sheldon Young]
Yeah. Yeah.
[Jason Moreau]
That’s so weird.
[Sheldon Young]
That’s how our brains work, Jason.
[Jason Moreau]
We share a brain. Okay.
[Sheldon Young]
Really between us. Uh, anyway, so farms, you know what else they do on farms, Jason, they use a lot of biosolids and biosolids. Biosolids is a company basically from wastewater treatment plants.
It’s kind of the leftover sludge. We call it right. Well, today’s guest has taken us down that road.
Um, we’re going to, uh, have a lot of fun. I met, uh, I met him, uh, Abraham, uh, a couple of years ago at WEFTECH. WEFTECH is a big wastewater show that it really is interesting.
You see all the interesting technology. You meet all the people that are in kind of in that wastewater world. And, uh, this is where I met him and invited him to come on the show recently.
Uh, it checks a lot of sustainability boxes, uh, what they do, and I’m excited to have him tell you about it. And, uh, I think we need to go to go see what happens to the sludge. Jason, what do you say about that?
Let’s go listen. It’s sewage sludge. Our next guest has made it his mission to change the way the world thinks about it.
An engineer turned global commercial executive. He spent more than two decades bringing complex industrial technologies to market from helping modernize the mining and cement industries across Europe, Africa, and the middle East to leading the commercialization of breakthrough clean technologies, tackling some of today’s biggest sustainability challenges. Today’s chief commercial officer at Aquagreen, he’s here to talk to us about how the future of sustainability is charcoal.
He’s Ebrahim Honar and it’s my pleasure to welcome him to No Footprints. Welcome Ebrahim. Thank you.
[Ebrahim Honar]
Um, uh, I’m happy to be on the show.
[Sheldon Young]
Yeah, thanks. Uh, you, I met a couple of years back, I think at WEFTEC, um, full disclosure.
Aquagreen is a partner of Alfa Laval’s. We have a relationship. So I always like to make that clear.
Um, of course I love having people on that can talk about wonderful new technologies and Aquagreen is one of those things. I think, uh, uh, when I saw that the technology, I was like, oh, that is cool. And I want to learn more, uh, for sure.
Um, but thanks for joining us today. Um, I guess as a start, I gave the little bio here, but talk a little bit more about your journey through wastewater and, uh, uh, the biosolids beneficial reuse world.
[Ebrahim Honar]
Yeah, sure. I’ve, um, I’ve been spending the last 20 years in technology driven industries, um, working in the, uh, water, wastewater and, uh, environmental technologies, and also been actually spending some years in the mining and the cement, uh, industries as well. So, uh, I’ve been a bit around and, uh, uh, picked up one thing or two.
So, uh, nowadays, yeah, as I’ve been, I joined the Aquagreen for about two and a half years ago, because I really believe in, uh, the journey that we are on now. I really believe that, uh, we have a very unique, um, proposition and, um, I’m looking very much forward to, uh, really scaling up this technology.
[Sheldon Young]
Yeah. So I guess let’s talk about it first. So tell, tell us what Aquagreen is.
A lot of people that are listeners are from all markets and, and, and, and parts of, of, of industry. So, uh, a little bit of all the, how the Aquagreen fits into the wastewater world.
[Ebrahim Honar]
Yeah. So basically you have all the upstream technologies where, uh, most of it is already covered by, uh, for instance, Alpha Laval, um, and the downstream technologies, there are some few. And what we do is we simply, um, take the, uh, dewatered cake that, uh, you produce, uh, and we upcycle that to a value.
So basically what we do is that we eliminate, you know, micropollutants from it. We eliminate PFAS. Uh, we, um, eliminate medical residues and, uh, and create, uh, a valuable product, uh, which is called biochar.
[Sheldon Young]
Okay.
[Ebrahim Honar]
So biochar contains both, uh, carbon and also nutrients that can be recycled.
[Sheldon Young]
Cool. So when, when we said the word cake and we make sure people understand that is so in the wastewater process, uh, uh, wastewater comes in, it gets biologically treated and, uh, all kinds of things get broken down. Um, the water, uh, gets cleaned up at the end.
There was this residue. It’s the, we call it sludge. It’s exactly what it sounds like.
Uh, we often put it through like a decanter centrifuge or a belt press, and it turns into what just, if we call it cake, not when you want to eat, but it’s, uh, definitely, uh, it looks like a, almost like damp sand. Um, right. So we do that.
They often dewater that, uh, to get it to like, you know, 20 something percent solids so they can put it in a, in a truck with minimal water and truck it away. Now you guys do, you take it even a step farther, right? It’s like 20% solids and the volume of whatever one, one fifth of what it used to be, um, what do you guys do to take it beyond that?
