That's what the Bio Thermic Digester is," he explains. We were then able to take large quantities of organic material and very rapidly reduce it down to its minimum consistency. "What we did is create an in-vessel composter on steroids, with a starting temperature of about 140☌ to 150☌ and a finishing temperature of anything up to 300☌ to 325☌. And because they flourished, the bulk of the organic material that entered the chamber became their food. In doing so it created a chamber where it could control the environment so that extremophiles flourished.
"Our background is that we're a deep sea exploration company, so we got the extremophiles from underwater volcanos." The company used these organisms from the deep and applied them to the concept of in-vessel composting. "Well, there's a thing out there called extremophiles - bacteria that live in temperatures way above 100☌ all the way up to 1000☌." "We harvested our extremophiles several years ago," he adds. "We asked what type of bacteria would eat all of this organic waste and clean up the in-organic waste, all in one machine?" he explains. According to Shaw, while these bacteria do work, the process is slow, and if you're producing hundreds of tonnes of waste you need something that's fast. The Bio Thermic Digester The company did a lot of development on its client's in-vessel composting machine and quickly realised that thermophilic bacteria - composting bacteria - wouldn't do. It was designed to do green waste or 'off the plate waste', but not both at the same time'," he adds. They never will do the way that it's designed. "You're putting all these different things in and it's causing a bit of a caustic cocktail for the bacteria and they're not flourishing. Because of Advetec's understanding of microbial activity, and what gets microbes to work much faster, the company soon came to the conclusion that the machine would work just fine - if it processed half a load at a time. “Our primary business was in dealing with organic loads in wastewater and what we developed as a company were biostimulants,” he elaborates. "One of our clients had bought this machine but it wouldn't get rid of all the different types of food waste that they were throwing in - a very varied mix with lots of grease, fats, oils, vegetable material, meats - everything," Craig Shaw, the company's founder and CEO tells WMW. But that all changed when a client asked it to look at a solids issue it was having with an in-vessel composter.
It had developed different strains of nutrients for nurturing various species of bacteria in different liquid effluents - and that was the company's focus. By Ben Messenger Until six or seven years ago, Bath, UK based biotech firm, Advetec was largely involved with the biological treatment of wastewater. However, a newly commercialised technology that exploits the 'super powers' of extremophile organisms offers the potential to cut that to £2 per tonne. In many countries landfilling is increasingly expensive due to taxation, while gate fees at energy recovery facilties can be costly. Deep sea diving: The extremophiles were harvested several years ago from underwater volcanoes Disposing of waste is becoming a major expense for businesses.