WATER IS LIFE !

What is the one thing all life forms need to live and grow?  I'll give you a couple of hints in advance, no, it is not "air", and no, it is not "oxygen".

There are plants and animals that live in 400 °F water in geysers and at equally hot volcanic vents on the ocean floor.  There are plants and animals that live at temperatures below freezing, in the tiny bits of water between ice crystals (yes, below "freezing" because the ice can be salt water at less than 0° Celsius).  But the one thing all these life forms, and the ones that live in "normal" temperatures cannot live without is ....  WATER.

Most people who will be reading this are fortunate enough not to have to worry very much on a daily basis about will there be "enough" water, or will the water be "safe" to drink or wash in it.  But that's not true everywhere, and we want to help fix that.

"How can an energy company do that?" you might ask.  The answer is quite simple, really, we designed our processes to address this essential need.

DaoChi Energy of Arizona (if you don't know Arizona, it is mostly a huge, hot, dry desert in the Southwestern United States of America) has  created processes and is simply adapting several other processes to make fuels.  We do it by taking "wastes" from civilization, generally things that for most of history society has believed they needed to "get rid of", or "destroy" or just plain bury, and use modern processes to turn these wastes  into the chemicals that can be used as fuels.  Society evolved over millions of years from only burning wood and grasses, to oils, and more recenly "petroleum" which  just means "oil" ("oleum") from "rock" ("petro") based on the ancient Latin words for these things.  But now we believe we are running out of oil, or will be in the not too distant future, and we also feel that adding all the carbon in these fuels to the atmosphere is putting the whole planet in danger of potentially disastrous global climate changes.  We are therefore looking at new sources of energy, and processing wastes from society is one of the most practical ways of doing this.

How does all of this aid in creating more safe drinking water in the world?  Isn't the usual way just to "dig a hole" and let the earth fill it by gravity with water from the natural underground sources?   That used to be true, but not only have wells evolved with technology, but also sources of pure, clean, drinkable water have gotten a lot harder to find, especially where a lot of people are gathered together in cities, or in places suffering from long periods without rainfall (sometimes years, due in part to climate change).   Wells are now usually "drilled" by machinery, and lined with pipe to prevent cave-ins.  Even ancient wells were lined with stones or bricks. But even now, that is not enough to get drinkable water.

The water that flows underground via gravity but above the more waterproof layers of rocks and clays below the surface of the earth is known as "groundwater", and unfortunately, especially where people are gathered in large concentrations this groundwater is polluted by human wastes.  The human wastes also contain or promote the growth of bacteria that infect humans.  Bacterial infections are what we call "diseases", and diseases like Cholera, dysentery, diarrhea, malaria, and many others that have killed millions every year for centuries are still common in under-developed countries of the world.  

So how is DaoChi Energy helping to "create" clean water?  Are they drilling "oil" wells that get water from deep in the earth?  No.  Quite the contrary, we are creating processes that use human wastes to make fuel.  We can also use agricultural waste, which is to say, livestock manure, and even what is known as "municipal solid wastes" (also known as MSW) (about 70% of MSW is just cellulose based material like paper and packaging, vegetable peels and landscape trimmings [these figures are for North American typical landfill content, other regions can be significantly different, but still problematic disposal problems]).

How does DaoChi Energy get the digestive wastes of humans into their facilities?  This requires that collection infrastructure must be built.  That is to say, we need to have a sewer system to transport sewage to our processing plants.   If a sewage system does exist, a DaoChi Energy facility can be located next to the sewage processing operation. It is likely that any existing system can and should be expanded. If none exist, construction of sanitation capabilities must be both a social and industrial priority.

Isn't the construction of sewer the business of governments?  Yes, we absolutely need local, state and probably even federal government cooperation in developing this kind of infrastructure.  

Are there no sewers in most places where humans live?  Unfortunately, there are no sewer systems where a very large percentage of the world's population live.  Modern cities in industrialized countries are planned and built with a foundation of sewer systems, but older cities, and especially places where poor people have merely "taken refuge" in shacks and shaky structures of whatever materials they can scrounge from dumps and roadside ditches have no way to either provide water to the residents, or carry away the tremendous daily accumulation of human wastes.  It is not a subject that "polite" people talk about, but it is a fact, and a very sad situation.

Isn't it EXPENSIVE (with capital letters, expensive, as in VERY expensive) to build sewers?  YES.   Adding to the challenges is the fact that local governments are slow to spend money on infrastructure in districts that will not create tax revenues, building contracts (and permit fees), business development, or other things that add to local government revenues (and politicians' own incomes).  And, by contrast to new modern housing and business and industrial districts, the population areas that have poor sanitation are mainly poor people with little or no voice in terms of government representation.  However, DaoChi Energy projects offer several attractive features which create economic incentives for government infrastructure spending on sewage building and expansions.