[Ebrahim Honar]
Yeah. So typically what we will receive is, uh, Municipal sludge or the sludge that is dewatered to, let’s say about 20, 23% dry matter. Uh, we, uh, inserted into a, uh, our process, which consists of an integrated dryer, uh, which is using superheated steam to dry the sludge even further.
So going from, let’s say 22%, we go all the way up to 97%. And that is then fed into a process which is called pyrolysis. Basically what it does, it is a using, uh, um, high pressure, uh, high temperature pyrolysis, which, uh, does not include any oxygen.
Hence we are actually capturing the carbon that is inside the biosolids. And we are capturing some of these nutrients such as phosphorus and natrium. Um, so what then happens is that the sludge that goes into our dryer, let’s say, um, it’s a hundred tons.
What comes out of it is just one 10th of it. And what comes out of it is also a clean product that can be applied to many different applications. And we can also come into labor.
[Sheldon Young]
Yeah, for sure. So just my brain, it’s like, okay, it goes from, let’s say, you know, a hundred gallons down to like 20 gallons to like two gallons, right. You know, in terms of volume.
Right. So at the end of the day, it’s about, I’m just doing the stupid back of the envelope math. It’s about 2% of the volume.
Um, uh, of the, the sludge that it started with. Right. And you know, it’s, you know, just quick back.
[Ebrahim Honar]
Well, the wet sludge.
[Sheldon Young]
Yeah. The prior to dewatering.
[Ebrahim Honar]
Yeah.
[Sheldon Young]
Yeah.
[Ebrahim Honar]
So that’s, and after the dewatering is one 10th of it.
[Sheldon Young]
Right. Right. Right.
So yeah, that’s a, just from a, uh, Practicality of cost and hauling it’s tremendously lower and you’re capturing the carbon, which I think is fantastic. That’s a great sustainability when, um, the nutrients, all that stuff, it’s just a big sustainability push. And so that’s why, that’s why I wanted to really talk about this thing.
It’s such an impact on, on the costs associated as well as the sustainability of, of a process. And so, and you also recycle the heat, right?
[Ebrahim Honar]
Yeah. So one of the benefits of doing an integrated solution, such as the one that we use, which is called the head clock, the tours, uh, process is that we are recuperating the heat from the steam. So, uh, we use superheated steam and that might sound a bit weird to, uh, the, to the untrained, uh, you know, ear, but, but typically, uh, um, the superheated stream is much more efficient in drawings, uh, sludge than, than areas.
So we use 200 degrees Celsius superheated steam to dry the sludge. Um, we will then be, uh, creating a lot of excess steam that we can use additional energy sources, but also the, the energy that we are recuperating from the sludge will be used internally in the process, about 15% of it will be used for the pyrolysis process and the remaining 85% of it will be running the steam drying. So when the process is up, uh, running at nominal temperatures, we will not be, uh, needing, uh, auxiliary energy, uh, or we will be in needing very minimal auxiliary energy.
[Sheldon Young]
Yeah. That, that to me is like, it’s hard to get my head around, right? Just the, the whole virtual cycle here of, you know, minimal energy being required to run this thing.
Uh, you, you harvesting the energy essentially in the product, right? It’s like, it’s all kind of there. And so it’s really interesting to me.
Uh, when I sit as a sustainability person, I look at it, I go, now that is how you make sustainability real, right? You, you, you take it. Think about all of the energy you think about all of the resource and you upcycle and you recycle and you reuse, and it all comes out, um, uh, in the end, a very, very efficient way to deal with a big problem for a lot of wastewater plants.
Right? So it’s a big expense and a big thing that they care about. So I feel bad.
I’ve been, I’ve been dominating the conversation on my, uh, my, uh, humble and kind coach, Jason listens on carefully. Jason hit us with a marketing. Hit us with something, uh, that’s non-technical because I’m going down the engineering nerd hole here.
[Jason Moreau]
Correct. Yeah. The non-technical part of my brain.
So biochar is what comes out at the end of this process. Is that essentially for, you know, for people who have never seen it, touched it, is that, is that very similar to, I think most people think charcoal. They think of like the briquettes that they would use in a barbecue.
I mean, is that effectively what’s coming out at the end of this process or is it substantially different than that? Or, I mean, that’s, that’s really pretty much what you’re the material that’s at the end of all of this.
[Ebrahim Honar]
Yeah, pretty much. It is, uh, you know, uh, charcoal, uh, it’s more granule than, than, uh, you know, the ones that you’re using for barbecue, but, uh, yeah, it is, it is the same type of material coming out. Um, the, uh, very, very positive part of that is that in this municipal sludge that we are treating, there will be, you know, a lot of, uh, residuals that you simply want to eliminate.
You don’t want them to be, you know, recirculating in, uh, into our groundwater. You don’t want it to be recirculating into our food, et cetera. And that is what we are eliminating with this process.
So you will have a clean product, uh, which can be used for many different applications, one of which is actually something that I have here. It’s very interesting. Uh, this is actually made out of biochar.
