TERRE HAUTE —
When Dennis Evers tells people that the international company he helps run, VOW Resources, has its headquarters in Terre Haute, Indiana, he often gets the response: “Terre Haute? Oh … Larry Bird.”
A native of England and a Vigo County resident just since 2004, Evers needed a little time — and some help from his wife, Indiana State University professor of psychology Jean Kristeller — to understand the significance of the former basketball star to Evers’ new hometown. In the future, however, many people may come to associate Terre Haute with Evers, himself, and his ground-breaking way of treating waste and turning it into energy.
‘Phenomenal’
“It’s absolutely revolutionary,” Evers said of his original and innovative waste management system in a recent interview with the Tribune-Star.
Evers, who has a Ph.D. in applied microbiology and is a public health engineer, has been perfecting his original system of waste treatment for more than 30 years. In a nutshell, his system is cleaner, faster and cheaper than conventional waste treatment methods.
Evers’ system also produces several useful and valuable byproducts, including “green” energy. Indeed, his work brings to mind a scene in the movie, “Back to the Future,” in which a device called “Mr. Fusion” converts ordinary household garbage into fuel for a DeLorean. Evers’ system uses bacteria, not nuclear fusion, but the basic idea seems the same — taking waste and making it into something useful.
“The benefits are phenomenal,” Evers said. “Of course, the problem has been over the years, people just couldn’t believe that it was possible to do that with waste.”
People are now starting to believe. VOW Resources — a joint venture between Evers’ own company, EversTech LLC, and an Australian group — is currently engaged in waste management projects all over the world. The company is active in China, Thailand, Malaysia, Australia, Greece and Canada as well as the United States. In fact, as of this weekend, VOW Resources was completing a deal with a Texas-based Fortune 500 company to convert paper waste into energy and other byproducts.
“We’ve been expanding rapidly,” Evers said. “It’s just exploding.”
Eliminating rotten egg smell
In nature, indigenous bacteria digest organic waste, including human and animal waste. In conventional sewage treatment plants, the same process is often used and simply accelerated.
But in Evers’ system, specially selected bacteria are used. This not only speeds up the digestion process, but also does it in a way that does not produce hydrogen sulfide, better known as the “rotten egg” smell.
“I didn’t believe that could happen,” said Mike Johnson, owner of Advanced Waste Management in Terre Haute and vice president of Rose Energy, the company that brought Evers to Terre Haute to test his system six years ago. But Evers was able to demonstrate his system, as advertised.
“We did document that we could digest high strength organic waste, bearing lots of sulfur, and yet produce negligible [hydrogen sulfide] — a very significant finding,” Johnson said.
In addition to its offensive smell, hydrogen sulfide is also a poisonous gas that is very damaging to waste treatment equipment, Johnson noted. Evers’ system, by virtually eliminating hydrogen sulfide, means lower repair costs at waste treatment facilities. Evers’ system also works much quicker than most conventional waste digestive systems, effectively expanding plant capacity.
“His [bacteria] also can do the same thing it takes 30 days, say, for a conventional digester…[his] can do in less than 10 days, maybe around five days,” Johnson said. “Assuming that’s true … your capital costs are dramatically reduced.”
Evers calls his process “Bioaugmentation,” which essentially custom-fits bacteria to a particular waste product, such as paper pulp, grease, palm oil, animal waste or human waste. He also engineers his system to eliminate hydrogen sulfide.
Indigenous bacteria “will do a job [digesting organic waste], but they don’t do the best job,” Evers said. His bacteria, on the other hand, “can do wonders. You’ve just got to know which ones to use and how to manage them,” he said.
Waste is a resource
These are not the only benefits of Evers’ system. His Bioaugmentation process also produces high-quality methane gas in greater quantities than conventional systems. Additionally, it produces water and nutrient rich fertilizers and animal feeds.
