Fatberg blocking London sewer could become museum exhibit

deaddirty

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https://www.theguardian.com/culture...king-london-sewer-could-become-museum-exhibit

[Note: there are pics and a vid on the website, but I can't embed or link them because the formats seem to be incompatible]

Fatberg blocking London sewer could become museum exhibit

Museum of London wants to acquire part of congealed block as it ‘calls to attention the way we live our lives in a modern city’

Wednesday 13 September 2017 19.04 BST Last modified on Friday 15 September 2017 20.15 BST

Part of a huge fatberg blocking a 250 metre stretch of London’s sewer network could go on display to the public after the Museum of London expressed an interest in obtaining a section of the 130 tonne mass of waste and fat.

The museum, which is planning a move to a new site at Smithfield, contacted Thames Water about acquiring a section of the congealed block of wet wipes, nappies, fat and oil for their general collection following its discovery in a Victorian sewer in Whitechapel, east London.

Engineers for Thames Water are using shovels and high-powered jets to remove the fatberg, which was found during a routine inspection earlier this month, and is one of the largest ever found in London’s sewer network.

Alex Werner, lead curator for the new museum at the Museum of London, told the Guardian the fatberg “calls to attention the way we live our lives in a modern city”, and said the museum had been interested in acquiring a fatberg after similar discoveries in Kingston and Leicester Square.

He said: “It speaks to the breakdown in London’s infrastructure as we transition between periods. The sewer dates back to the 19th century, and is struggling to cope with the number of high-rise developments and population increases. In 50 years’ time, maybe it will be looked on as a historic artefact, because we’ll have solved this problem.”

He continued: “Our challenge is to think of a way to make it presentable to the public. We need to work out a way we can store it and display it. It’s a bit like a specimen. We need to find a kind of fluid to maintain it for a long time. We have a bit of research yet to do.”
The Museum of London curator visited the site of the fatberg in east London on Wednesday and although he did not enter the sewer, he said hiding the fatberg’s smell would be a challenge.

“It’s a horrid smell – fairly pungent. It’s the smell you’d expect from the sewer. I’m back in my office now and I can still smell it around my nose.”

He added: “Thames Water have a really difficult challenge. It’s a bit of a race against time to get rid of the blockage. All the surrounding basements in the area in Whitechapel could flood with sewage.”

Sharon Ament, director at the Museum of London, said: “Our year-long season, City Now City Future, explores what the future holds for people living in urban environments. It is important for the Museum of London to display genuine curiosities from past and present London.

“If we are able to acquire the fatberg for our collection I hope it would raise questions about how we live today and also inspire our visitors to consider solutions to the problems of growing metropolises. This could be one of the most extraordinary objects in any museum collection in London.”

Thames Water says it spends around £1m every month clearing blockages from its sewers in London and the Thames Valley – an average of three fat-related blockages every hour.

Earlier this year, the company announced it was exploring whether it could use recovered fatbergs for biodiesel, but said the eventual solution would have to come from the proper disposal of waste by consumers and businesses
 
That is all very interesting. I've heard of fatbergs before, probably because they occur everywhere there are sewers, but I don't like to think about them. The powers that be in my locale are encouraging residents to cut back on the use of wet wipes. The sewer clogging caused by those "flushable" wipes is so serious that I've heard reports of attempts elsewhere in the U.S. to make their use illegal. I don't know what is to be done about the fat part of the fatberg. You can't very well ban fat and oil.
 
alexonedeath said:
I don't know what is to be done about the fat part of the fatberg. You can't very well ban fat and oil.

Recycle?
 
I am not convinced that recycling of any kind is useful. I've read articles where people who claim to be in a position to know insist that recycling is more expensive than trashing and starting from scratch. They also say that recycling is NOT eco-friendly, that it generates more carbon than if you'd just bury the items. Any more, I am just suspicious of whatever anyone tells me about anything.
 
You know what - they did! The fatberg is now fuelling London buses.

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...e-turn-the-whitechapel-fatberg-into-biodiesel

For a 130-tonne mass of grease, bound as hard as concrete by thousands of tampons, wipes and used tissues, the Whitechapel fatberg is in surprisingly high demand.

Last week, the Museum of London announced it wants to display a chunk of the human-waste bomb, recently unearthed in east London, as a way “to raise questions about how we live today”. Now, a Scottish biodiesel company is taking a piece to turn into fuel.