Okay. Wow.
[Sheldon Young]
It looks like a little, for those that are listening, not watching, it looks like a little dark bar of soap almost. It’s, it’s a brick.
[Ebrahim Honar]
It’s just a brick that is made out of a composite materials, including a biochar and it can be used in construction materials. So it can be used for that. Typically this is just to show you that what can be made out of it, but it can be used for that.
Um, it can also be used into concrete. This is actually something that has been done for many years. Um, what has not been done is use using the feedstock that we are using, which is municipal sludge.
Typically you would use wood chips and other things, uh, as, as a feedstock. Um, but, but there are, there are a lot of benefits out of this because what we essentially are doing, we are eliminating a cost and a pain from the utilities and making a product that they actually can sell. Right.
[Sheldon Young]
That, that to me was the, the really interesting thing. Like we’ve had, uh, Merrill brothers on before and they go the route of like a fertilizer, right? They take it and they do, I think they do like basically the drying step and they create a fertilizer pellet out of it, which I think that’s great.
That’s a beneficial reuse. Fantastic. This goes even a level farther and, and, you know, eliminates, um, even more water, uh, from, from the, from the sludge.
And then you can take that and do lots of different things with it. And so that to me, it was really interesting. So biochar, let’s talk a little bit more about you.
You showed me the brick. What else do they use it for? You know, a lot of people aren’t familiar with it.
They think, oh, it’s charcoal. Do I use it in a grill? What is it?
What do they do with it?
[Ebrahim Honar]
Yeah. Ultimately you would not want to burn it because the whole idea is that you want to do carbon, you know, carbon removal, carbon capture. So if you burn it, that, you know, that ship will be set, will be sailed.
So, so I guess the whole idea is that you need to put the biochar into a, a, you know, a process where it will be sequestrated for ages, years, uh, maybe even hundreds of years, uh, because studies show that it actually can be stabilized inside the construction material and in, in earth. So, so we can, you can do that. And that is basically what you should use it for.
However, because there is also phosphorus in it and phosphorus is a scarce nutrient, you would like to recirculate that phosphorus. So we are looking into now. A lot of companies are looking into how to extract phosphorus from different processes, one of which would be to extract it from the biochar.
And if you extract the phosphorus from the biochar, you will have clean phosphorus that you can use for fertilizer and you will then have the biochar, which is then sequestrated the carbon and you can use it in construction materials or another route is to use it as a substitute for activated carbon, which is also something that a lot of people are doing nowadays.
[Sheldon Young]
So what is activated carbon used for, again, for those that aren’t familiar with it, activated carbon typically would be used as a filter medium.
[Ebrahim Honar]
So you would use it to filter substances that you don’t want to be in water, wastewater. It can also be used to, to reduce emissions. So, and it’s quite costly.
So typically you would have to buy this activated carbon and you use a lot of tonnage of it each year. You already use it in a lot of wastewater treatment facilities. So by creating your own substitute for activated carbon, you will eliminate not only the disposal costs of your sludge, but you will also create a product that you can utilize inside your process and capture harmful pollutants from the wastewater, such as PFAS.
It is actually a very good media to capture the long chain PFAS molecules. And even more interesting is the fact that when you have used this biochar at a substitute of, for activated carbon, and it is saturated with, let’s say micropollutants, what you then do is that you take that saturated biochar, you then put it back into the dryer and then you just reuse it once again. So you will have unlimited filter media in your process.
[Sheldon Young]
Well, don’t you end up having extra though? Do you, I mean, at some point you have to, I mean, you’ll just keep building it up and up. I can imagine.
So I imagine you would take a portion of it and just reuse it and stuff and then take the rest of the activated carbon, use it for building. My gosh. It’s like, when you think of like a sustainability, like dream, that kind of fits the bill, right?
It’s like, I’m taking wastewater, which is a problem in itself. Uh, you know, treating it, taking this sludge, which I usually pay a lot of money for, like I’m talking with dairy. It’s a, I know we just, a municipal we’re talking about, but I industrially like a dairy, they’re paying like one dairy is paying like a million bucks a year to haul things away.
And I’m like, and I know it for most municipal wastewater treatment plants, it is a huge, huge expense. Even after they dewater it, it’s a huge expense. And so you’re saying by adding a process like this, you’re, they’re able to basically eliminate the expense of that.
Make a saleable product from it or something that replaces something they’re currently buying. Right. You just, that’s what a sustainability person looks for, right?
It’s like, it sounds like the ROI on this could be pretty decent for someone that’s looking at that kind of expense. And, and over the long run, it’s something that could really make a great impact for them.
[Ebrahim Honar]
Exactly. Um, and then, you know, again, you, we need to go back to the fact that, you know, we are eliminating all these micropollutants, which are very harmful for human beings and for the environment. And that is also a very positive, you know, environmental aspect that you need to take in consideration as well.
