Harvest Power, Triple T Trucking work toward zero waste
July 8, 2010 by scasola
Filed under Featured, Projects, Sustainable Communities, composting
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.