Asian Innovation Awards 2007 -- GOLD
   
    Like many innovators, Dean  Cameron has an eclectic background, a desire to prove the experts wrong  and, most importantly, a readiness to see that when experiments go  awry, you may be staring innovation in the face.
   
    In the case of  Mr. Cameron, winner of this year's Asian Innovation Awards for his  Biowater water-treatment system, what was staring back was a flush  toilet. Trying to produce methane by leeching organic acids from human  waste, he couldn't understand why the process wasn't working. The  process is anaerobic, meaning it excludes oxygen, and Mr. Cameron  thought his system was airtight. The container was welded down; there  was no oxygen leaking in as far as he could see; but there wasn't  enough methane being produced to even combust.
   
    When he looked  more closely, he found enough air embedded in the waste to keep the  system partially aerobic. And while that prevented methane from being  produced, Mr. Cameron says his interest was piqued by the aerobic  organisms like beetles and fly larvae he observed.
   
    'Whenever you  find something surprising like that,' he says, 'it's worth thinking it  over, because it's outside your expectation and therefore [there is]  something really important you might learn from it.'
   
    Mr.  Cameron, in his words, was ready for this moment. His father had been a  civil engineer and earth mover, and Mr. Cameron had memories of his  father putting in sewage and water systems. After leaving school, Mr.  Cameron dabbled in theology before moving on to horticulture, botany  and ecology and then environmental science. At one job, he realized he  needed to study more about making things, and in the 1980s he says he  invented a flashing LED bicycle light (though he didn't patent it).
   
    After  that, he developed an interest in permaculture -- artificial ecosystems  aimed at satisfying the requirements of inhabitants through renewable  resources -- and bought a place in Queensland where he could  experiment. From there, he says, 'evolved a chain of events, some of  which were fortuitous.' When the problem of methane production hit, he  says, it was a matter of 'chance favoring the prepared mind.'
   
    Instead  of being discouraged, Mr. Cameron started asking himself what would  happen if he went in the other direction, if he made the process even  more aerobic by introducing worms and air. 'The very first experiment I  did along those lines worked brilliantly,' he says, 'and it was  completely against the conventional wisdom that worms won't handle high  moisture content.' Mr. Cameron was on his way to creating 'Biowater.'
   
    Mr.  Cameron's water-treatment system moves human and other waste through a  multilayered tank in a composting process that uses worms, beetles and  billions of microscopic organisms to break up the material naturally  until water emerges at the bottom, ready to be used for irrigation. The  system, Mr. Cameron says, uses 90% less energy than conventional sewage  systems and costs half as much to run.
   
    His company, Biolytix  Water Pty. Ltd., has installed Biowater tanks in nearly 3,000 homes,  projects and businesses across the Pacific and plans to launch in Asia,  the U.S. and Europe next year.
   
    The key to the system is the  worms. What Mr. Cameron realized from his failed methane experiment was  that the fastest decomposition was occurring not in water, as may be  found in most conventional systems such as septic tanks, but in the  moist world where soil meets water. He realized this breakdown happens  much more quickly in the presence of air and soil organisms.
   
    These  organisms digest the waste that is pumped into the top of the tank and  create humus, a living, self-regenerating matrix that looks like soil  but is 90% water and serves as a filter. The treated water isn't  suitable for drinking, but is good for soil since it contains 'organic  material that actually enhances the growth of the plant,' Mr. Cameron  says.
   
    What is clever about this is that it turns a problem --  waste -- into a solution, by creating out of the waste a living organic  filter that cleans the water. This organic mass is the 'densest  population of critters on the planet,' Mr. Cameron says. 'There are one  billion organisms in one gram of humus. It's a staggering number.'
   
    These  organisms vary little in type whether in the Scottish Highlands or the  tropics. Some establish themselves naturally; others are introduced  deliberately; but each serves a purpose: Creatures that have adapted to  feeding on litter break up the larger material, dramatically increasing  the waste's surface area and speeding decomposition. The worms, beetles  and mites, meanwhile, drill tiny channels through the humus, allowing  air to diffuse into the filter and preventing water from getting  blocked.
   
    Millions of tiny Proturans, Collembolans and beetle  mites graze over the wet surface and suck or scrape up what Mr. Cameron  calls 'the microbial biofilm soup.' This teeming mass continuously  consumes and digests matter, which is eroded by the flowing waste  water. Tiny organisms called rotifers and copepods, meanwhile, consume  bacteria, cleaning out pathogens like salmonella. All this activity  reduces the size of particles until it creates a humus.
   
