Underground bioreactor – solution for waste handling?

The Cooperative Research Centre (CRCCARE) is noted as supporting a pilot scale project on biofuel generation. Currently they are working with piggery waste for the pilot.  The advantage for that industry is where waste did tend to be disposed of onto land and into water ways, and although some improvements had been put in place for larger farms to convert solid and liquid wastes to biofuel, this development of an underground reactor system virtually eliminates to problems of odour contamination of the air and allows smaller and larger farms to get an improved environmental benefit from the process.

CO2Land org found it particularly interesting that the project has been running 3 years, and CRCCARE has successfully run the trials under laboratory and field conditions.

We look forward to hearing of the technology being scaled up to large-scale conversion of solid wastes to energy in the not too distant future.

Reported in Remediation Australia Issue 9 2012.