Eco Loos for Kenya

Kenya Engineer takes German Technology Home to Kenya to recycle Wastewater from Eco Loos

When Lucy Wanjiku graduated with a mechanical engineering degree and secured a job with an automotive firm, she still had a nagging feeling that she needed to do more. After working for a few years she decided to go to Germany for one and a half years for further studies.

While she was there she realised that unlike Kenya, Germany had no raw sewage flowing everywhere. “I learnt that most companies were recycling their sewage and this was new to me.

I saw this as a good idea and also a business back in Kenya since most of our raw sewerage is either directed to rivers or is left to flow everywhere,” she says. When she came back she worked with different companies, which were practising green technology of turning sewerage into clean water, but after four years she quit her job to start her company.

“Having gained enough knowledge I decided to give it a try and in partnership with the German government, Eco-Cycle Company was born last year,” she says. She was contracted by the German government to be selling and maintaining KLAERMAX Sequential Batch Reactor (SBR) systems in Kenya.

The system turns sewerage into clean treated water, which can be used for secondary purposes. “The water passes through three chambers before it is treated and stored. Within a certain time frame, a certain amount of wastewater is treated within an enclosed chamber,” she says.

The wastewater enters the pre-treatment chamber (also called sludge chamber). This chamber is needed to allow sedimentation of coarse material. Coarse materials sink to the bottom and the pre-treated effluent flows over into the next chamber with the help of a natural gradient.

The second chamber is the buffer tank serving as storage until the effluent is pumped into the reactor. Within the SBR Reactor the wastewater is treated in three eight-hour cycles per day.

The last and fourth chamber is the storage where the clean water is stored. Though people were at first reluctant to embrace the technology, it only took a couple of month to sensitise them and they were ready to accept it.

Then she realised that only rich families were able to apply the technology, despite the fact that her mission was to save everyone from the sewerage mess.

“I learnt that most families couldn’t afford this system and I decided to come up with another technology, which was be affordable to people from different backgrounds,” she says. She then discovered Enviro Loo, a toilet that uses wind and sun to provide a catalyst, which evaporates liquid and dehydrates solid matter.

Her new technology doesn’t use water and electric power because the two were the main hindrances. “The design of this toilet separates solid and liquid waste.

Human waste consists roughly 95 per cent liquid content and through ventilation and heat, dehydration and evaporation happens leaving you with only five per cent of dry and stable waste material, which is pathogen-free and can be used as manure,” she explains.

The toilet basin is designed in a way that when you use it the waste goes directly to the collection basin since it has a vertical pipe, which is connected to the collection point and because of these no water is needed for flushing.

The liquid waste drains into a liquid trap below the solid waste drying plate, which promotes dehydration and evaporation and creates aerobic condition that kills any harmful bacteria.

“Our pilot project is in Njiru and we hope that many people will begin to use this toilet because unlike traditionally where you need to excavate more than hundred metres to construct a latrine this one requires only one metre,”she adds.

She revealed that her plans are to ensure that every household will be using these toilets by the year 2020, not only because they don’t require water but also because they are affordable and no sewer line is required.

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Taxonomy

• Ecological Sanitation
• Sanitation
• Sanitation & Hygiene