The Biolytix BioPod
Works with nature, rather than against it
For about a century, engineers have used water-based processes to treat wastewater. Biolytix discovered that nature has a different solution: in nature, the most effective treatment doesn’t happen in water, but in moist soil ecosystems on rainforest floors and river edges. This is where organisms convert waste into humus. This humus then cleanses all the wastewater that trickles through it.
Using worms and other organisms to break down organic waste is not an innovation - they have been doing so for eons. Our innovation is using nature's most highly evolved biological processes to solve today's wastewater challenges.
What makes up a BioPod?
A single, compact tank
This is normally a 3000 litre polymer tank (1.88m diameter by 2.06m high).
The BioPod is the most compact biological treatment system in the world that we know of – making it easier to transport, less disruptive to install and unobtrusive. To put this in perspective – a Sand Filter (with its septic first stage) would take up an area approximately 9 times larger i.e. the BioPod is 2.8m2, a Sand Filter is around 26m2.
Inside the tank
The tank includes a layered filter bed, engineered to house the organisms that quickly convert the sewage into humus. The organisms, including worms, ensure the filter bed is naturally aerated, so that there is none of the smell associated with septics and the septic stages of mechanically aerated systems.
The ecosystem maintains the humus indefinitely, so the system only needs one annual service (most competing systems require 3-4 services each year). Near the bottom of the tank is a geofabric layer, which removes fine solids down to 80 micron size and is continually biologically cleansed. Below this is the purified water ready to be pumped to the garden.
A tiny “fish tank” air pump for ventilation
A clear advantage of the BioPod is that is not reliant on complex or expensive machinery to run.
Its tiny, but robust, air pump ensures aeration of the treated water collected at the bottom of the filter. It only consumes 0.12 kWh per day. This energy use is very low compared to conventional aerated systems, which typically consume between 2.5 to 6 kWh per day for treatment. This is 20 times more energy than a BioPod! Their large pumps can also be noisy – droning for up to 16 hours each day.
An industrial strength irrigation pump
This pumps the treated water to the irrigation field. It is a single-phase pump. To dampen any pumping noise, it is engineered into the middle of the BioPod. The pump is also protected here from vandalism or theft.
What's inside the BioPod