Newcastle-upon-Tyne is well know for its under-achieving and likely to be relegated Premier League football club. Apparently, they're doing a lot of good work with digesters to reduce waste sludge. Advanced Anaerobic Digestion: More Gas from Sewage Sludge - Renewable Energy World Now, if only we can get the stink out of NUFC.
Here in NYC our sludge is barged/boated to one of the 13 water pollution control plants that has a dewatering facility where it goes through cemtrifuges. The centrate is put back into the aeration tanks and the 'cake' which is the dewatered sludge is trucked off to a company in the Bronx where it is pelletized and used in the south as fertilizer. We have one plant that is under major renovation and their digesters were replaced with these high tech digesters but from everything I've heard they work as good as a digester should lol.
I'm all for radical upgrading of sewage treatment. There are many modern techniques to capture methane, generate electricity, dewater the sludge, and have a generally non-stinky solution Yes, this also works extremely well for corporate pig barns, but for some reason this "solution" was loudly denounced on Faux News
Because they're ignorant tw@ts perhaps... This type of approach should be applied everywhere. There are so many wins that it makes your head spin.
Jayman, do you know the typical costs of waste derived energy? You've mentioned in past threads that the payback is often quite fast (3-5 years) so the economics must be pretty good. Why don't we see more of this sort of thing? Ignorance? Utilities that can't be arsed to explore energy sources other than coal and NG? These projects can deliver baseload power, which is the holy grail of renewables. I'm surprised we aren't seeing more of this sort of thing. Every waste water treatment facility should either be a power plant too, or have a means of pumping bio methane into the NG "grid".
The costs are entirely competitive with baseload primary power sources. I'm convinced the primary reason we don't see more of it is ignorance. A lot of these sources are municipal, and a case would have to be made to the rate payers to tack on an additional 30-50% to the costs of a new or renovated sewage treatment facility. Mention s*** and energy in the same sentence, good luck! Consider how Faux News poo-pood swine manure digestion in Iowa. They called it a glaring example of Pork Spending. No mention whatsoever of the many positive outcomes: reduced threat of disease, reduced odor, ROI of 3-5 years, etc etc etc
