INNOVATION November-December 2015

The Harvest Energy Garden reduces greenhouse gas emissions of 23,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent per year, says Frain. “Because the waste is recycled and re- used in the area where it is produced, it dramatically lowers transportation costs for businesses and haulers and, by reducing the amount of organic material reaching the landfill, it reduces the potential odour pollution and groundwater contamination associated with landfills.” Beginnings In 2009, Harvest Power acquired Fraser Richmond Soil and Fibre, one of the largest composters in North America. Harvest Power’s decision to deploy a high solids anaerobic digestion technology was driven by Metro Vancouver’s stringent new standards. The regional government implemented an organics disposal ban as part of the Regional Organics Strategy to achieve 70% waste diversion from landfills, effective July 2015. The ban is projected to divert more than 265,000 tonnes of organic material—mainly food waste—from landfills annually. Each year, Metro Vancouver transports more than 400,000 tonnes of municipal solid waste to a landfill in Cache Creek, 350 kilometres away. “The planning for the Harvest Energy Garden began four to five years ago as we started to look at this high-strength organic waste stream that was going to be coming,” says Ashwani Kumar, P.Eng. (Ont.), Harvest Power’s Vice President of Engineering. “We needed to find the technology to deal with it.” A number of technologies already existed to process high- strength solid waste. All of them were developed in Europe,

The Harvest Energy Garden in Richmond, BC, is the first processing plant of its kind in North America. It uses dry- fermentation high solids anaerobic digestion technology to process mixed food and yard waste to create nutrient-rich compost and renewable, carbon-neutral electricity. Owned and operated by Harvest Power Canada Ltd., the facility entered full production in April 2013, using technology developed by Grossman Ingenieur Consult GmbH (GICON), based in Dresden, Germany. Anaerobic digestion is the breakdown of organic material by microorganisms in the absence of oxygen. It is the basic process by which organic matter decomposes in a landfill, and it generates methane gas as one of the final products of decomposition. The GICON technology mimics the breakdown that would occur in a landfill by placing the material in an enclosed environment where oxygen is not allowed to enter. “The organic waste breaks down quickly in an optimal environment, and it gives off large amounts of biogas, which is a combination of methane and carbon dioxide,” says Seamus Frain, P.Eng., Senior Project Manager for Opus DaytonKnight, the coordinating consultants on the project. “The biogas is cleaned and combusted to generate electricity that is fed into the power grid.” The biogas is combusted to create 8 million kilowatt-hours per year of carbon-neutral renewable electricity. The solid residue from the processed waste is composted, and produces more than 17,000 tonnes per year of nutrient-rich, commercially marketable compost. The high-quality soil product benefits local industries, including turf and vegetable growing, horticulture, and market gardening.

Graphic: Opus DaytonKnight

Harvest Energy Gardens (facing page), in Richmond, BC, processes food and yard waste in the Lower Mainland. Using European technology translated to local conditions and standards, the facility generates 8 million kilowatt-hours of biogas-derived electricity and more than 17,000 tonnes of marketable compost each year.

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