Waste Water & Sewage Treatment System, onboard

I was cruising thru a June issue of Popular Science and ran across an award that had been given to this potential onboard sewage treatment device. I thought it definitely deserved some discussion on these forums.

"What if we could eliminate sewage? The ZLD virtually does just that! It takes the sewage (solids and liquids), grinds them up and homogenizes the solids in the liquid.

The ZLD then takes that liquid (that looks like chocolate milk) and pressurizes it and sprays this liquid into the hot exhaust gas of the engine. The hot engine gas vaporizes the liquid, and kills the bacteria and basically eliminates the sewage with no odor no liquid or no sludge to handle."

I went looking for a website and found this,
Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD) Sewage Elimination System

I don't see where he is dumping into the 'machinery', (or boiler as you might have experienced). It appears as it is dumped into the exhaust at very near the exit point?

...and it appears as though it has received a US Coast Guard Certification
http://www.thezld.com/index.php/project-profiles

Well I was wrong here, he is injecting in the manifold area. And if the engine is turbo I'm sure it would have to be after the turbo.

Here is another informed reply from Trawlers & Trawlering
http://lists.samurai.com/pipermail/trawlers-and-trawlering/2011-May/157205.html

Here we go again...this idea re-surfaces about every 10 years. It was
first tried in RVs about 30 years ago...and it actually seemed to work
pretty well....at least till the animal fats in waste began clogging up
catalytic converters and mufflers. There was also one more minor
problem: unbearable odor that gassed everyone in vehicles up to a
quarter mile behind an RV equipped with this system. So...it didn't last
long.

Several other would-be inventors have tried to make it work in RVs with
no better success...but the first--the ONLY--attempt to put on a boat
was about 15 years ago. Some Europeans put one on a muscle boat...it
worked, they put it on the market for a couple thousand bucks. What THEY
overlooked was, very few boats except muscle boats have dry
exhausts...and wet exhausts don't hot enough to incinerate anything.
Plus, there was still that pesky odor problem and those darned animals
fats. It was a short-lived venture.

Now, here we go again... This guy CLAIMS to have solved the odor
problem, but doesn't address the animal fats (it takes some time and/or
some VERY heavy toilet use for those build up enough to start to cause
problems, so he may not even be aware of it yet). So while it may work
on a RV, it still wouldn't work on most boats because most boats have
wet exhausts. However, I see on his website http://www.thezld.com/ that
he's had it "certified" by the CG and the EPA, but he doesn't say WHAT
he's had it certified as (plus, the EPA doesn't certify anything)...I
don't THINK it's as a Type I or II, but I'm gonna call him in the
morning to find out.....Peggie Hall