Traditional Companies Shifting Into Integrating Biogas Processes

Here’s an overview of key news in the biogas and renewable natural gas (RNG) industries. Companies from different industries are shifting their traditional ways of operation towards an eco-friendly one that produces biogas.

POLICIES & GOVERNMENTS ACTIONS

EU PROPOSES BAN OF SINGLE-USE PLASTIC PRODUCTS TO REDUCE POLLUTION

On Monday, the European Commission officially proposed banning the single-use plastic products most often found on Europe’s beaches: plastic cotton buds, cutlery, plates, straws, drink stirrers and balloon sticks. All of these materials would need to be made from alternative, sustainable materials once the ban is in place. The proposal also calls for all European Union (EU) member states to set consumption targets to reduce the use of plastic food containers and drink cups, and to collect 90% of single-use plastic drink bottles by 2025 through deposit refund schemes.

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MUNICIPALITIES & CITIES

IOWA CITY, IOWA, LAUNCHES TWO NEW BINS FOR COMPOST COLLECTION

Iowa City, Iowa, is gearing up to roll out its new 95-gallon and 25-gallon compost bins, which are free to residents who opt to pay $2 a month for curbside compost collection services. The city will begin distributing the bins at events in June, with hopes of expanding its curbside compost program that began in March 2017. Currently, about one-quarter of what goes into the Iowa City Landfill is food waste, so the city hopes that these new bins and its curbside compost collection service offerings will help reduce the amount of food waste that’s sent to landfill.

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MAYOR OF LONDON ENDORSES SEPARATE FOOD WASTE COLLECTION

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has endorsed calls for the city’s waste authorities to begin separate food waste collections. In the newly published Environment Strategy, the Mayor lays out plans to ‘tackle the most urgent environmental challenges’ facing the city. According to the Mayor’s office, it’s the city’s first integrated environmental strategy, with an aim to combine approaches ‘to every aspect of London’s’ environment. This includes air quality, green infrastructure, and waste. The strategy states the Mayor’s goal is to ‘make London a zero waste city’, with no biodegradeable or recyclable waste being sent to landfill by 2026, and for 65% of the city’s municipal waste to be recycled by 2030.

Read more on Bio Energy News

COMPANIES & ORGANIZATIONS

ANAEROBIC WASTEWATER TREATMENT AND BIOGAS PRODUCTION FROM BREWERY EFFLUENT

In 2019, MolsonCoors, a 230-year-old beermaker with 18,000 employees at 31 breweries selling product in more than 50 countries, is scheduled to start production in its new state-of-the-art brewery in Chilliwack in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia, Canada, providing about 1,000 jobs in the construction phase and supporting another 100 employees at the brewery at full production. To handle effluent from the new MolsonCoors $CAD200 million plant, which will produce beverages made with mountain-fed water at the foot of the North Cascade Mountains, the city of Chilliwack worked with Global Water Engineering (GWE) to build a high-strength wastewater pretreatment facility. The anaerobic wastewater pretreatment installation was engineered to provide treatment performance of 85 to 90 percent biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) and chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal, which are measures of the amount of potentially polluting organic content in the wastewater. The technology is purpose-built to treat wastewater that is rich in organic content.

Read More on Water Tech Online

TORONTO ZOO ONE STEP CLOSER TO OPENING BIOGAS PLANT

On May 9th, just a little over two years after the project’s initial groundbreaking, ZooShare and Canada’s Toronto Zoo celebrated delivery of the engine for a biogas plant that will generate electricity from zoo poo and food waste. In addition to the 2,000 tonnes of waste from the Toronto Zoo, the plant will also process 15,000 tonnes of inedible food waste from local grocery stores and turn it into power, heat and fertilizer. The zoo-based biogas plant will cover one and a half acres of the Toronto Zoo’s land. ZooShare’s Executive Director, Daniel Bida, was there to meet the delivery of the generator. “It was an exciting moment. The CHP is an essential piece of our project, and as the first piece of equipment to arrive, it is the first step towards construction,” he said.

Read more on Renewable Energy Magazine

VERMONT COFFEE COMPANY CONVERTS TO 100 PERCENT BIOGAS FOR ROASTING OPERATIONS

Vermont is giving new meaning to its nickname as the Green Mountain State, not through scenic peaks but through on-the-ground efforts to shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy. The sustainability-minded folks at Middlebury-based Vermont Coffee Company are certainly doing their part, announcing that that they are now using 100 percent renewable energy to roast their coffees, with both thermal and electric energy sourced from captured methane. “The electricity comes from biogas generated at Vermont dairy farms, and the thermal gas is coming from an engineered landfill just north of us in Quebec,” Paul Ralston, CEO of Vermont Coffee Company, told Daily Coffee News.

Read more on Daily Coffee News

PEANUT SHELL-POWERED BIOENERGY PLANT STARTS IN ARGENTINA

Prodeman, a major peanut producer in Argentina, has begun commercial operation of its 10MW bioenergy facility. The plant uses peanut shells to generate energy and is expected to consume 50,000 tons of the waste per year. The facility’s opening comes two months after signing its power purchase agreement with Argentine regulators. Depending on weather conditions, Prodeman can produce up to 130,000 tons of peanuts annually.

Read more on Bio Energy News

TYSON FOODS’ NEW INNOVATION LAB TO TACKLE WASTE, FOOD DESERTS

Tyson Foods has more than 122,000 employees around the world, but it could be a team of seven workers in its new innovation lab in Chicago that hold the key to helping the 88-year old company adopt the startup mentality it is trying to emulate. “As we think about innovation and what’s happening out in the market today, we’re seeing a lot of growth coming from smaller startup companies, and the typical CPG companies that we’ve competed with in the past aren’t necessarily going to be our biggest competitors as we look into the future for growth,” Jen Bentz, senior vice president of R&D for insights and innovation at Tyson, told Food Dive. “And so we had to take a step back and say, ‘Well, what makes them successful, and what should we be thinking about from a growth model moving forward?’ ”

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NEW REPORTS & RESEARCHES

NATIONAL ZERO WASTE COUNCIL RELEASES STRATEGY FOR PREVENTING FOOD WASTE IN CANADA

The strategy aims to cut Canada’s food waste in half by 2030. The National Zero Waste Council (NZWC) released its updated National Food Waste Reduction Strategy for preventing food waste in Canada, sharing the report with Agriculture and Agri-Food Minister Lawrence MacAulay and Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna to help inform the government’s development of a food policy for Canada. Key findings suggest more needs to be done to tackle food waste along the whole supply chain, access business and marketing innovators to provide solutions for food waste and improve the entire food donation system.

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YOU CAN CUT DOWN 80 PER CENT ENERGY COSTS BY MAKING YOUR BIOGAS AT HOME

Biogas is a renewable bio-fuel that is produced from the decomposition of organic wastes in the absence of oxygen (anaerobic digestion). Organic matter, such as food scraps, agricultural wastes, crop residues and animal wastes are broken down by bacteria producing a mixture of gases. Primarily methane and carbon dioxide and trace amounts of hydrogen sulfide , moisture and siloxanes. Methane can be combusted or oxidised with oxygen; the energy released during combustion allows biogas to be used as fuel for heating, cooking and power generation. It can also be used in gas engines to convert the energy in the gas into mechanical energy, electricity and heat. A methane concentration ranges from 50 – 75 per cent (vol/vol) depending on the type of feed material used. Methane burns with a clean deep blue flame.

Read more on The Standard