24 June 2022 | GBR-Rail
GBR-Rail’s Cleartrak, a novel train toilet treatment system, has been awarded SMART grant funding through Innovate UK.
10,000 train toilets operate on the GB Network alone and each train toilet discharges 80 tonnes of waste into the sewage network annually.
Cleartrak has been designed to reduce the whole life, environmental and social costs of maintaining trains with toilets, whilst also benefitting the railways with increased train availability, route flexibility and passenger satisfaction.
With Cleartrak wastewater is not stored on-board but recycled for reuse in handwashing and flushing, eliminating the need for Legionella monitoring. Solid waste is processed into an inert biochar, which can be emptied once every six weeks in any location.
Operating independently of the sewage network, without the need for specialist infrastructure and frequent emptying, the whole life costs of maintaining trains with toilets are halved, water wastage is reduced by 95% and GHGs by 35%.
Tim Brown, GBR-Rail Managing Director, commented, “This SMART funding will enable us to validate Cleartrak’s design and performance, through extensive real world on train testing, as a safe and reliable train toilet wastewater treatment and recycling technology for global use, prior to commercialisation in late September 2023.