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ENVIRONMENT
On the other hand, optimising the
system’s gas output can double the
chemical oxygen demand of ef uent.
In addition, the best gas requires
the most energy-rich materials,
such as animal waste or food waste
from farms or slaughterhouses, he
says; human waste, by contrast,
is relatively low-energy. In any case,
wastewater characteristics vary with the
type of waste processed.
GAS PRODUCTION VISION
So far, tests of the system have used
the gas generated from the process for
cooking purposes, which has the great
advantage of removing the need for rural
communities to use LPG, coal or wood.
However, Fudge envisions that future
trials might attach a gas collection bag
such as offered by Germany’s B Energy.
Doing so would allow communities
to transport the gas without needing
compression equipment.
Says Fudge: “Schools in Ghana have
to pay for pit latrines to be emptied, and
children have to pay for school dinners
with fuel. If they were to install one of
our systems, they wouldn’t have to pay,
Fudge knows,
South America and India.
“Working in wastewater stemmed
from when I was travelling. I was
working abroad in a school in Ghana,
and I noticed that the kids were getting
quite sick because of poor sanitation.”
That experience spurred him to return
to university to do a masters’ degree
(sustainability, entrepreneurship
and design at Brunel University,
2016), where he received a
scholarship to carry out further
research on the technology.
The scale of tests has gradually
ramped up during research; initially
500ml, one-litre and seven-litre laboratory
bench trials were followed by 30-litre and
nally 1,000-litre
(1m) systems.
The rst pilot
test trial unit
of the latter,
six months
treating toilet
waste on a
military site for an unnamed humanitarian
organisation, nished in 2019. Early
results from analysing the degradation
of the electrodes suggest that a system
could last at least 10 years.
In any case, it is now being developed
by a London-based spin-out from Brunel
University WASE (water and sustainable
energy) that was founded in early 2017
by Fudge and civil engineers Llyr Williams
and William Gambier. They now have
doubled their staff, hiring a lead research
engineer and two chemistry interns.
In 2018, Fudge won a £25,000
Santander University Entrepreneurship
Award for the product, and was a nalist
in the 2019 JC Gammon award from the
Royal Academy of Engineering, among
other awards.
WASE now has Innovate UK funding
to install two systems in Kenya, Uganda
and Tanzania in summer 2020. The rst
will aim to upgrade current anaerobic
digestion wastewater treatment
infrastructure at the Dadaab refugee
camp by installing a three-tank system,
with an aim to roll out further systems to
two other camps. The second is intended
to be used agricultural smallholdings in
Uganda and Tanzania. Following those
six-month trials, Fudge hopes to test
systems in schools next year, and is
currently looking for grants and funding to
support that work.
Back in the UK, apart from negotiating
plans to install a demonstration system
at an unnamed water utility, the designer
is also planning to install a 3-4m system
at a London microbrewery this summer
to treat process wastewater, as well as
generate gas for power.
In fact, Fudge is targeting the wider
UK food and drink manufacturing
sector to sell the product initially,
with the hope that orders for systems
will in time help to reduce manufacturing
costs.
and could use
some of the gas for
our system. That
creates a market
opportunity for
them.”
having seen these
conditions rsthand.
His rst exposure
to the wider world
was as a teenager,
when he travelled to
Mongolia on a World
Challenge school
trip and worked
in an orphanage.
After graduating
from Bournemouth
University in 2013
(BSc, product design), he travelled to
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