Victoria making renewable electricity and heat from high strength organic waste

Image: Barwon Water

In south-west Victoria, Barwon Water is building two Renewable Organics Networks which will use high strength organic trade waste from the Australian Lamb Company (ALC) and Bulla Dairy Foods to make renewable electricity and heat.

The organic waste will be treated by Barwon Water to form biogas which will run turbines that create the electricity and heat for water. The waste at this point is used as a soil improver. 

Yes, burning the biogas has waste CO2 but it is CO2 from a renewable source not from fossil fuels - a complete carbon cycle is created. Otherwise the organic waste goes to landfill where it is covered by soil and in that anaerobic environment most of it decays to waste methane which is a 21 times stronger greenhouse gas than CO2.

The electricity will be used by Barwon Water to take it off-grid with the excess going to the main grid. The renewable hot water will go via a special pipeline to ALC where it will offset ALC's gas consumption by 21.4 terajoules per year.

"The project is expected to achieve a net production of 5.5 gigawatt-hours of renewable electricity each year – enough to power around 1,000 homes – around half of which will be used “behind-the-meter” to take the Colac Water Reclamation Plant off the grid." The generation of this dispatchable renewable energy in the form of hot water and electricity will result in a reduction in carbon emissions of around 6,300 tonnes each year.

Read more: 

- "Australian first" network to deliver renewable electricity and hot water from organic waste. One Step Off The Grid, June 12, 2020.

 - Barwon Water: https://www.barwonwater.vic.gov.au/

Food waste eaten by fly larvae is making compost and then stock feed

Black Soldier Fly maggots – the key to solving food waste. CSIRO

It is well known that the life cycle of insects is from eggs to larvae to pupae to adults. It is the Black Soldier Fly larvae (maggots) that are of special interest as they consume food scraps. They are eating machines, turning scraps into compost at a very fast rate.

The start-up company Gottera, based in Canberra, Australia is processing five tonnes of food waste a day with these larvae. Goterra not only manages waste to compost it also sells the mature larvae, a rich source of protein, as stock feed. So far the maggots can be used by chicken and pork producers, zoos, fish bait suppliers and as an ingredient in aquaculture pellets but have much more potential.

Goterra is all about driving Australia towards a circular economy for food production. And breeding insects is critical to their vision. The original breeding research was done in partnership with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Canberra. CSIRO’s research helped Gottera breed the flies for effective results.

References:
- Sex lives of flies could be key to tackling food waste. CSIROscope, August 14, 2019.
- Waste-not the mantra of emerging maggot industry as larvae convert to protein. The Land, January 9, 2019.
- Gottera: https://www.goterra.com.au/.
- CSIRO Insect research: https://www.csiro.au/en/Research/Collections/ANIC/Insect-research

Finland is aiming for a circular system for waste by 2025

Street recycling bins, Finland (Source: Sitra: https://www.sitra.fi/)

Finland does not have many natural resources and no fossil fuels. This means the country has to think hard about how to run its economy. Now it is aiming for a circular system where everything is reused and landfill is rarely needed.

In a linear economy we buy items and send waste and unused items straight to landfill. But in Helsinki, for example, the recyclables go to the Ammassuo Waste Treatment Centre and only 1% of that ends up in landfill, the goal is to get that to zero. The majority of the recycled waste is reused or reprocessed. Glass, paper, plastics, metals and cartons are sent to recycling facilities elsewhere. Organic materials are fermented to create methane, which feeds a gas-fired power plant. The leftover organic waste is made into compost.

[N.B. Conversely, organic waste that goes to landfill is buried and in this environment without O₂ it forms methane gas, which then makes it way into the atmosphere. Methane is 21 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO₂ so it is best that it is captured, burnt and used for power. Organic waste can also go to a well aerated garden composting system.]

The waste treatment centre is supported by Helsinki’s excellent recycling system. Householders are given containers for glass, metal, paper, cartons, plastics and biodegradables, what is left goes into general waste. There are incentives to sort, such that householders pay for their waste to be collected and those that sort more pay less.

As reported in 2018, not all householders were cooperating by sorting their waste and a lot of recyclables were still going to general waste. This mixed waste, at 50% of all waste, ends up at a new power station at Vantaa, which burns it to make electricity and heat. Some of this waste is plastics which are made from fossil fuels, so not at all circular.

This reluctance to sort appears to be a worldwide human problem, so it remains to be seen how well Finland educates its people to be more cooperative so it can achieve its goal of a circular waste economy by 2025. If successful, we will need to follow their example!

Reference: Towards a world without landfill. New Scientist, No. 3203, November 10, 2018, p 8.
Read more:
- Circular Economy Breakthroughs in Schools - Business Village Students Learn Circular Economy by Doing It! (in Finnish so translate page) Sitra, August 8, 2019.
- Waste management and recycling. Info Finland.

“Tesla launches battery recycling at Nevada Gigafactory”

Tesla Nevada Gigafactory. (Green Car Reports)

“In its latest environmental impact statement, Tesla announced that it will open its own battery recycling facility.

Tesla has been recycling batteries made at the factory using third-party recyclers. Now, as the earliest Model Ses reach 7 years old, and the company is starting to receive some batteries back after use in those early cars, it's setting up its own battery recycling facility.”

“The new processing center at the company's Gigafactory in Sparks, Nevada is to process both old batteries used in customers' Teslas as well as those from its own research and development.

The company says lithium, cobalt, aluminum, copper, and steel will be recovered from the batteries in a closed-loop system that optimizes the materials for new battery production.

It also says it expects to save money producing new batteries from the recycled materials, rather than buying new minerals for its batteries.”

Read more at: Tesla launches battery recycling at Nevada Gigafactory. Green Car Reports, April 16, 2019.

See also:

- BMW sets up end-to-end battery recycling in Europe. Green Car Reports, October 19, 2018.

- Australia’s first lithium battery recycling plant launched together with e-waste processing plan. Using Renewables, May 3, 2018.

Making aluminium is costly so please recycle and buy recycled

Recycled aluminium foil and golf ball size foil for recycling (photo: J May)

Making aluminium uses a tremendous amount of energy and its mining causes environmental damage. Therefore it is important to Reduce, Reuse and Recycle aluminium and to buy the resulting recycled aluminium. All forms of aluminium can be recycled and it is a valuable recycled product.

Aluminium foil is recognised if it squashes into a ball. Collect the foil (from Easter eggs, etc.) and form into a golf ball size, so it does not slip through the cracks in the recycling sorting depot.

Aluminium comes from the ore bauxite which is strip-mined in tropical and subtropical locations. This means that a lot of original vegetation is destroyed as strip-mining destroys large areas of land. In Australia, topsoil, logs and rocks are set aside. After the bauxite is removed the sites are rehabilitated with the topsoil, logs and rocks followed by planting and seeding. (Bauxite Mining, Australian Aluminium Council Ltd). The soil level is now lower, the vegetation is altered and toxins arise from bauxite dust and water leaching. (What Aluminium Extraction Really Does to the Environment).

The manufacture of aluminium from bauxite is an expensive and energy intensive exercise, using so much electricity that, in some cases, whole coal plants have been devoted to aluminium smelters. So please reduce aluminium use, recycle it and buy recycled aluminium.