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A new study by Scottish Water Horizons for Scottish Renewables makes a kind of obvious if a little yucky suggestion. Why don’t we recycle the heat from wastewater and sewage? Currently, it all gets lost in the recycling process. By recovering this energy, the group claim dramatically:
‘Scotland’s sewers could contain enough natural heat to warm Glasgow for more than 15 years.’
I take it that they mean the current quantity of sewage could do that so if we keep up our efforts, the supply is infinite?
The water and sewage we flush away contains huge amounts of thermal energy. Every day Scots flush away 921 litres of wastewater and sewage. The temperature in sewers is often as high as 21 degrees C. Further, this method would mean preventing 10 000 tonnes of CO2 from entering the atmosphere.
https://www.energyvoice.com/otherenergy/142020/waste-water-heat-scottish-cities-study-claims/
Add this to the renewables and oil/gas boom and it’s hard to see what we do with it all. Sell it?
Talking-up Scotland 
Hi John, did you find a copy of the actual study? I had a search, but mostly just found more waffle news pieces. They have a trial in a Borders college and seem to be using heat recovery pumps on the sewage network – but the claims of being able to heat Glasgow for 15 years,,, not sure about that! I need more information 🙂 . I kind of work in water and wastewater, hence my interest.
There are lots of other innovations too, using biogas to power the sewage treatment works for instance, but these look like they need too much money to bring into being – so an ideological self-powering sewage treatment system does not seem to be economically viable at the moment. Maybe it just needs more prominence & grant funding? Wouldn’t it be great to have waste being fully recycled? A sustainable society!
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