Energy alternatives

Press, 22 January 1979, Page 6

Energy alternatives

PA Auckland New Zealand was in a more fortunate position than many countries to ride out the energy crisis, said the Wellington-born space scientist, Dr Sir William Pickering yesterday. It had a lot of hydroelectric power, a renewable energy resource — and plenty of wind, he said. “Your food production is not as energy intensive as in other countries.’*

Sir William is in New Zealand for a holiday and to attend the conference of the Australia and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science, which will open in Auckland today. Sir William is the former director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Pasedena, California. where a great deal of United States space research and hardware is produced.

The extraction of methane gas from trees — plentiful in New Zealand — could become viable, he said. Wind

too. might be harnessed. “If you could become selfsufficient in energy that would be very nice. I would not be pessimistic about [the future of] New Zealand,” he said.

As a spin-off from the space programme Sir William’s scientists developed an efficient way to treat sewage effluent. They found they could convert sewage sludge into charcoal, long known to be a good but expensive way to filter water from sewage. The furnace used to make the charcoal is fired with the methane gas produced in the process.

The system does away with sludge disposal problems since what is left is charcoal and a material which looks like sand. The scheme will be used in a treatment plant to be built in California to handle 4.5 m litres of sewage a day from 30.000 people.

Sir William believes it would be no more expensive than a conventional system.

The system was being considered for other applications, he said. A canning factory which has problems disposing of tomato skins might use it. After his retirement in 1976 — he was knighted K.B.E.’ that same year — Sir William Pickering set up as a consultant in the energy and satellite field.

He spent two years in Saudi Arabia establishing a science and engineering research institute.

He was not dismayed when the United States space effort was scaled down after the Apollo programme was completed, but the militate implications of what Russia was doing in space would have to be watched, he said. Other than the development of “killer” satellites to knock out satellite-based communication systems he does not believe satellites will be used as instruments of destruction — surface-based bomb-carrying rockets are more efficient.