Bluetector- Winning Over the Pooh by Converting Manure to Water
David Din is the Founder and CEO of Bluetector, based in Switzerland. Previously he was a Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Epuramat, a wastewater technology company. David is active in the field of sewerage since 2005.
He started Bluetector on his own at a site of Bluetector’s first client building a prototype to treat the wastewater from mobile toilet cabins. In his previous life, he was a banker at UBS and later a Director at Schroder’s Bank. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst
Interview with CEO of Bluetector, David Din
AV: How did your prior experience with treating wastewater from mobile toilet cabins lead you to the treatment of manure?
DD:We would never have dreamed of finding a solution for manure that is solely based on a biological treatment, as all the experts in water treatment just knew this to be impossible. The nutrients in manure are about 100x more concentrated than in normal wastewater, and especially the high nitrogen and ammonia content has toxic effects on the biology of a wastewater treatment plant. However, as we developed our treatment process to clean the wastewater from mobile toilet cabins and arrived at a low-cost working solution, I realized that this highly concentrated wastewater is very similar to pig manure. That's when we decided to try out our system with pig manure - and it worked like a charm.
Our ambitions at the beginning were modest: we were happy to have secured the world leader in mobile toilet cabins as our client, and we were content with a market potential of about 200 systems for this client. But manure - this has a totally different dimension! Manure has become a serious problem all over the world. As there was no solution to stop the environmental polluting with manure, governments were not really able to put limits on manure. We believe that this will change once our systems gain traction and will be installed on more and more farms globally. The market potential of manure is mind blowing, and livestock farms in Europe are achieving strong instant cost savings from using our system. In short: it was an easy decision to switch our focus to manure.
AV:Describe how your patent pending biological process removes nitrogen from manure?
DD:Bluetector's treatment systems combine anaerobic and aerobic methods originating from traditional wastewater treatment with our proprietary bioaugmentation and controlled anammox processes, achieving an almost complete nitrification and denitrification for manure and biogas digestate treatment, without the need to add chemicals or carbon sources to maintain the biological processes. Due to our purely biological processes, the operating costs of our systems are low.
During nitrification, ammonia is oxidized to nitrite, which is then oxidized to nitrate in a second step. The nitrogen bound in the nitrate is converted by denitrification to molecular nitrogen (N2), i.e., it is converted into a form that is largely inert and cannot be used as a nutrient by most living organisms. As a result, the nitrogen is no longer available as a fertilizer in waters and soils and is no longer environmentally relevant. Most of the molecular nitrogen (N2) produced is released into the atmosphere, in which it is the main component anyway.
Thanks to our specially developed biological process, Bluetector has succeeded for the first time in achieving an almost complete denitrification in the treatment of manure and biogas digestate, without the need to add any chemicals or carbon sources. As a result, Bluetector achieves previously unattained degradation rates in the nitrogen content of approximately 98% on average.
AV: Describe how the bioaugmentation gives positive effects on the treatment of manure?
DD:The process of nitrification/denitrification after anaerobic digestion systems is a problem, since both the biogas production and denitrification require carbon. It would require up to50% less biogas production so that there is sufficient carbon for N removal through nitrification/denitrification. Thanks to our patent-pending bioaugmentation, Bluetector does not require the addition of chemicals or carbon sources for its biological treatment, even with fermentation residues from the production of biogas. Our proprietary bioaugmentation breaks down organics which contain carbon that conventional bacteria are not be able to decompose and turn them into readily available carbon which can be used for the denitrification.
In addition, our bioaugmentation requires less oxygen for the nitrification, thereby using much less energy, and it produces almost no surplus sludge - thereby causing less waste.Our bioaugmentation actually has the potential to also revolutionize wastewater treatment globally.
AV:How do you achieve economies of scale in your Bluetector box as the volume of manure grows in the same area?
DD:A wastewater treatment plant is a complex system. We put in an overkill of electronics and sensors in order to easily remote-control our Boxes, but we want to make sure that they work smoothly around the clock. That's why we invest in local maintenance teams that are able to fine-tune machines at the farmers' sites and to carry out repairs of pumps if needed. Additionally, we also want to be able to run de-centralized plant where the remaining solids from our systems are collected and turned into valuable fertilizer in the form of pellets. These pellets contain the phosphorous which has become a precious resource.
AV:Mobile transports to take manure from farmers in Europehave become a huge industry, giving Bluetector tremendous cost savings. However, in India and China, manure is found closer to the source either the farms or in waters. How does Bluetector achieve these cost savings as you scale in Asia?
DD:Authorities in India and China are no longer putting their efforts in a conventional command-and-control way to livestock farms, but more in the form of incentives and stimulation, i.e., the situation in Asia has become similar to the one in Europe. We expect that livestock farms in Asia will receive comparable incentives as farmers in Europe that are using our systems, like being able to apply much larger quantities of treated effluent water from our BlueBox compared to the distribution of the untreated manure. This should lead to similar cost saving structures for the livestock farms.