Back on the Grind

It’s your favorite island explorer back with the 411 on BLUELab Thailand!

Are you excited?

Probably not… jk of course you are!

So over the weekend, the team took a littleeee break. The girls had a girls day filled with smoothies, blessings, Thai massages, and decadent food. The guys had a guys night stuffing their face with sushi and enjoying live music…

But the weekend is over and back to the grind we go.

Today we are under the care of Princess and began our talks with doctoral professors in CMU’s Department of Environmental Engineering. In case this was not clarified in previous posts, CMU is the acronym for Chiang Mai University. Our first presentation was given by Professor Dr. Khajornsak Sopajaree, who discussed the cause and effects of air pollution, specifically haze, in Chiang Mai.

Dr. Sopajaree explains the change in hot spots in Northern Thailand.

Haze is a major problem in Chiang Mai from January to April. It is caused by multiple sources including forest fires, crop burning, industrial exhausts, and transportation. The topography (the bowl shape) of Chiang Mai traps the polluted air and due to thermal inversion and subsidence inversion haze worsens during this period. The most successful mitigation efforts to reduce the effects of air pollution include policies and laws. An example of such a policy is the ban on crop burning from January to April. In 2017, there were no hot spots present since the passing of this law, which has reduced the effects of haze but has not completely solved the problem.

The major pollutant in Chiang Mai is particulate matter, PM. PM10 is generally filtered by our noses naturally; however, PM2.5 and PM0.1 cannot be filtered by our nose and often gain access to our bloodstream where they pose real threats to one’s health. Haze has affected the tourism industry for Chiang Mai, driving away tourists concerned about the health impacts of PM2.5 and PM0.1. Currently, there are only two stations in Chiang Mai that measure for PM. Such devices are expensive to purchase, costing about 2 million Baht, not including maintenance. There is need for a cheaper, more reliable PM station, but ultimately projects like Mr. Districts sustainable agricultural practice, policies that limit crop burning, and foreign agreements with surrounding nations that also produce air pollutants will be the main way to tackle air pollution as it is such a broad problem with no one direct source. Air has no boundaries.

Our second interview dealt with wastewater management and the research conducted by Assistant Professor Dr. Patiroop Pholchan. Wastewater management is a problem even in the most developed countries. What do we do with our waste? Most of us just wash our hands, take showers, flush the toilet without a second thought as to where all that waste goes, and think about how much waste you generate in a day… a week… a month… A YEAR?! Though we have standards for water treatment, standards do not exactly solve the problem… just makes it tolerable.

Dr. Pholchan discusses the pollution of Saen Saeb Canal in Bangkok, rendering it useless except for transportation

To this date, there are three ways to treat water: 1) aerobic system 2) anaerobic system and 3) natural treatment system. In the past, aerobic systems were the most popular as these systems were very efficient and could be compact; however, they come with a large cost and energy requirement to aerate the wastewater.  Natural treatment systems are efficient and low cost, but require a large area to maximize algae growth (algae is used to break down the organic matter). Dr. Phlochan believes anaerobic systems are the way of the future as they make wastewater treatment a profitable process. How does one make treating wastewater value you may ask? One word…. BIOGAS!!!!!!!

Incentivize it… and they will come.

As Thailand is currently experiencing an energy crisis due to the large importation of oil and natural gas, creating a biogas industry would help alleviate the country’s dependence on foreign fossil fuels and keep money within the economy. Biogas is useful because the majority of its composition is methane, a flammable gas that can be used to generate POWER. An example of the profitability of the biogas industry can be seen with a local landfill that makes about 130 million baht a year from biogas sales to a local energy company, EGAT. (Just for reference: 130,000,000 baht = 3.7 million USD a year!) Dr. Phlochan discussed other case studies that show the profitability of biogas as it can be made using a mixture of organic material (ex. crop residue… no more crop burning?). Dr. Phlochan’s current research is determining how to make biogas using longan and lychee peelings, which can be done with the right ratio of chicken manure. His lab is running tests in various reactors to find the best ratio that produces the best biogas.

The biogas reactors used Dr. Pholchan’s lab at CMU.

-Nicole