Decentralized Biogas Markets Continue as Prime Targets for Sustainability Applications

With an industry worth a potential $11.8 billion, effective waste processing and anaerobic digestion technologies can provide both economic and environmental benefits for industries and communities.

Overall infrastructure to effectively resolve environmental issues (related to waste streams created by communities) can be driven in large part by biomass processing. It’s one of the primary technology pillars in Team Gemini’s portfolio of developments because all communities are guaranteed to generate different types of organic waste—having those waste resources relegated to causing environmental problems misses significant opportunities in improving operating costs, creating high-value byproducts, and maintaining advantages of sustainability.

Growth potential is very significant throughout the world overall (including the U.S., as evidenced by the Billion-Ton Study), and food waste is one of the main drivers.

Every year in the U.S., 37 million tons of food waste are sent to landfills—the equivalent of 514 Nimitz-class aircraft carriers. At Seattle’s $125-per-ton tipping fee, this waste would amount to $4.6 billion annually. If used for biogas production, at 4,200 cubic feet per ton, this same amount of waste could power five million homes for an entire year. Unlike intermittent solar panels and wind turbines, biogas is available anytime day or night, rain or shine, and since biogas can be stored in a gas form until needed, it does not require external storage, such as batteries.

Europe provides helpful examples when examining future project potential in the U.S.; Biogas projects in Europe have been driven in significant ways by carbon trading systems, instability of natural gas prices, and more. Meanwhile, the U.S. faces other economic variables, which plays a major role in how to make Biogas projects viable.

The European large-scale biogas model has become a box canyon in America, where there are few public financial resources available to biogas projects and businesses. Smaller, on-site biogas plants sold business-to-business that limit the number of stakeholders and minimize government involvement are a more appropriate choice for American urban waste-to-energy projects.

For ongoing Team Gemini project developments, both small- and large-scale technologies are available. This includes a suite of products related to industry-leading UDR plants, including the small-scale MonoTube. If applied and used effectively, biomass resources can make communities significantly more independent and sustainable in terms of decentralized energy supplies and waste processing.

Team Gemini treats biomass as a combined effort between waste processing (strictly organic and non-organic waste, cellulosic waste, and contaminated organic waste) and resource generation. Many technologies ultimately contribute to this goal, including protecting and treating valuable water resources, implementing sustainable agriculture, and maintaining proper methods of waste management.

With team members providing innovative Bio-Ethanol plants, Feedstock Pre-Treatment and Digestate-effluent Post-Treatment technologies, UDR Anaerobic Digesters, highly efficient CHP units, and Wastewater Treatment plants, Team Gemini offers a complete solution set for a variety of commodity-intensive industries and smaller businesses, like farmers. Design and development are integral in establishing economic viability, as various cost factors, technology configurations and applications, and other details vary from project to project. Team Gemini is part of this process, and making sure that all requirements are met and implemented for clients to most effectively apply sustainability measures in their operations.

We welcome you to learn more about our technology models at http://teamgemini.us/technologies/. Consider subscribing to our RSS feed or follow us on Facebook and Twitter to stay in the loop about future updates.

The original article on this subject can be found at this link.