Back to calendar
Anaerobic Digestion of Food Waste and Manure into Renewable Energy
Anaerobic Digestion of Food Waste and Manure into Renewable Energy
Tim Raibley, Vice President, HDR
This presentation will present the feasibility of employing an anaerobic digestion process to convert various sources of solid organic wastes into a renewable form of energy for the Renewable Energy Anaerobic Digester (READ) facility prepared for the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) by HDR Engineering Inc. (HDR). The READ facility is envisioned to receive/process a variety of organic rich waste streams including cafeteria food waste and animal manures from the campus confined animal facilities, converting the volatile solids into biogas which will be used to generate electricity.
The eSession will address the challenges associated with employing a digestion system to treat solid waste organics, as well as the beneficial use or necessary management aspects of the facility byproducts (biogas, digestate and effluent).
It will then discuss a variety of key issues explored in the feasibility analysis including:
- Feedstock and its appropriateness for digestion as well as the necessary pre-treatment requirements to remove undesirable materials, and prepare the feedstock for insertion into the anaerobic digestion process
- Various digestion processes explored, including high solids, low solids and dry fermentation technologies
- Possible uses of biogas that were explored, including various ways of producing electricity, supplementation of natural gas boilers, or injection into UCD’s local natural gas distribution system
- Processes anticipated to stabilize the digestate to be acceptable as a useful soil amendment product
- Management of effluent and its possible use as makeup water for digestion or composting, or conversion to a liquid fertilizer
- Methods used to capture odors and possible fugitive emissions from the facility
Overall, the project has the potential to make UCD one of the first universities to leverage their valuable integrated resource known as “waste.”
The web seminar will inform the audience:
- How a variety of organic wastes such as cafeteria food waste and animal manures can be converted to energy using biological processes.
- The various types of digestion processes considered, and the benefits and limitations of each digestion process
- The various types of power generating processes considered, and the benefits and limitations of each type of power generation process
- The overall technical viability of the facility in terms of digestate production, effluent management, odor control
- The overall financial viability of the facility in terms of capital cost, operations cost and revenue streams.
For registrations or more information, please click here.