NOWON Technology – Transforming municipal solid waste into low carbon fuel

Your trash – the raw municipal solid waste (MSW) – contains between 30%–40% organic material which traditionally has ended up in landfills where it degrades and generates harmful greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Current regulation such as SB1383, is pushing towards diverting organics (OFMSW) from landfills creating a pressing need to propose solutions and treatment options for this organic fraction. Anaerobic Digestion (AD) is a commonly widespread solution for the treatment of homogenous and low solid organic waste streams such as sewage sludge, manures etc. However, when it comes to heterogenous and high solid waste streams such as the OFMSW, AD can pose great operational challenges such as lack of process stability, low biogas production, low biogas quality and highly contaminated digestate.

Now there is a commercially viable solution for municipalities, landfill operators and waste management companies that look to develop profitable high decarbonization projects and contribute to the circular economy. A solution where local authorities can stop landfilling organics and end landfill fugitive emissions, securing compliance with existing and upcoming environmental regulations.

This one stop solution, developed by NOWON, transforms MSW from your regular household collection service into low carbon fuel such as renewable natural gas (RNG). Landfill operators can extract the full energy potential from the organics in the MSW. They can generate an RNG that sells above double the price in the market compared to regular landfill gas and extend the useful life of the landfill while reducing operation and maintenance costs.

The NOWON solution is set up as a three-step system that pivots around an innovative and advanced pre-treatment of the feedstock to achieve an optimal substrate for the AD so these challenges can be overcome.

In the first step, the raw MSW is screened to achieve a fines fraction which is then pre-treated in the BIOMAK® – NOWON’s unique proprietary continuous autoclave system that hydrolyzes and homogenizes the solid waste. This is done to facilitate the separation of the organic fraction on standard mechanical separation equipment located downstream and prepare the resulting high-quality biomass (HQBiomass) for anaerobic digestion.

The second step consists in feeding the HQBiomass into a set of high solids anaerobic digesters to produce biogas.

The final third step is upgrading the biogas into a clean biomethane that is injected into the natural gas pipelines as RNG or used as fuel for transport. This project model offers a successful AD operation, with high process stability, maximized biogas production and hygienized digestate.

NOWON’s technology transforms the problem into the solution. Not only does it remove the organic fraction of MSW, the most contaminating waste fraction in terms of land and air emissions, from landfill; but it will also turn into low carbon fuel.

If you are interested in developing a project or learning more about the NOWON Solution, please reach out to J.AYALA@NOWON.US