Treating sewage and recovering usable water and solids

Abstract

The waste sewage that accumulates from humans, animals and vegetables is first diluted with water to provide a product comprising twenty parts water to one part solids by weight. This diluted product is subjected to a macerating and comminuting and mixing operation that breaks down the lumps in the solids to a size where they are either dissolved or carried in suspension. From the macerator, the fluid is moved up through a screen chamber having a screen of 1/8 inch to remove any heavy, large particles therein and is next pumped into non-conductive electrolytic cell containers. An overflow connection returns any gas and excess liquid into the screening chamber. In the electrolytic cell, the fluid is passed up and down between a plurality of electrode plates of platinum-coated titanium, that are essentially unattacked by the fluid contents and do not contribute any of their metal to the reaction, which are so connected that current flows across the flow of fluid repeatedly with only one end electrode of the plurality connected to the positive side of a direct current source and the other end electrode connected to the negative side of the current source. Enough voltage is supplied to maintain a current flow of 0.25 to 1.0 amperes per square inch of electrode surface. Thus the fluid is passed repeatedly across the current path and is subjected to a continuously step-by-step changing of the level of potential with respect to the original ground voltage of the fluid entering the cell. In each passage across the current, the fluid is changed by the reactions and most of the gases evolved are removed from the field of reaction upward so as to present a newly constituted fluid to the next passage. The effluent from the cell is cleared of the solids by a skimming and filtering action to recover the water for re-use and the solids for return to earth.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.