Solving one of our oldest, hardest problems by turning human waste into fuel
Harmaan Madon has a vision he is putting into action to solve one of the oldest, most challenging, potentially impactful yet unsexy problems in human history.
“What do we do with our human waste? How do we deal with the growing amount of human faeces?” Even in the most developed nations, there is massive inefficiency and problems created by waste processing systems.
In Europe complex infrastructure and energy intensive facilities are used to collect, dehydrate and incinerate waste. This uses huge amounts of energy and creates terrible flu gases which require further treatment.In America, it is buried. Trains move waste from the urban centres to dumps in the rural areas.
In many parts of India, where Harmaan and his team are developing this technology, the social and environmental challenges are more in your face and brutal. The cheapest and most reliable methodology for millions of people, is to furnish daily wage earners with a bucket to clear septic tanks and simply move the waste into local waterways or spread it on open land.
For an agri-intensive economy like New Zealand, faecal sludge management is as much of a challenge for the farming sector as it is for towns and cities. New Zealand’s wastewater systems continue to face growing issues with waterways, soil health and landfill.
In short, no one has got this universal problem figured out.
From engineering cars to transforming waste
Harmaan stumbled into this problem from a background as a mechanical engineer in the auto industry.
“We were running experiments with Bio CNG derived from sewage, which was technically feasible but not commercially viable. The upgraded gas was too expensive to compete with petroleum.”
He had an insight around 2008/2009.
“India is a major agriculture producer. Crop residues are rich in carbon but have a nominal amount of nitrogen and not enough process water. Faecal matter has too much nitrogen and water. Take two things that are useless, combine them together in the right proportion to create the right gas mix.”
He began working on this hypothesis with local universities and testing solutions, slowly making the commitment to spend his life solving this issue.
In 2017 he started the company and found a partner (TERI School of Advanced Studies) to test his hypothesis and prove it at a lab scale.
This research has continued to lead him to a non-obvious solution and process to turn waste into viable fuel. He has developed the patent and systems to create the first commercial operation and move the project out of the lab and towards real world impact.
A chance for NZ to lead the world
Harmaan believes the biggest barrier to this solution is that it hasn’t been done before. “Innovation and inertia are contra-indicated!”
With the building blocks in place, the work is now to bring the first commercial plant to life. His company has been awarded its first commercial opportunity by Pune Smart City Development Corporation in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, and is now awaiting allocation of the land for the first facility.
New Zealand is among the first countries in the world to take a more holistic view in treating and disposing of faecal waste. Impressed by NZ’s creation of a Centre for Integrated Biowaste Research, or CIBR, Harmaan applied to the Edmund Hillary Fellowship. After joining EHF he made a trip to New Zealand, to begin the process of making connections and scoping the needs. Although different in many ways from India, the same potential for huge systemic environmental, economic and political gains exist by addressing the waste problem in Aotearoa, New Zealand.
There are obvious environmental gains such as reducing pollutants in waterways and landfill. There are also significant social and economic benefits of turning waste into jobs and new fuel sources, offsetting the emissions from landfill and recapturing the primary nutrients of nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus (NPK) which are valuable resources that can be further processed for use in regenerative agriculture.
“Processing all of NZ’s organic waste could supply 2.5 times the country’s current energy needs for surface transport, while simultaneously off-setting the equivalent of 50 million tonnes of GHG emissions annually. It could also help to preserve hundreds of millions of dollars of value in fertiliser imports. If this is the potential impact in NZ, imagine what we could achieve at global scale?”
The first steps…
Through connections and support from other EHF Fellows, Harmaan is in early conversation with Wellington City and Greater Wellington Regional Councils. Both have had recent significant public challenges with waste-water infrastructure. Preliminary conversations with other regions including New Plymouth district council, Christchurch City Council and Nelson-Tasman are also underway. Further, Harmaan is seeking to collaborate with Lincoln University’s Energy Demonstration Farm, which is supported by MPI to build a proof of concept serving the needs of a dairy farm with an average stockholding of 500 heads of cattle.
Harmaan’s work represents a rare opportunity to tackle a global issue with systemic benefits that positions New Zealand as a global leader in innovation. The next steps are to continue these discussions, grow the visibility of this idea and work with investors to bring the first trials to life. To learn more about this project connect with Harmaan.
Journey with us
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