Biofuel Success Stories in Canada
The city of Hamilton, Ontario (Canada) is embarking on a new Green Biotech project that will utilize human waste to make methane gas for fueling it’s fleet of 110 vehicles. Thanks to a $30 million infrastructure grant, the city will invest in a biofuel technology that has been used in Europe for years, to generate methane from wastewater treatment plant sludge. According to the Hamilton Spectator, the city is the first in Canada to use this technology. Part of the funding will be used to retrofit the vehicles, invest in new technologies for energy recovery from biodegrading microorganisms, and purification of the methane.
Hamilton made headlines in 2005 for a project to convert sludge to electricity that is now used to heat the wastewater treatment plant from which it came, saving the city about $450K per year on natural gas costs, and creating revenue as excess electricity is sold.
Meanwhile, Canada has also jumped on the bioethanol bandwagon as Shell announced today that an Ottawa station has begun selling gasoline containing 10% bioethanol made from wheat straw. According to Shell, this is the first commercial use of bioethanol from straw. Other companies, such as Genencor, are trying to find ways to improve the efficiency of bioethanol production from traditional sources such as corn or sugarcane. The Ottawa technology is the result of a collaborative project between Royal Dutch Shell and the Ottawa-based biotech company Iogen Energy Corporation.
Sources:
AM 680 News Radio, News Headlines, June 10, 2009. Rogers Broadcasting Ltd.
Environment Canada Pollution Prevention: Canadian Success Stories: Hamilton Renewable Power Incorporated.
MacIntyre, N. Human waste will fuel city fleet. The Hamilton Spectator, June 10, 2009 online at thespec.com.
Comments
Poop plan should be flushed
June 17, 2009
Maureen Reilly
The Hamilton Spectator
Sludge Watch
Toronto
(Jun 17, 2009)
Re: ‘Poop power’s no potty joke’ (Editorial, June 15)
Power from sludge? Good idea. Stop putting sludge on farmland? Good idea. But something does not add up in the $30-million Hamilton poop-as-car-fuel project.
First, Hamilton just spent $4.4 million to stop flaring off the digester gas and is instead using the 1.6 MW generated from the digester gas to offset the annual 8 MW requirement of the sewage treatment plant. The city is still buying energy — 6.4 MW a year to run the Woodward sewage plant.
Instead of leaving it at that, the city proposes to take $30 million from taxpayers to polish up that little bit of energy to pump into the public works vehicles. But:
1. When they take away the 1.6 MW from the plant and put it in cars, they will have to buy it back to run the sewer plant. They are robbing Peter to pay Paul.
2. When you clean the digester gas to make it clean enough to use in cars, you lose about 30 per cent of the energy, so there is a net loss of power.
3. Hamilton’s water and wastewater fleet isn’t engineered to run on natural gas, so it will cost another $6,000 each to retrofit them with natural gas tanks.
4. Running on natural gas isn’t all that clean. That is why the city isn’t buying any more natural gas buses. They have moved on to a cleaner choice — the hybrid.
5. It costs about $6,000 more to buy a hybrid than a regular car. If Hamilton wants to spend an extra $6,000 per car, they should make a truly better environmental choice by spending the money on a hybrid.
The poop-power project mimics a good idea. But it is really just siphoning $30 million down the drain. The city would do better to spend the money fixing potholes