Worms are Turning Waste into Water At a Treatment Plant

Worms are turning waste into water at a Strathmerton treatment plant in what will be an Australian first.

‘‘We are using worms as the engine of our waste and water treatment plant,’’ Booth Transport project manager Brendan Edwards said.

Representative image, source: Pixabay

Common in Chile, the technology allows the business to clean 125million litres of wastewater a year, which comes from cleaning up to 50 tankers per day as well as silos.

‘‘The water treatment facility we have will be known as a worm farm ... Traditional methods are very costly, so using a worm farm is a cost-effective method by filtering for a start and then it will be sprayed onto the worms where the worms will be eating the food, so the fats and proteins, and then that will reduce the biological oxygen of that wastewater,’’ Strathmerton plant manager Michael Banfield said.

‘‘It will then go through a desalination process which remove the salts from that water.

‘‘That water can then be put back into the irrigation channel where the water can be reused for irrigation.’’

Mr Banfield said it was obvious from the start of the project that wastewater was going to be a problem.

‘‘As the plant was being built, wastewater was going to be a hassle.

‘‘Bringing milk in is fine but with all the cleaning and rinsing of the line it becomes a waste stream. This waste stream we are now able to clean up and be able to reuse any as clean water.’’

Read full article: Country News

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Taxonomy

• Treatment
• Treatment Plants
• Biological Treatment
• Biology
• Water Utility
• Utility Management
• Water microbiology
• Biological Engineering

4 Comments

1. Hello how can we today say that earthworms turn waste into water. In the compostors the earthworms and moreover all the microorganisms found there éliment the organic matter without producing any traces of water since it is necessary to moisten the medium constantly.
   A earthworm is an organic matter in the same way as a human being: it breathes, it drinks and it feeds on food. By this obligation to feed it produces organic waste. So by putting worms in a treatment plant, worms will eliminate the organic matter and will in no way produce water. It is a real heresy to be able to write this. 
   Now let's see the part of the living. A Earthworm lives in the Earth, it does not live in the water. Putting earthworms in water is killing them because they need free oxygen and not oxygen from water (H20) In addition if the earthworm is a living, it feeds exclusively like all living on earth, living. In sewage, the characteristic-biological-is dead. A living will automatically die. Only the living aquatic being can stay alive, but still need it that the environment in which they are immersed is all the characteristics-biological-necessary to their survival. 

2. We use this technology in India. Mostly earth worms are engaged in the waste cleaning process.

3. Interested in knowing how much is your waste water flow & how much is the foot print of the worm ponds.

4. You have discovered one of the many known secrets of the microbiological world.  Different species of worms have a wide variety of microbes/enzymes that actually do all of the water cleaning. A lot of work has already been done which organic waste can be bioprocessed by which species of worm. because of the past 30 years of success in the US the field is now gathering data with the ultimate goal of every organic compound listed to one or more species.  It may interest you to know that a flat worm from  the pacific ocean was used to clean radiation from nuclear waste water back in the 1970's. The species of microbe used was Archaea.  US military commissioned University of Texas at Austin to do the experiment. Dr Carl H. Oppenheimer Jr. lead scientists.  The same worm cleaning is being done in Peru by the Incas. At least 700 years of experience.  Kudos to all.