    The  beauty is that all this can work on a very small scale, and cheaply.  Mr. Cameron's company has developed a proof-of-concept version of the  system that could cost as little as A$200 (US$175) for four people. And  the system uses little or no energy: The Biolytix BF6 model uses a  five-watt air pump. That is less than it takes to pump out a septic  tank once every five years. And some models require no power at all.
   
    'The  end point of what we're trying to do is to break down the material,'  Mr. Cameron says. 'If you can avoid putting a whole lot of energy in,  then that's what you should do.'
   
    Mr. Cameron sees waste  treatment as historically flawed, almost from the start. 'The way  evolution of technology takes place,' he says, 'people look at what's  happening and make incremental improvements.'
   
    Things started to  go wrong, he says, during the Industrial Revolution. People early on  realized that contact with sewage produced diseases, so they put drains  underground. This, he says, was 'the first step where engineers went  wrong.' Doing this deprived the waste of the oxygen that would break it  down quickly -- 20% of air is oxygen, but there are only seven parts  per million in water. When the volume got too big, it was too much for  nature to replenish the oxygen in the water. 'They never thought' about  what they were doing, he says. 'Their first step was just to take it  away.'
   
    Ever since then, he says, incremental improvements have  focused on better ways to pump oxygen into the water, a wasteful  process that accounts for much of the 5% of a grid's electricity that  is used to treat waste.
   
    'It's completely unnecessary if you do  what we've done,' he says. 'We've developed [the system] so [the  aerobic process] works completely passively. The only energy needed is  to pump out to irrigate.' Mr. Cameron says it has been hard to convince  an industry so entrenched in its methods and to capture the imagination  of investors. But with 2.5 billion people without proper sanitation, he  believes his vision, which began at the bottom of a toilet bowl, is  coming true.
   
    'Our technology,' he says, 'is the most adaptable technology to provide for that massive need.

跟许多发明家一样，迪恩•卡梅伦(Dean Cameron)拥有广博的学科背景知识和挑战权威的愿望，最重要的是，他深知当试验出现差错时，可能恰恰会有新发明的灵感迸发。

在因“生物水”(Biowater)水处理系统而获得今年亚洲创新奖的卡梅伦这里，出现差错的是一个抽水马桶。当时他试图从人类粪便中提取有机酸来制造甲烷，却不明白这个办法为什么行不通。甲烷的产生过程是厌氧的，也就是要隔绝氧气。卡梅伦觉得自己的系统密封良好。容器是焊接的，眼见之处根本没有氧气渗入；但是生成的甲烷气体连燃烧都不够。

卡梅伦更加仔细地进行了观察，发现废弃物中所含的空气足以让系统保持在有氧状态。虽然情况阻止了甲烷的产生，但卡梅伦说他观察到的甲虫和蛆这样的好氧生物引起了他的兴趣。

他说：“只要发现类似这样令你惊讶的事物，都值得去思考一番，因为它出乎你的意料，所以可能会有一些重要的东西能让你从中学到点什么。”

用卡梅伦自己的话说，他对这种时刻有充分的准备。他的父亲是一位土木工程师，经常自己动手“大兴土木”，卡梅伦还记得父亲亲自组装上、下水系统的情形。从学校毕业以后，卡梅伦先是涉猎了神学，然后转攻园艺、植物、生态和环境科学。在干某个工作的时候，他意识到自己需要多学一些制造方面的知识，并表示自己在上个世纪80年代发明了闪光二极管自行车灯（不过他没有申请专利）。

在那之后，他又对朴门农艺(permaculture)产生了兴趣，并在昆士兰买了一块地方做实验。朴门农艺是一种人工生态系统，旨在通过可再生资源来满足居民的需要。他说，从那个地方“引出了一系列事件，有的很偶然。”他说，生产甲烷时遇到的问题正可以用“机会只青睐那些有准备的人”这句话来诠释。

卡梅伦不但没有泄气，反而开始问自己，如果反其道而行会怎么样──加入一些虫子和空气，让这个过程充满更多氧气会如何。“我按照这个想法所进行的第一个实验非常成功，”他说，“而且彻底推翻了认为虫子无法在高湿度环境中存活的传统看法。”就这样，卡梅伦开始了发明“生物水”的历程。

