Business

Technology company wants to turn sludge to energy

By Bill Moss, Published: March 7, 2013

A company that produces energy from waste products hopes to partner with Hendersonville's utility system on technology that uses sewage plant sludge to make fuel.
Ecologix Environmental Systems, which specializes in industrial and public wastewater treatment solutions, would use the sewage plant byproduct on site or near the plant and save the city from paying to haul the sludge to South Carolina.
"They spend a huge amount" hauling the sludge, said Brian Riley, the chief operating officer of Ecologix, a worldwide company that offers a variety of portable and fixed plants to turn waste into energy.
City utilities director Lee Smith, who met with Riley last month, said the idea is in very early stages.
"This is a fact finding mission," Smith said. The city currently spends $325,000 a year to haul the dried sludge and pay tipping fees at the landfill. It is trucked from there to a landfill in Barnwell, S.C., operated by Waste Management.
"We'd reduce that cost," he said, "and then the tipping fee would totally go away."
Riley, who lives in Horse Shoe, says his company's sludge-handling solution is a good fit. He has invited Hendersonville utility officials and Henderson County solid waste department officials to a demonstration of the technology with a desktop unit next week. Advantage West, the Asheville-based industrial recruiting arm of the N.C. Commerce Department, and other agencies have contacted Riley about the waste-to-energy technology.
"We're getting a lot of calls and inquires especially because it's in Western North Carolina," Riley said.
The company is exploring the possibility of using city sewage plant sludge and possibly solid waste for fuel in a plant that could be located either at the landfill or the sewage plant off Balfour Road.
In order to make the energy plant viable, he said, Ecologix would use the city's sewage treatment byproduct — about 5,000 tons a year of dewatered sludge — plus other products to make energy.
"We refer to it as waste stream," Riley said. "The sludge is one source, about 5,000 tons a year, but woodchips is another one and MSW (municipal solid waste, or garbage) is another — tires, shingles, yard waste, anything that has a carbon content, you look at what they have and how much they have."
The waste products can be converted into usable products in a couple of ways, he said. The company's renewable energy plants can make methane gas or convert the products to gasoline or diesel fuel. Methane gas can be used to drive generators to make electricity or sold to factories or used in agricultural machinery.
"You could sell it into the grid, you could sell it to city to run the wastewater treatment plant," Riley said. "The gas can actually run vehicles.... We're getting an awful lot of traction in the eastern part of the state with hog farmers using their manure to generate electricity. We're in negotiations for five different power plants using hog manure and we've talking to one chicken plant."
Riley described Ecologix as "basically an integrator" that uses its technology in partnership with cities and industry. Energy or methane gas made from the city wastewater sludge, for instance, could be sold to Duke Energy or piped to a nearby factory.
Riley said an Ecologix plant could be either near the city's wastewater treatment facility, which is on Mud Creek near Berkeley Park, or at the landfill.
"We haven't gotten that far yet but typically you want to locate as close to the source of waste as you can," he said. "In a typical application, and it doesn't mean it would happen this way in this one, you would put it as close to the wastewater treatment plant as you could."
Riley also mentioned the possibility of a plant at the Henderson County landfill because the landfill is closed. Garbage hauled there is trucked to South Carolina.
"If we were working with the landfill you want to put it on or adjacent to the landfill," he said. "We'd be dropping a couple million dollars worth" in investment. Because of that, Ecologix would need to supplement the wastewater sludge with other waste products.
"All of these technologies are carbon neutral," he said. "They're closed loops, with no emissions, no smell, they're just very environmentally friendly."
The city's output of sludge "is right on the borderline" for what's needed to make a plant profitable, he said. He suggested the sewage byproduct could be supplemented by yard waste, the trees and limbs that remain after storm damage and "municipal solid waste, more commonly known to us as garbage."

Asked whether the permitting is a long process, Riley agreed that it could be.
"The permitting is definitely an issue," he said. "I think that once the permitting agencies see it and understand and get the results from it, I think they're going to be comfortable granting permits."
The company sees North Carolina as a growth market, not only because of hog waste but household garbage.
"We've began to look at remediating landfills," he said. "In North Carolina, in 12 years, every landfill that's currently permitted in the state will have reached its capacity. That's one of the reasons the county is trucking their garbage, as well as the city."
Riley said he pitched his company's plant to Hendersonville officials because "I live here."
Ecologix has projects around the world — in British Columbia, the Philippines, Ghana, Bermuda and other countries.