[Sheldon Young]
Absolutely. Absolutely. Cause it’s, uh, I know, uh, I’m from the state of Maine.
Um, was where I grew up and I remember several years ago, uh, when the PFOS thing was starting to come up, they were their first state to really say, if your sludge has PFOS on it, you know, at a certain level, you cannot land apply it. Nope.
[Ebrahim Honar]
And so in Maine, yes.
[Sheldon Young]
Yeah. And it’s a huge problem. Cause they have to truck it.
I mean, what are they, they truck it out of state now as opposed to managing it in state. Right. So how this to me is like a solution for that, right.
It is a way for them to say, you know, I can take that municipal sludge. Utilize it in state, save all the trucking expense, save all the greenhouse gases created by trucking things and the cost and associated, turn it into something real, uh, and actually solve the problem that, that they’re dealing with. So, I mean, if the real life examples exist for sure.
And, uh, they were, uh, you know, it’s something that, uh, it just hasn’t been adopted much yet. And so I’m excited to, to see it happen, uh, and start talking about it more as an industry, because it is, uh, a pathway that, that, that makes sense. Um, from the perspective of solving the real problem.
[Ebrahim Honar]
Yeah. And in Europe, uh, we have, uh, maybe we are a bit further ahead because the, the legislation is a bit more strict in EU, uh, specifically, uh, the country where we are from Denmark. Uh, we were, you know, the first country in the world to start banning, um, not, there’s not even a ban, there’s actually some guidelines about not applying, uh, you know, uh, sludge that is PFAS contaminated above certain levels, uh, on land application, et cetera.
But the municipalities, they started actually utilizing, uh, these, uh, you know, these guidelines already from back in 2021. So we are a bit further ahead, but this is definitely something that is coming, not only in EU, but also in the U S.
[Jason Moreau]
Yeah, yeah, for sure. For sure. Can I ask a probably pretty basic process question is, is the process batched or is it continuous?
Like you need to put in so much and then kind of close the door and let it run. Or is it like a conveyor belt and it just kind of runs through? I was just kind of curious.
[Ebrahim Honar]
Yeah. That’s a very good question. It is a continuous process and it is a fully automated process as well.
But basically when, uh, when I have visitors coming over and seeing, uh, some of the, one of the many plans that we have already operating in, uh, in Scandinavia, um, they, uh, they, they are very much surprised when they see there’s no operators anywhere to be found. So the buildings are always locked. The, uh, the, the light is always out because nobody needs to be around the, uh, the machinery.
So it just runs and it’s 24 seven. Um, and it is fully automated with all the safety, you know, uh, procedures that you need to have in place, of course.
[Jason Moreau]
So the ideal situation would be that these are co-located at current water treatment plants, right? Because then waste water. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Versus trucking it, you know, from like multiple, like the ideal would be it’s on site, it’s taking the cake and then essentially converting it, right?
Because then it’s even a bigger sustainability win because you’re not, you know, cost to truck it somewhere. Right?
[Ebrahim Honar]
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That’s, that’s, that’s a very good point that you’re making there, Jason.
And that’s exactly what we want to do. We want, uh, we have a more decentralized approach to this. Whereas if you look at, um, maybe other adjacent, um, uh, technologies that are being used around the world and also in the U S incineration has been there for many years, but typically when you do incineration, you need very hot, uh, you know, big throughput of, of material.
And, uh, typically you would have a hub where you’re gathering a lot of sludge from many different areas. That’s, that’s not the approach we’re taking. We’re taking a more decentralized approach, meaning that on any wastewater treatment facility going from, let’s say 25, 30,000 person equivalent up to even up to 300,000 person equivalent, we would be able to build our machinery directly there.
So the sludge doesn’t need to be transported anywhere, de-watered and goes directly into our equipment.
[Sheldon Young]
Interesting. That’s very cool. When you, when you incinerate though, you aren’t capturing the carbon, right?
Though you’re, you’re putting it out the stack.
[Ebrahim Honar]
Exactly.
[Sheldon Young]
You’re not doing any carbon. That’s an oxygen. That’s an oxygen based process.
Yep. Correct. See, Jason, I am an engineer, believe it or not.
Believe it or not. They gave me a degree somewhere on the way. Oh boy.
So you, you, you say you mentioned project Denmark. I read something, a project in England. Is that correct?
Is that something we can talk about? I don’t recall if it’s, I think it’s public. Yeah.
Go for it.
[Ebrahim Honar]
Yeah. So as part of our, you know, ambition to globalize our, our efforts and this technology to be rolled out globally we have now trying to work with municipalities and utilities outside of Scandinavia, because in Scandinavia, we already have, you know, four plants running in Denmark, two plants running in Sweden. And then the seventh one is now coming in UK, which is sold to Thames Water.
