Lulu Island plant to be Olympic showcase for sewage biogas power
For goodness sake we don’t need any more Olympic showcases! Do you seriously think anyone coming here for the speedskating is going to want to look at the Lulu Island Sewage Plant?
We should be doing this anyway - should have done it years ago. When I worked for the GLC twenty years ago all the sewage works were fitted with biogas digesters - and we sold power to the grid from the garbage incinerators too. We (The BC Enegry Aware Committee) made a big song and dance a few years ago now about gas capture in the Delta landfill mainly to shame Delta Corporation into giving it third reading! They could hardly turn it down after accepting an award for environmental awareness now could they?
Flaring biogas should be an offence.
I hope that this process will mean that Metro Vancouver stops dumping virtually untreated human waste into the Fraser at long last. Again, thirty years ago treated, dried solids could be bought from GLC sewage works for fertiliser for back gardens!
Metro’s Burnaby Incinerator had a turbo generator installed maybe 5 years ago for the generation of electricity. Until BC Hydro started encouraging small producers of electricity (from various sources) there would have been little incentive to install such facilities without a purchaser for the power. The Burnaby Incinerator has also been selling steam to the neighbouring paper mill for years.
Waste water biosolids have been marketed by Metro under the name “Nutrifor” since 1990. See info here:
http://www.gvrd.bc.ca/nutrifor/program.htm