‘Energy at our backyard’: Xavier U offers clean, RE resource from wastes
by Manuel Cayon, https://www.facebook.com/, https://www.facebook.com/BusinessMirror/ · BusinessMirror- Manuel Cayon
- October 6, 2024
- 4 minute read
CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY—The newest science laboratory at the Xavier University in this city has ignited a flint of promise for a greener environment for the Northern Mindanao region, addressing the critical question on optimizing the use of municipal and industrial wastes while generating energy in the process.
The laboratory at the university’s Department of Chemical Engineering is refining the waste-to-energy technology. Unlike the conventional technology, it will skip the incineration process, focusing instead on deriving hydrogen from waste water generated by factories and plantations.
The Green Biohydrogen to Energy (Green Bio-H2E) Research and Development Laboratory (R&D Lab) would then use the bio-hydrogen as the main resource for energy, mainly in the form of electricity, offering a promise for the Philippines to derive an alternative source of power that is clean and renewable “right from our backyard.”
High hopes
The Green Bio-H2E laboratory developed from the urgent concerns and needs not only of the highly urbanized Cagayan de Oro City but also for the entire Northern MIndanao, whose 5.02 million population either have to brace the risk of the environment impact of the solid and liquid wastes generated by the factories and plantations.
Or, whose wastes are themselves generated by the households, which are a major source of waste water that have been always dumped back into the environment.
“It has to be addressed in a cleaner and sustainable way because domestic waste water alone is mostly coming from the households.” said Dr. Shierlyn S. Paclijan, the project leader of the Green Bio-H2E R&D Lab.
Treating waste water, Paclijan added, “would cost a lot of energy, and that finding or sourcing it is a need that has become as pressing as ever.”
As cities struggle with mounting solid waste turning their sanitary landfills into mountains of trash, Paclijan said the laboratory would help reduce the accumulation of toxic liquid waste, like leachate, from the landfills before they percolate underground, and from the waterways before draining out to the seas or oceans.
Because of the extraction of the liquid waste, it would turn out most likely that the trash may be sent further to the next useful form, like raw materials for fertilizer or waste-catching dry bed for animal manure.
Rather than the trash thrown directly to the landfill, extracting the garbage for their green hydrogen content may be the next best thing for Northern Mindanao to slow down the accumulation of solid waste.
Paclijan said the trash collection would concentrate on extracting their liquid content to be subjected to microbial electrolysis, the emerging technology to derive the green hydrogen, the cleaner version of hydrogen used in power plants.
Electrolysis will break down the molecules into their basic atomic elements to extract hydrogen, to derive the resource for energy storage, and to break down further the erstwhile unusable garbage to other uses.
“We are returning the resources back to the environment in a clean slate to enhance the circular economy, a principle given due recognition by the United Nations Development Programme [UNDP] Philippines for ensuring a sustainable environment.
“We will see in the immediate future how many factories or plantations may tap this clean and renewable technology to address their mounting waste generated from their specific production activities,” said Engr. Hercules R. Gascon, dean of Xavier University College of Engineering.
The Lab
The Green Bio-H2E R&D Lab has already acquired the basic chemistry equipment like the dark fermentation gadget and the microbial electrolysis cells and microscopes.
It was given a space in the engineering building and a funding of P6.332 million, withP1.32 million coming from the university, and P4.99 million from the Philippine Council for Industry, Energy, and Emerging Technology Research and Development of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST-PCIEERD).
Caroline Jacot, a sophomore Chemical Engineering student and Deux Konstantin V. Echavez, a graduating Chemical Engineering, looked at the laboratory as significant addition to the common laboratories of many schools for their engineering, physics, biology and chemistry courses.
“This helps us understand better the concepts of renewable energy [RE], sustainability and innovation which are all theoretical. Now we understand why there must be a sustainble environment or innovation in the way we operate the machines and gadgets,” they said.
However, there are still challenges to hurdle, Paclijan added, whose graduate studies on waste-to-energy is expected to be the crucial talent behind the technology.
“We have to find ways to generate adequate supply of the microbes that would break down the substrates into hydrogen,” she said.
The laboratory would also need more talents and researchers to meet the needs of corporations, factories and plantations, saying each of them have specific designs and processes because of the differences in the raw materials they use and the waste they generate.
She cited for example the cassava processor whose waste from the root crop has its own liquid waste water as compared to a pineapple plantation, whose wastes are from pulp and pineapple skin.
The challenge would also come from livestock farms which have odorous and objectionable smelling-liquid waste water.
Northern Mindanao has 47 manufacturing plants alone, many in agricultural industry like poultry and piggery, Paclijan said.
“We will be generating 8,000 cubic meters per day by 2025 and treating them would cost a lot in terns of energy to be used,” she added.
“We always have a problem in sourcing energy to power our electricity, and this time, we have a potentially good alternative,” she noted.
Prospects
Jesuit Father Mars P. Tan, university president, said it would be up to the project team and the DOST to chart the path of the laboratory and the technology.
He said he was open to the possibility of allowing the facility to be the center of mentoring or fellowship for other academicians who would be trained in the application of the technology.
He also promised organizers and the project team that the laboratory has a priority space in the future campus of Xavier University in uptown Cagayan de Oro University.
“We are still in our initial phase of the project, and whatever development stages we would track will hopefully see a cleaner Northern MIndanao region and a better circular economy in the area,” Paclijan said.
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Manuel Cayon
Manuel T. Cayon has written about Mindanao for national newspapers for more than two decades, mostly on conflict reporting, and on the political front. His stint with TODAY newspaper in the ’90s started his business reporting in Mindanao, continuing to this day with the BusinessMirror. The multiawarded reporter received a Biotechnology journalism award in January 2019, his third. A fellow of the US International Visitors’ Program Leadership in 2007 on conflict resolution and alternative dispute resolution, Manuel attended college at the Mindanao State University and the Ateneo de Davao University.
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