Argent Energy has spent more than 10 years turning waste that would otherwise go to landfill into biodiesel, a process it has ramped up since the opening this year of a new plant at Ellesmere Port in Cheshire.

“We’re always looking for new sources,” says Dickon Posnett, one of the company’s bosses. “We’ve done rancid mayonnaise, old soup stock that has been sitting in tanks for years, and now we’re playing with fatbergs.”

Sewage sludge, taken from the water-treatment process at various stages in cities across the country, now makes up about 10% of Argent’s intake (food and agricultural waste make up most of the rest). The sludge is heated to melt the fat, which is separated from the debris and processed and squeezed to create a clean oil. The oil is further processed with chemicals to make biodiesel, which Argent supplies to fleets of buses and trucks in the UK, Europe and the US.

Posnett calculates that the new plant could process 300,000 tonnes of fatberg a year – enough to fill more than 50,000 lorries with biodiesel, which creates a fraction of the polluting emissions of standard fuel. The government has just raised its target for the percentage of renewable fuel in petrol and diesel to just under 10% by 2020, up from the current 4.75%, raising demand for new sustainable sources of fuel.

As unfortunate sewer miners continue to hack away at the Whitechapel fatberg (about half of it has been excavated so far), Argent is already supplying biodiesel, blended at 20% with standard diesel, to Metroline, one of London’s biggest bus operators. Thames Water is anxious for its 15 million customers to stop putting fat and wet wipes, among other clogging agents, down our drains. In the meantime, a growing number of bus passengers in London are being propelled by their own effluent, mined from the rich seams of fat beneath our streets.
 
I'll bet that bus exhaust stinks worse than usual. Maybe they could feed the fatberg to farm animals. Seems like a lot of them will eat anything.
 
Um yes - but then we get to eat them!
 
More rats in the sewers is the solution. Rats are excellent scavengers and will coop with the fat problem in an early stage.
 
And guess what, it has - the exhibition opens today, get yourselves down to the Museum of London.

Suddenly I feel a peace for the first time in nearly two years - Britain may be up shit creek without a paddle, making the worst possible mess of the worst decision in many a long year (ie Brexit), but London has the world's greatest fatbergs and the wold's first major museum exhibition about them. So everything is OK :happy banana:

Some wonderful quotes in this - and fatberg fudge, anyone?

https://www.theguardian.com/culture...ewer-fatberg-goes-on-display-at-london-museum

Part of monster sewer fatberg goes on display at London museum

Museum of London opens putrid exhibit that ‘reflects the dark side of ourselves’

Mark Brown Arts correspondent

Fatberg at Museum of London

There are no guidelines for museums working with sewage, admitted the museum curator. Photograph: Alicia Canter for the Guardian

Its aroma was once a mix of rotting meat and a toddler’s nappy that had been left out for months, but it has now, mercifully, calmed down.

“At the moment it smells like dirty toilets,” said Sharon Robinson-Calver, who has led the conservation team at the Museum of London for one of its most challenging and unusual projects.

The museum will on Friday unveil a display of the last remaining piece of a monster fatberg discovered last September in sewers under Whitechapel.

London’s fatberg on show: ‘We thought of pickling it’

It has been slowly air dried. While visitors will not be able to smell it they might get to see a drain fly, given that there is larvae still in the sample.

“They seem quite happy,” said Robinson-Calver. “They’ve got a good food source. They pop out and fly around from time to time, which will be fascinating for visitors. It is part of the mystery of the fatberg, it’s the gift that keeps on giving.”

The sample was part of a sewer-blocking fatberg that made headlines last year, weighing 130 tonnes, the equivalent of 11 double decker buses and stretching more than 250 metres, six metres longer than Tower Bridge.

The solid calcified mass of fats, oils, faeces, wet wipes and sanitary products tells us something about how we live.

“Here at the museum we are all about reflecting the real lived experience of Londoners and it is part of our season exploring the highs and lows of London city life,” said Vyki Sparkes, the curator of social and working history. “I don’t think you can get much lower than a fatberg.”

She said it was like a “black mirror … it reflects the dark side of ourselves”.

A sewage worker’s overalls at the Fatberg exhibition. Photograph: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images

There are two cases of fatberg samples on display. One sample has crumbled into what resemble large truffles. The other is the size of a shoebox and is more intact because it was dried more slowly. It has an other-worldy look; it could be a piece of moon rock or debris from a meteor. Its alien nature is heightened by a strange purple and orange tag.