The larger the quantities of sewage delivered, the more fuel output a DaoChi Energy facility can produce.  This can represent tax revenue for the governments growing in direct proportion to the amount of sewage they can deliver, and therefore the size of the DaoChi facility capacity.  But DaoChi Energy facilities do not produce only jet fuel.  Part of the process to create the fuel from sewer sludge also creates heat.  The heat is not wasted.  The heat is largely recovered through modern heat exchangers and converted into electric energy.  Such electric energy can be used in a variety of ways.   Electricity can serve to power (part or all of) an adjacent industrial development park.  The electricity can also be used to power local homes, or schools, or desalination plants if seawater is available, thus providing an additional supply of potable water for the community, or even could be used to pump distant seawater to a  local desalination facility.  Similarly, some or all of the heat could be used to directly perform distillation desalination (like a power plant built by the German engineering firm, Siemens, does in Mexico, in contrast to the way most North American power plants merely both the heat and extra water in evaporative cooling towers).

An optional feature of DaoChi Energy processing plants is to use algae for secondary sewage effluent cleanup.  This natural organic process is coming into common use around the world, however DaoChi Energy has, again, developed innovative methods of integrating this in the water and energy process.  DaoChi has designed (and recently filed a patent application) for an apparatus that allows concentrated cultivation of algae, though depending on numerous factors including climate, building construction costs and land costs and availability, this system may or may not be used for the algae cultivation.  In addition to acting as a natural cleaning agent on the sewage effluent, the algae itself can be processed into biodiesel fuel and the residuals can be used either as livestock fodder (high in proteins and low in fats) or processed into other nutriceutical or nutritional supplements.  

NOTE #1: Algae is currently already being used in at least a couple of malnutrition and starvation prevention programs in rural Africa.  Algae is not a traditional human food in most parts of the world, but it is also potentially a nutritious food, or recipe ingredient.  
NOTE #2: After extraction of the oils from algae, depending on the process used, the residual portion of the cells containing protein and starches and basic sugars can still be used.  Some or all of the starches and sugars can be turned into ethanol by traditional means of fermentation (or cellulosic type fermentation in the case of cellulosic and hemicellulosic long chain carbohydrates).
NOTE #3:  The "food vs. fuel" "debate" is largely a manufactured urban myth based on speculation that eventually there COULD be a conflict.  That is not an ethical and moral dilemma that should be ignored, but it is not an imminent danger either.  There is no actual worldwide shortage of food supplies.  Actual food shortages are almost entirely a political problem, or an economic issue, which may also be related to illegal activities and official corruption.  Canada, Britain, the USA, and Australia all have government programs that pay farmers NOT to grow certain crops in order to help maintain local prices and markets.  Short stemmed hybrid varieties of grains, including rice, have virtually eliminated the vast systemic shortages of India and much of Asia.  There is no shortage of food worldwide, there are just problems of equitable and economic distribution.  Charitable organizations can provide temporary relief in the face of floods and droughts bringing on local famine, but the long term benefits are not nearly as much as the kind of sustainable economic and infrastructure development that DaoChi Energy projects provide.

In all cases, DaoChi Energy projects remove sewage sludge at a stage at which the effluent (waste water) is sufficiently decontaminated that it could be introduced into a "gray water" recycling system.  In most cases the introduction of ozonization of the water (a better disinfecting agent than chlorine based chemicals) and ultraviolet light treatment to destroy any possible remaining pathogens would likely be sufficient to meet potable water needs, thus recycling the water itself.  In extreme cases, at minimum the water could be either "pasteurized" or "boiled" or possibly even distilled if necessary using process heat recovery and or electricity generated by the DaoChi Energy operations.

What are the incentives to local, state or federal authorities to implement such large infrastructure projects in support of DaoChi Energy facilities?

* DaoChi facilities are themselves industrial development projects in the millions of US dollars in terms of local economic growth.
* DaoChi Energy becomes a supplier to the local airport, offering "green" jet fuel which not only does not have fossil carbon content from petroleum sources, but also has no unnecessary energy expenditures to transport the fuel from distant refineries.  The local jet fuel retail  vendor's operation is also a beneficiary of this arrangement.  (Unless major airlines or associated entities have "take off" contracts for the entire DaoChi production volume at any particular location.)
* DaoChi Energy facilities will be the hub of a new industrial tax base, not only itself, but also by making electric power available to an adjacent industrial park.
* Fresh water can be created by the sewage processing system in several ways, from distillation, desalination, and just eliminating groundwater contamination due to improved sanitation (as a direct effect of the creation of additional sewer lines).
* Improved sanitation creates more stable local workforce by also reducing healthcare costs, improving infant mortality rates and providing  generally healthier workers.
* World Bank, United Nations, and other international development funds and agencies are eager to help with this kind of overall integrated development, so the local economy also may receive a significant injection of capital from these NGO sources.
*  Improved sanitation means less (hopefully zero) raw sewage in local lakes, streams and rivers which enhances tourism appeal or potential.
*  Innovative and highly integrated "green" industrial development may actually spawn "eco-tourism" interest for the advanced level of desirability of these kinds of "closed loop" recycling systems.

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And thank you for your interest.