Liquid waste cleaner all go

COMING CLEAN: Viclink chief executive John Errington with liquid waste and the result after Wetox deals with it. The export and environmental potential of Wetox is a great example of how academia and business could be brought together, he says.

Polluted waterways from "dirty dairying" or manufacturing may soon be inexcusable if a new product being commercialised by Victoria University has anything to do with it.

Viclink, the university's commercial arm, has revealed a new technology called Wetox which turns liquid waste into clean water and several other useful by-products.

Invented by a PhD student at Victoria, Wetox could have great international potential, Viclink believes.

"After media attention last week we've had inquiries from all over the world," said Sophie Howard, commercialisation manager for Wetox and Viclink.

In 45 minutes, Wetox heat-treats the waste and breaks it down into safe water, fertiliser and acetic acid – a common industrial solvent.

The process may even be carbon neutral. The heat and steam given off can be used to drive a turbine and the water can be reused or discharged safely.

The technique is a big improvement on the current practices of paying to discharge into a river, or smelly ponds which break the waste down for spraying on paddocks.

The method, "wet air oxidation", had already been commercialised but the cost of the plant had been prohibitive, Mrs Howard said.

"There's only ever been single figures built around the world because it's so expensive. Our research really brought down the cost and it's the first time it can be cost-effective for small or medium producers to be able to afford such a plant on their production line."'

With the permission of the PhD student who came up with the process, Viclink sought patents, secured initial funding and established market potential in Europe and North America.

The European market is expected to be especially interested because of its strict legislation on wastewater.

Hopes are high a commercial model can be on the market within the next 18 months.

Mrs Howard said the inventor, Michael Richardson, finished his thesis a few years ago and is now running his own IT business, but he and his supervisor were involved as consultants.

It was now all systems go to get a pilot plant up and running by the end of the year.

The researchers are working to bring down the unit costs of Wetox as much as possible. A chief executive has been appointed to line up potential customers.

One of those customers is likely to be Wellington meat processor Taylor Preston, which has already been supplying samples for lab testing.

Chief executive Simon Gatenby said the firm was excited to be involved and was "looking forward to being able to gain benefit from a part of the waste stream that was previously a problem".

Mrs Howard said investors for the commercial scale-up would eventually be sought and she was hopeful the manufacturing would remain in New Zealand. "The design and intellectual property's here. Whether we can keep the manufacturing here forever – say the main market's in the States, it might be cost effective to do the manufacturing closer to source but on a contract basis."

And it could be a real money spinner, she says. "Absolutely yes. We know that if it's going to at least break even here, with, say, a smallish dairy farmer. When you take it to a different market where their costs of waste management are so much higher, they would be paying an absolute fortune to get rid of their waste at the moment, and so this becomes a really profitable thing for us to sell to them."

- © Fairfax NZ News