“That’s a Double Decker wrapper,” said Robinson-Calver. “It is kind of the only thing which makes it recognisable and contemporary.”

Curators and conservators have had to learn new skills to put the sample on display, choosing drying rather than pickling or freezing. “There are no guidelines for museums to work with sewage,” admitted Sparkes. “Nobody has conserved one of these before. We don’t really know how it is going to behave over the long term.”

The Whitechapel fatberg was a colossal thing, giving off hydrogen sulphide and carbon monoxide, both toxic and flammable gases, and some visitors may be disappointed that the sample is not bigger.

Sparkes said a larger piece would have been impossible. It had to be blasted off using high-powered jet hoses, carried through the sewer and lifted through a small manhole. “To be honest, I’m hoping people will come, realise the amount of work and the risks and be amazed that there is any of it.”

The display also tells a more positive story, revealing that fatbergs can and have been converted into biodiesel, and is one of the fuels powering the No 24 London bus route between Pimlico and Hampstead.

Sparkes admitted that the display may not be for all tastes. “Not everyone will want to come to see the fatberg, it will be too disgusting, too gross to think about,” she said.

It has been deliberately put in a sewer-dark room that people can choose to enter or not. Either way, the museum is expecting lots of interest and has come up with fatberg merchandise, including T-shirts, tote bags and badges.

There is also fatberg fudge – quite crumbly, with a piquant rum and raisin flavour.
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Fatberg! A free display at the Museum of London, London Wall EC2, 9 February - 1 July
 
That's so gross, to even contemplate. I don't think I'd want to visit the exhibit, and it should definitely be off-limits to children. It would give them dangerous ideas about fat and sewers, possibly leading to their flushing a tub of Crisco down the loo and then climbing into a manhole to see it go by in the turd stream. Don't encourage kids to play with bathroom functions! Give them a porn magazine instead (wholesome and natural).
 
I would dare to visit that exhibition either. How embarrassing to hear people exclaim -Look the there is the disgusting Fatberg! While they are pointing at me. :thinking:
 
I would dare to visit that exhibition either. How embarrassing to hear people exclaim -Look the there is the disgusting Fatberg! While they are pointing at me. :thinking:

They had better not try that, old bearkill...or, or, or else!
 
And it goes on - more coverage (this one is too long to paste in):

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...eed-fatberg-museum-london-clogging-sewers-oil

This is wonderful: we have lost our Empire, we are walking away from Europe, the world's icecaps and icebergs are disappearing, but we have found a new role - "Britain, home to the greatest fatbergs in the World".
Presumably on Brexit day a ginomous fatberg will mysteriously and permanently block the Channel Tunnel, and flotillas of British fatbergs will scour the English Channel, embedding all cross-Channel shipping and bringing its passengers and crew to a horrible end!
 
I wish Britain would have found some other means of regaining its supremacy. This fatberg thing is just so gross. Deaddirty, can't you DO something to stop it?
 
Short of shitting industrial quantities of detergent into the system, which I do not fancy AT ALL, I am not sure what I can do?
At least let us be thankful the Titanic hit an iceberg not a fatberg. :too hard to take:
 
The passengers on the Titanic would probably disagree with you, since a fatberg would not have sunk the ship. Surely there is some industrial or commercial use for discarded fat. I really think that thing does not belong in a museum.
 
If the fatberg was big enough (and we do produce the World's biggest fatbergs), I reckon the Titanic would have embedded itself to its full length - so everyone would have suffocated in the most appalling stench even if the combined mass had not sunk as I suspect it would have.
The oil/fat can indeed be, and is, recycled to power London busses but the, um, other constituents are more problematic - do you really want to breathe fumes from a bus burning wet wipes and shit?
 
If the fatberg was big enough (and we do produce the World's biggest fatbergs), I reckon the Titanic would have embedded itself to its full length - so everyone would have suffocated in the most appalling stench even if the combined mass had not sunk as I suspect it would have.
The oil/fat can indeed be, and is, recycled to power London busses but the, um, other constituents are more problematic - do you really want to breathe fumes from a bus burning wet wipes and shit?

I was going to argue that fat floats, but ice floats too, so I'll just shut up. As for the actual sewer berg, I'd forgotten that it is made up of more than Crisco. We won't dwell on the shit, but I've seen photos of the wet wipes buildup in American sewers, and it's a nasty business, berg or no berg.
 
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