Thames is the largest wastewater and water company in UK. One of the largest in Europe, quite famous. It has been there for many, many years.
And especially in the English speaking countries, they all know which, who Thames is and, and what they stand for. So as part of a, an effort that the EPA in, in UK has started the EPA is called Ofwat, Ofwat started this program where they are going to fund some technologies, which they call advanced thermal technologies, which pyrolysis is one of them. They’re going to, they have been funding that and they want to trial these technologies in UK, in different plants to see both the techno economic aspect of it, but also how it really operates in their own environment, with their own sludge, with their own people running the plants.
So and that was a process that we started over a year ago and we won that tender. And we are, we are in the midst of delivering this plant now to UK. They will do a trial for 18 months and then they will actually make a report that they will share with the remaining 10 utilities in UK and hopefully by then we will have a successful installation and they will then see integrated steam drying and pyrolysis as a viable alternative for this, you know, disposing sludge.
[Sheldon Young]
Interesting. Interesting. So again, I look, remember, remembering my brain, looking at the aqua green flow diagram kind of thing.
Normally the heat that comes off the end, the leftover heat is used for something like district heating. And that’s something that’s a very European thing, right? But how, in the US, we don’t do a ton of that, like the localities, but how could they use the heat in a wastewater treatment plant here in the US?
[Ebrahim Honar]
Yeah. So district heating is simply one way of monetizing the heat. It’s not a requirement for the technology or the transportation costs.
So, so it’s, it’s just one of the ways of doing it. You could also use that excess heat for treatment of local, you know, local usage. It could be for the building itself.
It could be for, you know, for the process water, it could be for digestion. It could be for, for other thermal loads that where you, where you need that. The good thing about our technology is that is not relying on subsidies.
So there will be a business case for our customers just purely on the fact that they are avoiding disposal costs and the disposal cost is actually increasing. So that business case is looking more and more attractive for every year. So, so that is one way of doing it.
And again, if you don’t have any way of utilizing the excess, you know, heat, which is coming as condensate water, hot water, it can just be rejected back into the heads of the waterworks.
[Sheldon Young]
Got it. Got it. Very good.
Yeah. So, I mean, I, the more I think about it now, it’s like, you know, with the, I just went to the gas station, uh, uh, yesterday, um, as many Americans do. And I look over at the price of gas for me.
Okay. It’s, it was kind of expensive. It’s like high $3 in the U S this is expensive in the U S and I realize you’re, it’s much different, but it was like $3 per gallon for us.
Then I look over at the diesel pump, it was over $6 a gallon and the trucks that haul sludge use diesel. Okay. And when you think about that, that is a variable cost that is going to be put back on these wastewater treatment plants.
It’s going to, it’s going to be in a form of surcharges. It’s going to be from all kinds of stuff. Hauling costs are going to be variable and it’s out of your control.
Many times you may have a contract for a while, but eventually that number’s going to go up. If the, if they don’t get control of fuel costs and things like that, regardless, it’s an expense, right? It’s a big expense.
You write a big check for every month, especially when, when you have fuel prices that are kind of unstable, frankly, you know, it’s gone up and down quite a bit in the last few years. And then you look over at that diesel pump now, it is not a pretty picture. And so I can imagine a lot of municipalities right now are saying, wow, this hurts.
And so I can easily see how the business case can get particularly more attractive when you start looking at numbers like that for sure. So I guess, you know, just in general, you know, this is exciting stuff. And I know you’ll be at WEFTEC.
I think this episode will have to come out after WEFTEC because we’re kind of pushing up against it kind of quick, but we’ll try to make sure we give it a mention somewhere along the way. And you’re going to be at WEFTEC though. You’ll be, I think, and actually with our booth, if I’m not mistaken.
So I hope after WEFTEC, we’re able to recap a little bit about, about our experiences there. Hopefully we’ll hear what people are saying about this technology. I’m curious to hear it as well.
How do people kind of learn more about AquaGreen and honestly connect with you if they have questions and want to learn, learn about it?
[Ebrahim Honar]
Well, we just recently did a very big overhaul of, of our website. So they can find a lot of this information on our website, aquagreen.dk, not com.dk, for Denmark. Yeah.
[Sheldon Young]
It’s not for don’t know. It’s for, it’s for Denmark. That’s my website.
It’s the Sheldon dot don’t know.
[Ebrahim Honar]
And yeah. And, and, and they, I’m very easy to find on LinkedIn. So they’re more than welcome to connect with me on LinkedIn or send me a message and, and then we’ll take it from there.
Yeah.
[Sheldon Young]
Fantastic. Ibrahim, did we miss anything? I think we covered it all.
I think we hit all the major points. Anything else you want to bring up before we sign off for the day?
