Hi Via Water community,
We make charcoal from faecal sludge by carbonizing the faecal sludge and mixing it with an agri-binder. We know that others carbonize agricultural material and mix in faecal sludge as binder, but we have opted for the other method for a number of reasons.
My question: Does anyone out there have microbiological data on the resultant charcoal, either from the process we use or the other process? (e.g. helminth eggs, bacteria, bacteriophages, etc) We would appreciate guidance towards any data or research already existing (so much found for compost, so little found for charcoal). We are doing our own testing, but would like to know what others have found!
:) Danielle from Slamson Ghana
Hello Danielle,
My suggestions is to use molecular monitoring tools to test for pathogens on the end product. The way to do is is to extract the DNA from your charcoal and to characterise all the DNA with NGS sequencing. Let me know if you need more info, regards, Marc