INNOVATION May-June 2013

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Without divulging the details of Quadrogen’s answer to the 100-million dollar question of how to do it (Quadrogen’s goal, lit- erally, is to make $100 million per year) Prasad says his company has found the ultra-cleaning solution. It’s a unique and patent- pending process that combines traditional cleaning strategies with new ones. And that’s why he’s busy filling orders for custom-built, scalable equipment even though he has yet to pick up the phone and make a sales call. The analogy he uses is a television set. “Suppose you’ve been watching black and white television. Now, somebody has come out with a colour television. People go for the colour television, right? We are selling a colour television.” The BC Bioenergy Network is also confident Quadrogen has found the answer; so confident it has loaned the company $1.5 million for its demonstration project in Delta. Quadrogen has also received $1 million in funding from the BC Innovative Clean Energy Fund and $2.91 million from the federal government through Sustainable Development Technology Canada. Michael Weedon explains the all-round optimism saying, “The pollutants he’s removing are removed to less than 100 parts per bil- lion and normally they’re measured in 100 parts per million.” The particular project that convinced the BC Bioenergy Network to invest in Quadrogen is in California, at the Orange County Sanitation District Waste Water Treatment Plant. There, Quadrogen’s clean-up system delivers biogas with siloxanes below 100 parts per billion and sulfur below 30 parts per bil- lion to a FuelCell Energy Direct FuelCell ® power generation system. “The system has been running well for more than two years without any maintenance,” confirms Prasad. (On his scale of difficulty, he pegs gas from a wastewater treatment plant at about an eight.) Orange County is Quadrogen’s first ultra cleaning project. But the Delta project is more complex, more costly and involves more partners. The plan is to use 100 standard cubic feet per minute of already piped pipe gas from the Vancouver Landfill in Delta to a site about three kilometers away, where Village Farms Interna- tional has a commercial greenhouse operation. There, Quadrogen’s Integrated Biogas Clean-up System and H2 Booster systems will be integrated with a 300 kW Direct FuelCell ®

power plant from FuelCell Energy of Connecticut to generate renewable electricity, heat, and hydrogen. It will also separate out the carbon dioxide and clean it so thoroughly that it can be used in the food-producing greenhouses. If successful, it will be the first project where fuel cells convert gas from a landfill into energy. “To date, these high efficiency, yet contaminant-sensitive fuel cells have not been able to use landfill gas due to the significant challenge of removing all the contami- nants in the gas,” explains Prasad. The uncertain outcome is why this project is being described as a ‘demonstration.’ “What he’s attempting to do is a world’s first,” says Weedon, “so there’s risk associated with that and there’s a possibility he will fail. We don’t believe he will fail. We’re investing our money in his project and he’s assembled a very impressive team to work on that project.” A Growing Demand In BC, part of the impetus for converting biogas from landfills into renewable energy is politically driven. In 2009 the prov- ince announced that owners and operators of small-to-medium landfills will be required to collect gas by 2016. As well as creating odours and possible explosions, the methane in landfill gas is about 21 times more harmful than carbon dioxide in terms of its effect on global warming. But why flare all that methane when it can be converted to renewable energy that customers want? That was the thinking behind FortisBC’s initiatives in converting landfill gas in Salmon Arm into pipeline quality natural gas. “Customers won’t even see the difference,” says Scott Gramm, P.Eng., Business Development Manager for FortisBC. That’s because methane is methane, no matter whether it comes from underground in the form of natural gas or out of a landfill. Furthermore, some of FortisBC’s almost one million custom- ers are willing to pay more for the satisfaction of knowing that some of their natural gas comes from renewable sources. “About 70% like the idea; 15% are willing to pay more vol- untarily” is how Gramm sums up the demand. To date, that’s translated into about 5,000 customers since the renewable energy option was introduced in June 2011. On average, those residential customers in the Lower Mainland pay an extra five dollars per month for having 10% of their natural gas desig- nated as renewable. “It is significant when you think about it,” says Gramm. “We’re seeing demand growing and we’ve asked for approval for an addi- tional four projects and that is under review by the BC Utilities Commission today.” FortisBC is also interested in what Quadrogen might be able to do for them, but it’s still too early. “One of our criteria would be that you’ve proved it and they haven’t yet,” says Gramm. “I think they will. I know Alakh personally. I’ve worked with him. I think highly of him and I think he won’t make claims he can’t substantiate.” For his part, Prasad is calmly confident, saying he’s shunning publicity, simply concentrating on doing the hard work at hand. And will he succeed? “You are asking me if we can put this color television in each house. This will not happen in 5 years. In 10 years? Sure.” v

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