[Ebrahim Honar]
Yeah, I would just, you know, just sum up this by saying that biosolids, you know, shouldn’t be treated as simple waste. That’s our motto. It should be because it contains carbon energy, it contains nutrients that should be utilized, recycled.
And the real value of, you know, pyrolysis is that it solves several problems at the same time that it eliminates, contaminates, contaminants. And, and, you know, it sequesters carbon and nutrients and energy. So, so we are really looking into how can we create value on all different aspects of the sustainability agenda.
[Sheldon Young]
Yeah. I love it. Making, taking it from waste to great.
I like it. I like it a lot. Ibrahim, thank you.
Thank you so much. Really appreciate this and looking forward to continuing to work with you, actually, you know, since we’re, we’re kind of on the kind of the same team here. So I mean, I’m excited about that for sure.
And I know it’s going to be a big part of my sustainability discussions when I talk to our clients. So thanks again for being on, on new footprints and looking forward to see you soon. Absolutely.
[Ebrahim Honar]
Thank you.
[Sheldon Young]
Thanks. And we have returned, Jason, we are back. Yes.
We never really left as I like to say. Uh, yeah. Ebrahim and AquaGreen.
What a fun little thing. I mean, it’s, uh, I don’t know about this product or this product, this, uh, solution for like a couple of years and paralysis has been around.
[Jason Moreau]
It’s not like a, a new thing, but that’s, uh, not to interrupt, but, uh, you know, upon like re-listening to our conversation, I wasn’t sure if we really. For the, again, the audience who doesn’t have an engineering degree, if we’ve explained the difference between pyrolysis and incineration, because it kind of came up, but yeah, I’ll tell you right now that the difference is, uh, paralysis doesn’t use oxygen really.
[Sheldon Young]
It doesn’t, it doesn’t, or it doesn’t bring oxygen to, into the equation. Like, and so you, you are actually capturing the carbon and not turning it into CO2 because when you have oxygen in the process and carbon, which is part of the makeup of the, of the organic, those two would combine and create CO2. So in pyrolysis, you don’t do that.
That’s the big difference. And you do it at usually a really high temperature. It’s at a very high temperature.
Uh, and so you end up getting just basically a carbon product, which is the biochar, uh, and, uh, essentially that’s kind of yet.
[Jason Moreau]
Right. Yeah. And then there were, there were two other things that I noticed.
[Sheldon Young]
Okay. I’ll try. I don’t want to, I don’t want to be wrong about it.
Okay.
[Jason Moreau]
Go ahead. No, I don’t think you will be. Um, you corrected me when I was asking a question, I said water treatment and then you’re like wastewater treatment.
Yes. And I think that distinction is important. So like, so I sound better if I’m talking to somebody, water treatment would be like, what is the difference?
[Sheldon Young]
Yeah, well, sure. Water, yeah. Water treatment is okay.
I’m speaking from the municipal side of things, right? Water treatment is basically you’re taking raw water and you’re treating it for, to use as potable water. Okay.
Now there might be there, but there might be some sludge involved in that as well. There is often a sludge that comes because what you often do is you have, you, sorry, I don’t want to get too, too nerdy on you here. Uh, you have membranes typically like a membrane, like a reverse osmosis and things like that.
You have a membrane and you are capturing stuff on one side of that membrane and that does create a, it’s called like a membrane reject. Um, there’s another terms for it, but it basically, you retain a lot of the stuff you don’t want in potable water on the inside of the membrane that creates a sludge. And that often is, is dewatered as well.
It’s not the same though, as I buy a silence, okay. Wastewater. You have a lot of organics, you know, that comes from, comes from us.
It comes from everything. And in the wastewater treatment, you were first like filtering the water a little bit to take out the big stuff you’re then often there’s different ways to treat wastewater. That’s why I want to, I want to be careful here.
But one of the common ways is you’re, you’re doing a, you’re using bacteria essentially in your, um, you’re kind of eating a lot of the organics and then you settle out all these solids, they settle in the bottom and you pull and you have clarified water at the top that you can then take, you can take onto the next step, which could be a further polishing treatment, or it could be often is like a UV treatment, but at the bottom, we have all this, this, these solids that they, they, they suspend out and they drop and it’s a wet solids. Um, so very, it’s very, very low percent solids.
This is like two, three, 4%, right? They then take that and they, they, and they often will dewater it, take, you know, they’ll spin it out with a centrifuge or they use a belt press or other type of technology. And that will create what they call sludge cake.
Okay. And that’s the biosolids that we often will take into a land apply, or they can be used for other places. Now there’s lots of ways.
I didn’t talk about digestion and didn’t talk about any of that stuff. Right, right, right. I gave you the kind of the raw basics, but that’s a difference.
Water treatment and wastewater treatment is you’re a lot more organics and stuff in the wastewater you have to manage and deal with. And that’s what they’re doing is you’re taking that wastewater biosolids and they’re putting it through this process. They, they’ll dewater it like a centrifuge.
