Adnams Bio Energy creates fuel from brewery, food waste

Construction is complete on the first phase of a groundbreaking project by Adnams Bio Energy Limited that uses anaerobic digestion to transform brewery and food waste into renewable energy.

Based in the United Kingdom, Adnams Brewery has partnered with British Gas and the National Grid to provide a new source for renewable fuel. According to the company, it will generate 4.8 million kilowatt-hours per year, enough energy to heat 235 family homes or run a car for 4 million miles.

The plant offers more than just renewable heat and energy. It diverts methane from landfills that might otherwise pollute the atmosphere. Adnams Bio Energy Chief Executive Andy Wood was quoted on the company’s Web site recently as saying the following:

“For a number of years now, Adnams has been investing in ways to reduce our impact on the environment. The reality of being able to convert our own brewing waste and local food waste to power Adnams’ brewery and vehicles, as well as the wider community is very exciting.

“The industrial ecology cycle is completed when the fertiliser produced from the anaerobic digestion process can be used on farmland to grow barley for Adnams beer. This facility will have a major impact on the reduction of carbon emissions in the region and the production of renewable energy. The food waste would otherwise be destined for landfill, but processing it through the digester will save an estimated 50,000 tonnes of CO₂ equivalents from landfill.”

What are your thoughts on the use of brewery and food waste to help fuel this community?

Harvest Power, Triple T Trucking work toward zero waste

Today, Harvest Power’s partnership with New Hampshire-based Triple T Trucking was featured in the Brattleboro Reformer. The story, by staff writer Chris Garofalo, presented plans to create an organics to energy and recycling station in the New England area that works toward a common goal of zero waste while creating renewable energy.

Harvest CEO Paul Sellew was interviewed for the piece. He explained that both the renewable energy and compost production model for this project differ from earlier methods of eliminating waste:

To remove organic materials from the waste stream, Harvest will produce high quality compost products while generating electricity from food and yard waste.

“So our view is to combine these two, increase diversion from landfills, recycle these organic materials and beneficially reuse them through the production of renewable energy and high-value compost,” said Sellew. “We think this is the next evolution in the development of the organics industry in the United States.”

The company presently operates a similar facility in British Colombia, Canada, but has several others that are expected to go online by the end of the year.

The story also does a clear and concise job of explaining the technology behind this plan.

Harvest uses High Solids Anaerobic Digestion (HSAD) at its facilities, the degradation and stabilization of organic materials with a solids content between 25 and 50 percent. By comparison, a wet anaerobic digestion system processes the same materials with a solids content between only 2 and 15 percent.

Anaerobic digestion reflects the same process that occurs in a cow’s stomach — using similar micro-organisms in a large chamber and capture the biogas as it is produced in an ideal environment.

Through HSAD, Harvest operators break down food and yard waste using naturally occurring bacteria to produce renewable biogas energy. Workers then aerobically compost the remaining digestate to capture the nutrients and organic matter to create a high quality compost-based product.

The partnership with Triple T represents a mutual interest in environmental sustainability for this region. Though the initiative has the ability to create jobs, improve air quality and boost recycling efforts, the article also notes the challenges yet to come.

Read the story in its entirety here. Let us know your thoughts.

UK moves forward with renewable energy pledge

Anaerobic digestion is a hot topic in the United Kingdom these days when it comes to waste management. The Coalition government is forging ahead with its highly publicized plans to provide more anaerobic digestors to generate heat and electricity from organic waste.

According to an article in today’s BusinessGreen.com, ministers met with representatives across the industry to identify any barriers to the sustainable technology.

As reporter James Murray noted:

“The technology is fueled using biomass such as animal manure, sewage or food waste, which is digested by enzymes working in the absence of oxygen to produce methane. The methane is captured and can be burned off onsite to produce electricity and heat, converted into biofuel, or upgraded to biomethane which can be fed into the national gas grid. The resulting waste material can also be used as fertilizer.”

Anaerobic digestion is well suited to farms and businesses that produce large amounts of organic and food waste. As the article mentions, it also has the power to reduce the amount of organic waste going to landfills and can cut greenhouse emissions.

Roundtable discussions will tackle everything from the financial benefits and viability of using anaerobic digestion to ways the government can harness the power of biogas produced through this energy conversion technology.

If you were in attendance, what questions or concerns would you have? What would you most want to know about the addition of this technology on a much broader scale?

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