Thomas Czoske, the technical director of ECO Water Solution GmbH, was invited to the lecture by BEW - the training center for supply and disposal companies. On November 22, 2021, the event "16th BEW technical talks: small sewage treatment plants" took place in Essen. You can see the lecture on the topic: "Small sewage treatment plants with biological phosphorus elimination - possibilities and limits" here.

ECO Water Solution is presented by our Kirchheim regional newspaper "Der Teckboote". The reporter Thomas Zapp took the time to conduct a detailed interview with our managing directors Thomas Czoske and Uwe Burk.

As part of the founding of ECO Water Solution GmbH, we submitted our business plan to the district savings bank. We automatically submitted our application for the start-up prize to around 100,000 other start-ups in the country. You can find our imiga video here.

Ökoservice presented the NAFASAN - a closed loop concept at the "Doctoral Days 2019" from December 17th to 18th, 2019 in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. The BioTopp system is an integral part of nutrient recovery and service water production. In a prototype competition, Sarah Maïga won 2nd place for the NAFAGAS pyrolysis oven. The production of charcoal for cooking is a major problem in the Sahel as it fuels deforestation and desertification. The NAFAGAS stove, on the other hand, uses pellets from residual biomass, which are pyrolysed into biochar during cooking. The energy yield is almost 100%. The biochar is used in the NAFASAN concept to create a sustainable soil substrate (Terra Preta) and to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

The first self-sufficient BioTopp sewage treatment plant with 50 population equivalents was built in Brazil as part of a research project. The energy is supplied there purely by photovoltaics. The aim of the project is to optimize energy management and costs by adapting the process. Questions of sewage treatment design in warm climate regions are also examined. A report on this is available here (Portuguese).

Within the framework of the DBU field test project in Burkina Faso and at the research sewage treatment plant of the University of Stuttgart, very positive effects were found through the use of biochar. In this way, the biological phosphorus elimination of the BioTopp small sewage treatment plant could be further improved and stabilized. The results were presented at the conference "Biochar in a municipal context". You can see a video of the presentation here.

The small wastewater treatment plant with nutrient enrichment with Terra Preta, which went into operation in Burkina Faso as part of a research project in winter, is now fully operational. The Deutsche Welle television team visited the facility in the spring and broadcast a TV report. The 3 minute report can be viewed here.

The breakthrough achieved in 2015 in biological phosphorus elimination at Ökoservice, in which effluent values of cleaning class P are achieved through purely procedural measures without the addition of precipitants, has now been published for the first time in the WWT magazine and has thus been independently confirmed by experts. The article gives a good overview of the development of phospha elimination. You can find the whole article here.

In certain operating phases of small sewage treatment plants (especially during pumping processes) there is increased noise. When the liquid is pumped from one chamber to the next, you can hear a clear "splashing". In most cases, this is not a problem. If small sewage treatment plants are installed in the immediate vicinity of bedrooms or places to stay (e.g. terrace), this can be the case are perceived as disturbing by the operator. In order to further optimize our sewage treatment plants and to adapt them to customer requirements, tests were carried out on sound insulation. For this purpose, silencers were developed and tested by the engineers at Ökoservice. The test results are presented in this document.

The first tests with bio-charcoal added to the small sewage treatment plant have recently been carried out. In the spring of 2015, a master's student from the Nürtingen University of Applied Sciences wrote her master's thesis at Ökoservice and supervised a test facility in this context. Biochar was added to a model of the BioTopp small wastewater treatment plant. As a result, trace substances such as drug residues and nutrients are adsorbed on the coal, which improves the cleaning effect. A research project has now been applied for, with such a system being set up in Burkina Faso. A new type of stove that is fed with pellets was recently introduced here. After the dishes have been cooked, the pellets are in the form of charcoal, which can be added directly to the treatment plant. This then enriches itself with nutrients and is withdrawn from the clarification process. The coal is then sanitized and can be used as fertilizer.

The BioTopp small wastewater treatment plant has been continuously developed over the past few years. The effluent now not only meets the limit values for effluent classes C, N and D, but also complies with the phosphorus limit values for cleaning class P. The BioTopp system is therefore the first system of its kind that biologically keeps the phosphorus concentration in the effluent below the limit of 2 mg/l without the addition of precipitants. Technologically, the system is a leader among small sewage treatment plants and thus redefines the state of the art in this area.

An engineer from Ökoservice has been in Cuba since October 2015 and is developing a biological cleaning process specifically for warmer climatic conditions. The process is a further development of the immersion bodies commonly used in wastewater treatment, whereby the disadvantages of the classic process are eliminated. A prototype is currently being tested. The product is expected to be available from 2017.

Ökoservice carried out the research project "Development of innovative high-performance membranes for filtration" (HEIMEM) together with the University of Stuttgart, the Fraunhofer Institute, Mahle-InnoWa GmbH and Plasma Electronic GmbH. Here, a hygienization of the treated waste water by means of membranes was investigated, after which it can be used as process water for irrigation, cleaning or toilet flushing. It is now possible to reuse the water.

Ökoservice GmbH has also been represented in Africa since 2015. With the company Mazingira Technologies, a local partner was won in Tanzania, who is able to install BioTopp small wastewater treatment plants and also to maintain them professionally. Although biological wastewater treatment is largely new territory in the East African country, there is increasing pressure on hotels and safari lodges to treat or reuse the wastewater. Mazingira Technologies and the local economy benefit from knowledge transfer based on our many years of experience. Although the government also requires the use of the nutrients, landfilling of untreated fecal sludge is currently the only available sludge management option. The BioTopp sludge humification is the longed-for instrument for realizing the recycling use, saves costs and reduces the ecological footprint. A detailed article can be found here.