Anaerobic Digestion, What’s That?

By Lisa Bartoli

Lately, conversations with my friends and family go something like this: Them: “How’s your new job?” Me: “Great! The company is in hot pursuit of many great opportunities.  Everyone’s excited and motivated.”  Them:  “That’s good! I’m happy for you.  So, what does the company do again?”  Then, I try my best to explain again how Harvest Power captures the biogas generated from organic waste to turn it into energy, and then produces high quality compost material.  Occasionally I’ll toss in an industry term like anaerobic digestion just to make it interesting.

It’s not surprising to me that these questions repeat themselves.  No one I know socially is connected to green jobs, let alone exposed to the technology needed to harness energy from food scraps. My blue collar upbringing created a social circle of retail, construction, and manufacturing jobs, with a few medical professionals thrown in for good measure.  Of course we all agree that recycling and reducing our energy consumption is important.  But when the rubber hits the road, I am considered the radical of my group when I consider purchasing a compost bin from the local home improvement store.

Now that we’ve become aware of the organic-waste-to-energy-and-compost process, my friends and I comment to each other frequently about how we hear and read about composting efforts throughout the area and across the country.

Articles in our local papers report how towns are considering composting options to reduce the costs associated with trash removal.  Cities like Boston are making plans to build facilities that will turn their compost piles into energy for their neighborhoods.  Local schools have installed compost bins and are using them as a teaching tool for their students. (My son cheerfully reports to me each time he is selected to jump in the compost bin at his middle school to remove the trash that uninformed passersby have deposited in the compost bin.)

So when I stop to think about it, my company and its mission is really nothing new to my friends and me.  We’ve slowly become accustomed to recycling, thinking green and trying to reduce our footprint.  Renewable energy from organic waste is just a new frontier in our growing knowledge and awareness of organic waste.

Maybe at the next BBQ, when my sister-in-law again asks me what Harvest Power does, I can explain source separated organics.

In Norfolk, One Biogas Facility Struggles to Find Public Support

A sort of European biogas arms race begins, as Britain continues to turn more attention to developing biogas power plants.  Educating the public continues to be a huge factor, however, in approving new biogas technology in suburban and rural areas.  The county of Norfolk recently resubmitted plans for an anaerobic digestion power plant that will power 1,500 homes, located on the edge of Attleborough.  Concerns from local residents about noise, smell, and traffic issues stemming from the constant hauling of waste are being eased by officials from SS Agriservices, the local renewable energy firm.  The project was even withdrawn from the Breckland Council last summer after Britain’s Environmental Agency expressed reservations about odors that might emanate from the site.

Since manure and waste products are often used in the digestion process, many biogas facilities build their tanks underground to reduce concerns about odors.  Tim Evans, the managing director of Renewable Zukunft, which is working in partnership with SS Agriservices, confirmed that the prospective facility at Attlesborough was be resubmitted with plans to store the waste underground.

SS Agriservices, is a collective of local farmers and agricultural contractors in Norfolk and Suffolk hoping to build the region’s first anaerobic digesion project. Located on a poultry farm off Stony Lane in Attleborough, the power station would be fueled by manure and waste crops like maize, cereals, and grains.  The methane gas produced would drive a generator and create electricity.

Evans said he believes that biogas was a more reliable and “attractive” source of energy than onshore and offshore wind farms. While other European nations like Germany and Austria can boast over 7,500 biogas facilities, there are only a handful currently running in the UK.

“The government is putting lots of money into wind farms, which only run for 25 percent of the year, and we run for 95 percent of the year,” Evans said. “It is not windy everywhere, but there are farms everywhere, and one of the attractions of Crows Hall Farm is that it is very close to a suitable connection to the National Grid.”

Read the article here. Read more about Harvest Power’s best-of-breed technologies here.