Old Botany to house Living Machine system

By Melissa Jones
Collegian Staff Writer

The wave of the future is upon Penn State, and riding that wave is a water treatment system that defies the general ideas of this technology.

Old Botany will house one of these systems, called Living Machines, as part of the restoration gift from the class of 2000. The systems were developed by John Todd from the University of Vermont.

This week, Michael Shaw, an associate of Todd, will be at Penn State working with several architecture classes to design the actual Living Machine that will be placed in Old Botany.

Shaw will give a public talk at 8 p.m. Thursday in the Deike Building to supplement the classes.

Living Machines look like a greenhouse or a botanical garden, said Erin English (senior-chemical engineering), who is associated with The Center for Sustainability.

Living Machines are biological wastewater treatment systems that work on the basis of ecological succession, which means starting from the smallest forms of life and working toward higher forms. For example, the first stage of the Living Machine may contain algae and plankton, but by the time the last stage is reached, those forms have been replaced with complex plants and snails and fish.

The different forms of life within the various stages of the Living Machine, in essence, eat all of the waste. The complete process takes two and a half to three days and the remaining water can be utilized for general use.

Companies such as Ben & Jerry's and The Body Shop have used Living Machines. The machines are also in place at the Darrow School in New Lebanon, N.Y., and Oberlin College in Ohio.

"It's really a neat thing once it's up and it's full of vegetation," said Lee Holden, representative for Ben & Jerry's. "It's really, really neat."

The Living Machines can be used in many ecological treatments from lakes, streams and rivers to soil and, possibly in the future, ocean shorelines.

The Darrow School chose to implement a Living Machine when it encountered problems with its septic system. The Living Machine has not only been used as a waste management system, but also as an educational opportunity, said Lisa Riker, director of the Samson Environmental Center at the school.

The Living Machine has been an asset for the science classes, and also for public speaking classes. The students give all of the tours of facility, said Beth Mulvey, director of development. They have given tours to students from fifth grade through college level as well as to environmental engineering consultants.

And the cost between general forms of water purification and the Living Machines are drastically different. Living Machines generally cost several thousand dollars as opposed to waste sanitation processes, which can cost several million.

Installed costs for the Living Machines begin at around $1,000, but the Darrow School's machine cost about $500,000. Over time, the cost of the Living Machine proves to be drastically lower than traditional methods, according to Living Technologies, the company that produces the machines.

"If we had expanded it, that (lower costs) would have been the case," Holden said. The company removed its Living Machine when Ben & Jerry's began producing yogurt, which altered the state of the waste produced and caused live cultures to grow in the system.

The cost for the Living Machine that will be developed for the Old Botany restoration project is undetermined, but Shaw will make estimates for the cost of the project during his stay, English said.

Penn State already has three Living Machines prototypes in the Forest Resources Library.

At the present time, there are three working models of Living Machines located in the Forest Resources Library.