They will dry it with like a dryer and then they finally take what’s left over and they, and they use paralysis on it to make the biochar. That’s kind of what they’re doing. It’s a three, kind of a three-step process in a way from, from the, the very base, basic sludge to turning it into biochar.
[Jason Moreau]
Yep. No, thank you for the, uh, the extra information, no, no. And, and the difference, because I mean, I don’t know if, if any, I mean, you know, I think people who listen, you know, hopefully become a little bit more educated about, you know, some of these more technical processes that we talk about that really enable modern civilization.
And so I think it’s important to understand the difference. The last one, which again, I don’t want to assume people know about it or why it’s in the water was PFAS. We didn’t really touch on that.
And that’s sort of a big, big, big piece of why, you know, pyrolysis, you know, is an, is an interesting solution there. I don’t know if you can kind of like touch on that a little bit.
[Sheldon Young]
I can try this again. This PFAS can be a really, really long course topic.
[Jason Moreau]
Yeah.
[Sheldon Young]
It basically comes from, uh, a lot of the plastics and stuff that we use. And I don’t want to name, name, name, names of products and stuff like that. Cause a lot of their products we have.
That get into our, in our wastewater streams and water streams, frankly.
[Jason Moreau]
Um, and commonly known as forever chemicals, forever chemicals.
[Sheldon Young]
Right. Right. And so it’s a multiple challenge in wastewater because the paralysis will deal with what’s in the sludge.
It won’t deal with what’s in the water component. Right. So you have to, you have to deal with kind of both of those things.
Here’s the thing is there are so many different mouse traps out there, but a lot of times with biosolids, what they’re doing, they want to land apply them. Right. So what you’re seeing is a lot of States, uh, rightfully so are looking at this and saying, huh, I don’t know.
There’s a lot of PFAS in this what’s happening to that goes into your body. It goes into the, into the crops, which maybe does that go into our food supply. Again, not trying to speculate or go too far down this road, but that’s what they’re dealing with there by taking those biosolids and putting it through this process, they’re eliminating something like they said, like 99% of it, like you’re, you’re down to the minimal aspects of it, of it left over.
So, uh, it really does eliminate it and kind of turns it to, you know, breaks it apart with, with this paralysis process. Uh, so yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s, it’s an important topic and, and you’re seeing more and more.
Uh, people wanting to do something. I mean, Maine was one of the first ones mistake I grew up in. And they basically said, nope, if you piece up PFAS at a certain level, you can’t do anything with that sludge.
You cannot put it on land. That was a big problem because they had no place to put it. And so you had trucks kind of, there was just trying to ship it out of state, which get costly.
Right. So a solution like this could easily be something they can consider and think about, um, as, as a, maybe an option to, to deal with that.
[Jason Moreau]
Yeah.
[Sheldon Young]
Yeah.
[Jason Moreau]
I appreciate that. I feel like in this episode, you let your, uh, the engineering side of you come out a little bit more. And so I, I thought I would tease just a little bit more out in, in terms of, uh, illuminating some of those things.
So I appreciate it.
[Sheldon Young]
You’re squeezing what’s left of this little brain of mine, like a little sponge, you’re wringing it, you’re wringing out the data. And I hope I, I hope I did it justice. You know, um, I always, I always say disclaimer, um, I’m, I’m speaking from a knowledge that’s had been there for a while, so it could be a little outdated or dusty.
So a little disclaimer on that one. Um, yeah, but I, what I really liked about this episode again was, I guess what I like about this type of solution. Is it hits sustainability in so many different ways, as I said, probably it’s been around a while.
Um, and honestly it’s had, I think, uh, Abraham alluded to this. It’s had a little bit of a tarnish reputation in some cases, because it wasn’t always applied to the best, the best way, right? It’s, it can be a, it can be a tricky thing, depending on what, because they would apply it to use, to do all kinds of things.
I’ve seen it used on like wood waste. I’ve seen it used on all kinds of, they put it, put it through paralysis and it will solve the problem. When, if it’s misapplied, it can be kind of a tricky process to manage and, and you don’t really want to deal with that.
So, uh, that’s why it’s, you know, what I like about what they’ve done is, Hey, look, we know we have tested this time, but we know it works well doing this. And so that’s where they’ve, they’ve kind of said, we’ve got some here. And what I love about it just hits so many aspects of sustainability.
Water recovery. Like you’re, you’re, you’re taking that water. You’re kind of vaporizing it off, but you’re trying to also capture it.
You’re reusing the heat and the prior process in the dryer. And then you’re capturing that condensate. So you’re capturing water, you’re capturing carbon because you aren’t turning it into CO2.
You’re taking out all the bad stuff. You mentioned PFAS and there’s other things and microplastics, all that stuff. You’re pulling, you’re, you’re basically.
