Profitable STP concept:

All sewage treatment plants (STP) in the world require the operation costs to sustain their
performance. The electrical power consumption and the sludge disposal costs make up the major
expenses of the operation cost. Most of the governments are able to pay for the initial capital
costs but find it difficult to maintain the high operation cost of the STP. Self sustainable
integrated STP is an integration of STP, Biogas/Cogen production system and Organic fertilizer
production system, not only to offset the operational cost of the whole system but to operate
profitable fertlizer producing factory.

The Biogas/Cogen production system

The biogas/cogen system is quite a standard system already used by many large scales STP, to
produce electricity to supplement the electrical power consumption of the STP. The primary and
secondary sludge generated from the STP along with the the segregated food waste are fed
directly to the high solids thermophilic anaerobic digesters to produce biogas, which in turn is fed
to the gas engine or microturbine to generate electricity.
With regard to the utilisation of biogas, the emphasis is on combined heat and power generation
(CHP).
There are other technologies that make use of biogas apart from engine-based CHP (such as
microgasturbines or fuel cells, or using biogas for the local supply of fuel), but these are
discussed only in so far as scientifically validated information is available to demonstrate the
economically worthwhile potential application of such technologies in the foreseeable future.
This research, therefore, focuses on the production of biogas using commercially available
processes and on the use of the biogas in an internal combustion engine to generate electric power
by commercially available technology.

Organic fertilizer Production system: Advanced mechanical composting technique

It is a new technology, which can convert the food waste and other biomass waste into palletized
organic fertilizer within 7 days. The best integration part of the system is that it can convert the
anaerobic sludge from high solids thermophilic anaerobic digestors in to palletized organic
fertilizer in three days only. It is a continuous process. The system uses the Aerobic Thermophilic
Fermentation (ATF) Process, which is different from the conventional composting process.
The system has a built in NPK blending system that can produce organic based fertilizer with
different NPK values suitable for different agriculture purposes. The specially blended fertilizer is
more effective for plant growth and thus can fetch a higher market price.