Sechelt will see if turning biosolids into charcoal will help remove pharmaceuticals and hormones from the municipality’s wastewater as part of a field test being partially funded by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM).
The District will try using charred biosolids as a filter to run water through at the end of the treatment process. The project is expected to cost about $338,000 and FCM is providing $169,000 by way of a non-repayable grant.
“It’s an exciting opportunity for Sechelt,” said Paul Nash, wastewater treatment plant project coordinator, during the Nov. 5 council meeting where the idea was discussed.
“For several months, and in line with our sustainability plan, we’ve been looking at the options to enhance the level of treatment that we do to our water and in particular on the question of hormones and pharmaceuticals, which has been raised by various members of the public … When we’re looking at reusing the water, this is a potential issue.”
The filtering idea came from Nash, who saw a similar process using wood charcoal to filter water in Australia.
“There’s one process using a special type of charcoal for filtering called biochar that has a lot of potential. There’s all sorts of charcoal you can use for filtering water, but biochar seems to do it better, removes hormones, pharmaceuticals, ammonia, heavy metals, better than an activated carbon level filter medium,” Nash said.
“It’s also much cheaper and you can make it from wood, straw, paper and biosolids. Yes, we can make charcoal out of dewatered biosolids and use that as a filter medium for the water itself.”
He explained there are two parts to the field test, which is expected to take place next year.
“One is to make charcoal from biosolids and test it for the destruction of hormones and pharmaceuticals. The charring process actually destroys it all. And the second process is to filter the water through that biochar and then see how clean the water comes out at the other end,” Nash said.
“If it’s successful we will have a simple process for removing hormones and pharmaceuticals from both the effluent and the biosolids without needing any external chemicals or energy, and if we implement the water filtering, it will be the first such example in North America.”
Council was in favour of the idea with Mayor John Henderson noting that if it works, the process could be licensed and money could be made on the innovation.
