Inspiration
What it does
How we built it
Challenges we ran into
Accomplishments that we're proud of
What we learned
What's next for AZOLLA RECIFIER
Kitchen Grey Water is water that has been used for food preparation and cleaning crockery, cutlery and cooking utensils including greasy pans.
The storage of Kitchen Grey Water can give rise to anaerobic conditions which promote putrid smells and increase of pathogens.
The re-use of untreated Kitchen Grey Water is restricted because of potential contamination and structural breakdown of soil by oils and fats, sodium salts that result from the use of soaps and detergents.
The following description demonstrates a low-cost, practical treatment of Kitchen Grey Water that will achieve the requirements of Storage and Re-use.
Note that ‘General Grey Water’ refers to sullage deriving from lavatories, showers, wash basins and laundries, which has the potential to carry pathogenic organisms. This risk is reasonably regarded (but debatably) absent from Kitchen Grey Water and thus making the entire treatment process simpler and easier to safely manage.
EXPERIMENTS
Over the past three years the author has conducted numerous experiments in the use of azolla for removing polluting nutrients from grey water. These have been small, domestic experiments, based on the established fact that azolla is able to reduce phosphates in water.
Phosphates accumulate in plant tissues and facilitate energy transfer during the process of photosynthesis. Decomposition of plant material by fungi, bacteria and soil biota releases phosphates and other nutrients. The experiments investigated different processes involving water that is passed through a zone of decomposition which carries nutrients into a pond where azolla is growing.
The experiments were conducted to determine if sufficient phosphate would be provided by the system to enable azolla’s growth on a sustainable and continuing basis.
The following text, diagrams and photographs show the proposed system resulting from the experiments. This may be upgraded based on future experiments.
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