Mr. Velupillai Yogendran, a Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, UK, Chartered Engineer, Chartered Water and Environmental Manager, Fellow of the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management, UK, and European Engineer (EurIng) visited the faculty on 11th February 2016. He is currently working in collaboration with the University of Surrey, Guildford, UK for the last 5 years, lecturing on Pollution Control, Waste Management & Water Treatment Processes to M.Sc. students at the University of Surrey. And also, he is working as a Process Engineering Consultant at his own company, Invixo Consultancy Limited in UK. He has 24 years of experience in process design, commissioning, process investigation and troubleshooting water and wastewater treatment processes. In addition, 2.5 years research & development experience of membrane bioreactor (MBR) and one of the patent holders of Energy Efficient hollow fibreMBR system.
He hheld discussions with Dr. A. Atputharajah, Dean and Dr. A. Anburuvel regarding a few studies to be carried out at the faculty on waste management and water treatment. He was keen to guide the young engineers here to set-up pilot plants forproducing biogas from waste and water purification using dual media (sand and GAC) and electrocoagulator. He, with the help of Instructor S. Sugitharan, set-up an electrocoagulatorat the faculty of engineering and carried out a few trials. He confirmed that he would be assisting the faculty to continue the above studies.
He also delivered a talk on the same day titled ‘Technical feasibility study of linking more lavatories including public lavatories to a small scale anaerobic digester with access for feeding cow dungs and animal droppings for the production of biogas for either cooking and or for generating electricity using Combined Heat & Power (CHP)’. The talk was jointly organized by Faculty of Engineering and IESL/ Northern chapter. The faculty thanks Dr. A. Anburuvel for coordinating this excellent knowledge sharing event.
Synopsis of the talk:
Anaerobic digesters (AD) are needed and to be installed below ground in Sri Lanka wherever suitable and to be liked with more toilets including public toilets with access to feed cow dungs and other animal droppings to AD is also required as there will be environmental benefits and social benefits. Anaerobic digestion is a proven process and operating in Europe, UK, USA, and Australia and in many tropical developing countries including India, China & Nepal. Based on the internet search, a few anaerobic digesters have been installed in the south of Sri Lanka. Typical biogas production data are available based human wastes and cow dungs. Biogas contains hydrogen sulphide gas which needs to be removed prior to feed it to CHP. The by product from AD are organic biofertiliser which will help to reduce the nitrate concentration in borehole water in the near future and also will reduce carbon foot print. Sizing of AD and calculations of biogas production and electrical energy production will be included in the presentation.