To all:
I just got off the phone with Rene and there are three items:
1. while talking to him he was informed that court is adjourned till next week Mr Lunney spoke for an hour, and did not wish to have L Liebowitz testimony allowed, when Justice Cohen was going to look at the material in the next week, Mr Lunney said he would not cross examine Liebowitz on the material. So much for the trial and execution of Thermo Tech. I am sure some of the many spectastors will expand on this.
2. The purpose of my original call was to clarify the sewerage/ waste water issue. They do have a building permit complete with sewage permit. The evaporator, however, is heated with steam and in the process water is distilled. This water which is very clean and potable is flushed down the sewer system and is perfectly acceptable input to any sewer system. The concern about the Richmond plant (which is on Mission Island) is that the existing pump used to pump all the waste water from the island (including storm runoff) may not be large enough to handle the extra load. Rene did not have precise figures for this but it may be 200 gallons per hour for the Richmond plant. It may not be a problem but the water district authority is unable to say ahead of time. If capacity will be a problem then Thermo Tech will buy them a larger pump, end of story.
3. He had noticed some discussion on protein content and made several points:
The measurement of protein is always done on a dry weight. That is, if 10% protein in the incoming stream that means on a hundred lbs of waste coming in made up of fibre, fat, carbohydrates, water and protein, 10 lbs is dried protein. The bacteria feed on the carbohydrates and fibre and multiply enormously, enhancing protein to about 35%. The bacteria do not have a chance to start using the protein as the time is too short (typically 24 hours) before they are dried. This is typical input and output numbers for the process. This also why this is a much better process than either cooking or composting. Composting ends up using the protein and leaving the fibre which then still has to be disposed of and is not a valuable product, smells while it is working and takes a lot of land and is a very slow.
Regards to all,
Sheldon |