卡梅伦的水处理系统让人类粪便和其他废弃物经过一个多层槽体，并经历一个堆肥过程，利用蠕虫、甲虫和无数有机微生物来自然分解这些废弃物，直到底层形成水，这些水可以用于灌溉。卡梅伦说，这种装置比传统污水处理系统节能90%，而维护它们的成本是后者的一半。

他的公司Biolytix Water Pty. Ltd.已经在太平洋沿岸的近3000个家庭、公共事业和企业内安装了“生物水”水槽，并计划明年进军亚洲、美国和欧洲市场。

这个系统的关键之处在于那些虫子。卡梅伦从失败的甲烷实验中认识到，最快的分解并不是在水中发生──大多数传统系统比如化粪池可能都已经证明了这一点──而是在土壤与水接触的潮湿环境中。他发现，在有空气和土壤生物存在的情况下，这种分解发生的速度要快得多。

这些生物会分解被抽吸入水槽顶层的废弃物并形成腐殖质，后者是一种可以自我再生的活性基质，看上去像土壤，但其90%是水分，并充当了过滤器。卡梅伦说，经过处理的水不能饮用，但对土壤很有好处，因为它含有“能够提高作物产量的有机物。”

这个东西的巧妙之处在于它利用废弃物制造了一个能够净化水的活性有机过滤器，将废弃物这样一个问题转化为了一种解决方案。卡梅伦说，有机体是“全世界生物体数量最为密集的地方；1克腐殖质里就有10亿个有机物。这个数量极为惊人。”

不管是在苏格兰的高地还是在热带地区，这些有机物的类型都不会有什么变化。其中一些是自己形成的，还有一些是人为加入的；但所有的有机物都是为了同一个目标：这些以垃圾为食的生物会分解较大的物质，极大地增加废弃物的表面积，从而加速分解。同时，其中的各类虫子会在腐殖质中钻出细小的通道，让空气进入这个过滤器中，防止水被阻塞。

数百万体积细小的原尾虫、跳虫和甲虫在潮湿的表面上生活，吸收或吞食卡梅伦所称的“微生物层汤”。这个丰富的群体不断吸收和分解为流动的废水所腐蚀的物质。与此同时，轮虫和桡足动物之类的微生物又会消耗细菌，清除沙门氏菌一类的病原体。所有这些活动都减小了颗粒的体积，直到形成腐殖质。

这个系统的好处在于它能以非常小的规模运行，而且成本低廉。卡梅伦的公司已经开发出了此系统的一个概念验证版，可供四个人使用，费用仅为200澳元（合175美元）。而且这个系统需要的能源很少，甚至可以完全不用：Biolytix BF6型号使用一个功率为5瓦特的气泵。这比五年一次抽空化粪池所需的能源还要少。还有些型号完全不需要动力。

“我们最终要达到的目标是将物质分解，”卡梅伦说。“如果你能避免消耗很多能源，那你就应该这样做。”

卡梅伦认为废弃物处理几乎从一开始就有重大缺陷。“科技发展的过程就是这样，”他说，“人们关注所发生的事，并不断作出改进。”

卡梅伦说，在工业革命期间污水处理方法开始走入歧途。早期的人们意识到接触污水会致病，于是他们就将排水管埋在地下。他说，这一点是“工程师们走错的第一步。”这样一来就丧失了可以让废弃物迅速分解的氧气──空气中20%为氧气，而水中的氧气含量只有百万分之七。当废弃物体积太大的时候，自然环境就难以补充水中的氧气含量。卡梅伦说，这些人从来没想过他们在做什么，“他们的第一步只是把它弄走。”

他说，从那时起，后续的改进只是重点关注如何更有效地将氧气注入水中，这个过程很浪费资源，5%的电网电力用来处理废弃物，而其中大部分都被这个过程消耗了。

“如果用我们的办法，这种能源浪费是完全没有必要的，”他说。“我们开发的这个系统可以让需氧过程完全在无能耗状态下进行。唯一需要能源的地方就是将净化后的水抽吸出来用于灌溉。”卡梅伦表示，要说服一个墨守成规的行业并抓住投资者的想象力很难。但全世界有25亿人没有良好的卫生设备，因此他坚信自己这个从抽水马桶底部开始的计划将变成现实。

他说：“我们的技术是最适合这种大规模需求的技术。