Mines Engineers Develops Household Wastewater Plant to Replace Septic Tanks, Save South Dakota’s Economy! – Dakota Free Press

South Dakota School of Mines chemical environmental scientist Dr. Maryam Amouamouha, may have South Dakota’s next big thing: a water filter to replace septic systems!

dr Amouamouha developed the Anaerobic Membrane Bioreactor with Electrolytic Regeneration (AMBER), a wastewater treatment system that screens, zaps and chemically treats wastewater to produce drinking water, compost and methane. The domestic version of the unit is 1.80 x 2.00 x 3.00 meters – smaller than some freezers – and would be cheaper than the typical septic tank and plumbing we currently install in rural homes that are not connected to central sewerage . The technology can be scaled up to purify process wastewater for neighborhoods, factories, and small towns.

Think of all the benefits this compact wastewater treatment system brings to rural South Dakota:

  1. Instead of flushing away our dwindling water resources after a single use, we can recycle water, relieving stress on our water systems.
  2. Recycling water to expand water supplies means South Dakota communities can support more population growth, more housing, more irrigation capacity, and more industrial development. (Enumerating these developments as benefits assumes that we believe growth is good and necessary.)
  3. We reduce pollution from old, leaky septic tanks and plumbing on the prairies and especially in the Black Hills, where the rocky soil has less filtration capacity than our clayey East River dirt.
  4. We get compost to use in our gardens and fields.
  5. We get methane to heat our homes, power our factories and reduce our dependence on imported fuel.
  6. Rural residential lots don’t need space for a septic tank and the lines that meander from there into the dirt that naturally filters our sewage, so developers will be able to subdivide all these large lots and make more room for more people create to build more houses. (Again, this point assumes that having more rural people living closer together is a good thing.)
  7. Denser rural development means a stronger tax base and more efficient use of rural roads, power lines, rural water connections and other services. (Ah, yes, maybe it’s really a good thing that more people in the country live closer together!)
  8. This on-site sewage system would be cheaper than building centralized sewage systems for rural housing developments, saving Lake Herman and other places close to my heart the extravagant expense and engineering effort of building and maintaining a sprawling centralized sewage system.
  9. This technology preserves the bold individualism of my Lake Herman tribe and spares good patriots the socialist dignity of centralized municipal sewerage!
  10. dr Amouamouha is a native of Iran, so installing AMBERs in every rural home in South Dakota would give every South Dakotan a stark reminder of the value of immigrants to South Dakota’s prospects for economic development.

The Governor’s Office of Economic Development sees the shine in this sh*** processor. GOED awarded Dr. Amouamouha received his highest Giant Vision prize of $20,000 in April. But we can’t get the good doctor’s waste water purifiers at Menards just yet: it has yet to get regulatory approval before it can start manufacturing the devices, which might go on sale later this year.

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