Destroying it. You capture the nutrients in, in, in, in the biochar reducing the impact and the cost of hauling, right? This is, there is actually a financial benefit to this recover the heat, like I mentioned.
And then you could potentially even upcycle that product to be a filter over in the water plant or some other part of it. So really is a virtuous cycle of things. That’s what I really liked hearing about it so much.
And you almost, as a, you know, kind of a sustainability nerd, you just get excited when you hear it.
[Jason Moreau]
Yeah. It it’s actually the other thing that I was impressed about was that it was a continuous process and almost fully automated. It sounded like, so not unlike the story you shared at the, at the top of the autonomous tractors and stuff like that, you know, really leveraging technology in a smart way to sort of manage this and like you say, sort of produce all of these virtuous loops and feedbacks well, and you know, materials that we can use for other things without a lot of, you know you know, person power needed to manage it is also pretty cool.
[Sheldon Young]
It really was, it really was. And so, and you know, I’m excited to see what this becomes. I’m really hoping we see more facilities like this start to take on in the U S it really is, it’s about understanding the numbers, understanding the impact, understanding, you know, the cost of doing business of biosolids.
Cause it’s often one of the most expensive processes. It can be like half of the operating costs sometimes is managing biosolids.
[Jason Moreau]
Oh, wow. It’s okay.
[Sheldon Young]
Yeah. It’s a big number for the facility. Yeah, absolutely.
And so if you could find a way to reduce that by hauling away, I mean, I’ll give an example, you know, no names mentioned, but I was talking to a customer and it was not a municipal customers, industrial customer, but they were hauling away the biosolids from their process and it was costing them a million dollars a year.
[Jason Moreau]
Yeah.
[Sheldon Young]
Right. It’s a million bucks and cause they weren’t dewatering. They’re just literally putting into a truck and trucking it away.
Right. You even just dewatering it, you take that volume down probably 60 to 80%. Right.
So, so just, if you just, let’s assume that million bucks was all, all trucking costs, it probably isn’t, but let’s just make for the sake of argument. So you save like six to $800,000 doing that. Right.
That pays off things pretty quick when that’s the kind of number. Now, again, the back of the envelope, my thumb in the air kind of thing, but you can see how the impact translates into a financial benefit for some people. And so I think it’s just important to think about, there are different things coming out, like every, every year, every month, even sometimes around ways to deal with these expensive and sustainability impacting problems.
And it’s important to just think about them, continue to look like, don’t just assume status quo has to be the way it is. There are so many different ways to, to create these creative solutions that, um, something new is coming out all the time. And so don’t forget about them.
And I guess the one takeaway here is like, look, you know, if you’ve got biosolids, think about it, different ways of managing them and dealing with them that maybe aren’t traditional that you used to be doing the last 50 years. Cause there’s new problems, new costs and new impacts that you have to think about.
[Jason Moreau]
I’m constantly reminded of how heavy water is and how much volume it takes up 8.4 gallons, something like that. Therefore the cost of moving water from one place to another is just incredibly high, crazy, because all that turns into diesel basically.
[Sheldon Young]
Unless you have some miraculous electric truck in your, in your area, that’s hauling away biosolids, which I don’t think there are too many, but still it’s costly. So yep. Dealing with it now is easier than dealing with it with a, with a checkbook for sure.
[Jason Moreau]
Exactly.
[Sheldon Young]
Okey dokey, my friend. Well, that was fun. I was, I, I’m a, this, this, uh, episode is being recorded.
I had to climate week next week. And then by the time this comes out, it’ll be after climate week. But I’m excited about that.
And the right after I go to WEFTEC and actually see, I’ll see Abraham there. Um, and talk to him about some of this stuff. It’s an exciting time to head.
And if you’re in New Orleans, people should come talk to you in person. And they should, if you’re coming to like WEFTEC or something, come on by. I’d love to, I’d love to chat with someone about this or any other, anything, frankly, I’m a, I’ll talk about almost anything when it comes to this stuff.
Pretty much. It’s always fun. Pretty much.
Uh, all right. So if you like this podcast, which I hope you do, we put a lot into it. Please follow like, subscribe, tell your friends, share it with your network, put it on LinkedIn.
Do you dare, right? This stuff really makes a difference to the success of what we do here. Uh, make sure to check out our website, nofootprintspodcast.com.
If you have ideas for a topic or a guest, feel free to reach out to us. Um, you know, either characters on LinkedIn or nofootprints.podcastalfalaval.com. It’s a L F a L a V a L.com.
That’s all I got. I say with this, let’s go, let’s go make sludge better again. How about that?
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Our company Alfa Laval is a global supplier of process solutions. So it’s very possible that the organizations our guests are with may use Alfa Laval or even our competitors’ products. This does not mean that we, the hosts or Alfa Laval are endorsing any of the companies, guests, or the specific ideas that we discuss.