W. J. Oswald, 86, Algae Miracle Worker, Dies
NY Times
William J. Oswald, a scientist who pioneered ways to use algae to address immense human problems - including treating sewage, increasing food supplies, generating energy and facilitating voyages into deep space - died on Dec. 8 at his home in Concord, Calif. He was 86.
The cause was pancreatic cancer, said the University of California, Berkeley, where Dr. Oswald was a professor emeritus in civil and environmental engineering.
Dr. Oswald promised miracles from the humblest of plants and proceeded to perform more than a few.
He developed a system of ponds in which algae eat and purify wastewater, and built more than 100 around the world. The algae could then be harvested using his patented process as protein-rich food for animals or people able to ignore its provenance. The leftover water, now cleansed, could be used for irrigation, as a coolant for engines and even, with more purification, for human consumption.
The sludge from the bottom of the pond could be added to the soil as humus, he advised. Methane gas produced by the algae could be captured and used. The per-acre yield of protein is 10 times that of soybeans, and algae suffer from few of the diseases that affect other crops. Since algae can do all this work in seawater, more precious freshwater can be conserved.
“It is technically feasible to apply controlled photosynthesis to reclaim and reuse our wastes an indefinite number of times and in so doing to produce unprecedented quantities of food, water and raw materials at costs within the economic reach of most societies,” Dr. Oswald said in a speech in 1960.
Many of these concepts were realized in experiments or actual projects. Dr. Oswald’s ingenious idea for having astronauts take along some algae to treat their waste, while producing oxygen and water, has so far been tested only with mice, successfully.
Treatment systems designed by Dr. Oswald or patterned after his design are now in use in Bolivia, Brazil, Greece, Mexico and South Africa, as well as in the United States.
Dr. Oswald was particularly interested in applying his ideas for simple, affordable, sustainable wastewater treatment to developing countries. In recent years, he worked with the government of India to develop a way to use algae ponds to purify the Ganges River.
In a 1998 article on this Ganges effort, The New Yorker declared, “Oswald is to algae what Michael Jordan is to basketball.”