These byproducts have tremendous value, Evers notes. For example, the high-quality methane gas his system creates can be used to power entire treatment facilities. This is being done at several locations where his system is being used, he said.
The fertilizers and animals feeds also have tremendous value, he said.
“I keep saying, ‘You’ve got to stop calling it waste,’” Evers said. “It’s a resource. It has value, but you’ve got to know what to do with it to get that value.”
How it started
Evers discovered the possibilities of his system 23 years ago while working in Australia. A friend in the grease disposal business asked him if he could help him deal with several tons of grease in a landfill near the city of Brisbane. The friend’s company, which cleaned grease traps from restaurants, had spent millions of dollars eliminating its grease about 10 years earlier.
“Well, they were collecting [the grease] and landfilling it,” Evers recalled. “They had to stop because … it was causing an odor problem [in Brisbane]. They could smell it ten miles away.”
Evers agreed to try to help with the problem, and he and his friend constructed a large tank in which they placed some of the grease.
“It went solid,” Evers said of the grease. “You could walk on it. And I just injected some [bacteria] down the side of the tank and went home for lunch.”
A little over an hour later, Evers returned to hear bubbling coming from inside the tank. When he looked inside, there was no grease left, he said.
“The [bacteria] had digested it in that short of time and I thought, hey, this has got to be useful. I can do something with this, I’m sure.”
Cleaning up around the world
It has taken Evers more than 30 years to perfect his system, he said, and some people have attempted to copy it
“I’ve had people try to copy me all over the place,” Evers said. “In Australia, in Saudi Arabia. … Now that people are sort of latching on to what we’re doing, [they] want to catch up to us, but they are years behind. I mean, we’re ten years ahead of anybody else.”
With its ever-expanding world reach, VOW, which stands for “Viable Organic Waste,” now is helping the city of Thessaloniki in Greece meet European Union environmental standards for its sewage treatment facility at a fraction of the cost of conventional facility upgrades.
Thessaloniki, because of the financial crisis in Greece, has little money to meet new EU-mandates for its waste treatment facility, Evers said. However, using his system, the city, which is the second-largest in Greece, can effectively expand its existing waste treatment plant’s capacity by about 25 percent.
The same system could be applied in municipal waste treatment facilities elsewhere, Evers noted. Even in Terre Haute.
“The benefits of Bioaugmentation in a sewage plant is not only increasing the capacity of the system, but it’s controlling things like odors, you know, and this is what we suffer in Terre Haute, of course,” he said.
Terre Haute Mayor Duke Bennett, speaking Friday, said he is interested to learn more about Evers’ system.
“Obviously, one of my primary goals is to eliminate the odor at the treatment plant,” Bennett said. “We would be interested in exploring any options for doing that.”
Rapid Growth
Evers is the only employee of VOW Resources living in Terre Haute. But the company currently has seven other management-level employees. In addition, VOW Resources works with a team of about 100 engineers and other professionals around the world, Evers said. And the company continues to grow.
Indeed, VOW’s business is expanding so rapidly Evers expects it to become a publicly traded company within the next three years. VOW also is looking to set up regional offices in the United States, including one in Houston, he said.
“There’s all sorts of things happening all at the same time,” Evers said. The company’s work in Thessaloniki in Greece has captured the attention of an even larger European city and other projects are currently keeping Evers and his associates constantly moving.
“The word is getting about now, which is really, really rewarding,” Evers told the Tribune-Star Friday, soon after returning from another cross-country business trip.
“I’ve been doing this all of my life,” he said, but now, “it’s very much in vogue” thanks to the green energy movement. His company’s ability to convert waste into energy and other reusable products is a perfect fit for the times, especially in the European Union, which has been attempting to make the whole of Europe a recycling society for years, he said.
“I’ve been in this game for 50 years now. I still get excited by it,” Evers said. “Every day is not only a new challenge, it’s a joy,”
Arthur Foulkes can be reached at (812) 231-4232 or arthur.foulkes@tribstar.com.
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