Need more water? PUB aims to produce more with same amount of resources
Channel NewAsia - SINGAPORE: Every time you go to the toilet, your waste enters the sewers as used water, gets treated at a water reclamation plant, then processed into NEWater or released into the sea.
The treatment process also produces sludge, a mud-like mixture of solid and liquid bits that goes into the incinerator and then dumped in the landfill.Sounds simple enough, but there's a problem: It's not just a bit of mud.
Singapore consumes 430 million gallons of water a day (mgd), enough to fill 782 Olympic-sized swimming pools, and generates 300,000 tonnes of sludge a year, equivalent to the weight of 3,000 buses.
These figures are not about to go down. By 2060, when Singapore is set to use twice the amount of water it does now, it will generate 600,000 tonnes of sludge annually.
This presents a challenge, as Semakau Landfill is projected to run out of space by 2035 at the current rate waste is being generated and burnt.
Enter national water agency PUB, which is trying to recycle more of the sludge into biogas, an important source of energy.
PUB is already turning some of the sludge into biogas, which means its four water reclamation plants are 25 per cent energy self-sufficient.
This is because its plants have digestors that convert the organic matter in sludge into biogas, which can in turn power generators.
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