Wastewater in a sewage treatment plant is filtered to remove waste particles and contaminants. The purpose is to clean the water prior to further treatment or discharge. This is done in three main stages:
– Coarse screening: Large objects such as plastics are removed.
– Fine filtration: Here, smaller particles such as toilet paper are filtered out of the water.
– Further treatment is applied to further decontaminate the water, depending on the desired water quality.
The residue harvested as paper pulp can be reused in several ways.
The ICABUS’ innovative screening system removes toilet paper pulp from sewage before the treatment process begins.
Wastewater must be screened first, then treated. This reduces the dirt load, provides a better and more energy-efficient cleaning process and results in less sludge waste.
Thus, in a sewage treatment plant, first of all, the coarse materials are removed from the sewage. This is to prevent pipes and pumps from becoming clogged. Usually this is done with sieves that have an opening of up to 6.00 millimeters . However, these sieves do not stop toilet paper pulp.
Fine screening
There are fine screens with openings of 0.35 to 0.50 millimeters for it. Several sewage treatment plants have since been equipped with finescreens but large-scale application has never materialized Because of the high investment and operatingcosts.
Toilet paper filtering
The Icabus extracts screenings from sewage. Screenings consist of: paper fibers (cellulose hemi-cellulose and lignin) Macro pollutants (hairs and fleece) Mircro pollutants (grease, protein and bacteria) and Inert (sand).
Toilet paper consists of short fibers with low branching, making it soft and falling apart quickly, making recycling difficult. The material’s micropollution and odor make it difficult to reuse, especially since burning it causes odor. Applications for recycled toilet paper are limited to situations where the origin of the fiber is less important, such as digestion or asphalt production, or where companies value waste-to-product policies.
Toilet paper is the drain of the paper industry. Toilet paper uses relatively short fibers, with a low degree of branching. This makes the paper soft and makes it fall apart easily. So returning toilet paper to the paper cycle is not very obvious. Purgatoria’s ICABUS changes this and does sift toilet paper – cost-effectively and with relatively large screening holes – from sewage!
