Leave no trace: No-waste energy close to reality

November 09, 2009

By Nancy Remsen, Free Press staff writer Don McCormick is out to prove that old landfills, which dot the landscape across New England, can be transformed from community nuisances to multi-tasking community assets.

Starting with a closed landfill in Brattleboro, McCormick’s 1-year-old, three-person company, Carbon Harvest Energy, plans to demonstrate a strategy for using methane, a potent greenhouse gas emitted by landfills, as a catalyst for a chain of uses that produce a healthy bottom line — and no waste.

McCormick recently proposed a similar project in South Burlington and has been investigating possibilities in Randolph; Lebanon and Keene, N.H.; two sites in Massachusetts; and two in New York.If all goes as planned, the result in Brattleboro would be a chain of production that yields a profit without yielding any waste. Maybe it sounds a bit pie-in-the-sky, but it’s closer to reality than you might think.

The chain would look something like this:

The methane fuels a generator that produces electricity, heat and carbon dioxide. The electricity is sold, the heat warms a greenhouse and fish tank, and the carbon dioxide, plus fish waste, feed an algae farm. The algae is pressed to produce a bio fuel and a cake-like waste — which can be fed to fish. The vegetables and tilapia from the greenhouse supply the local food bank and are available for purchase.

As a bonus, Carbon Harvest Energy would like to install a solar array on the landfill’s open acreage. The solar-power system could make use of the site’s connection to the electric grid.

“What we really want to do is show the integration of waste streams,” McCormick said. “The waste from one thing is the input for the next.

“It has to be economically sustainable,” McCormick added. “That is critical. We want it to be replicable.”

The Brattleboro project, which has a $1.8 million price tag, is designed to show a return on investment within five years, with some components, such as the energy generation, showing a return more quickly.

“I just thought it was a remarkable idea,” said George Murray, executive director of the Windham Solid Waste District. The district, made up of 19 towns, owns the 30-acre landfill just off Interstate 91 that is the test site for McCormick’s vision.

The Brattleboro landfill was one of the first in the country to tap its methane to produce electricity in the 1980s, but the 20-year-old equipment hasn’t run recently. Last year the district looked into generating power again, Murray said, but found the capital investment too costly.

That’s when McCormick called, Murray said. “It was perfect timing.”

Finding a focus
McCormick, 50, describes himself as business developer and greenhouse entrepreneur.

He grew up in a family with “a culture of nature and science,” he said. Much of his early professional career, however, focused on business development and financial management. Still, on the home front, he decided to try to live as self-sufficiently as possible. Eventually, he said, “We grew 80 percent of our own food and fish.” His home initiative evolved into a commercial operation: Laughing Duck Farm in Westport, N.Y.

McCormick said he began thinking about urban growing system for local food.

Meanwhile, Will Raap, founder and chairman of Gardener’s Supply and also founder and former chairman of the board of the Intervale Center in Burlington, invited McCormick to pursue his passion in Vermont. McCormick accepted the invitation and has been here three years.

During the Intervale Center’s composting controversy, McCormick stepped in as interim director. The Chittenden Solid Waste District assumed ownership of the compost operation last fall, freeing McCormick to turn back to sustainable local food initiatives.

By then, months of association with solid-waste experts had opened his eyes to new opportunities, and Clean Harvest Energy was born. The company’s mission is to take an environmental nuisance — the leaking of methane from landfills — and turn it into an asset.

McCormick explained the hazards posed by methane: It’s explosive, and at least 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide in its effect on the atmosphere. The gas is a byproduct of the breakdown of all the trash society has buried in landfills.

“In New England,” he said, “they are everywhere, and they are emitting.”

The energy from methane at large landfills can be lucrative, but small landfills get passed by, McCormick said. To make harnessing methane energy feasible at small landfills, Carbon Harvest Energy’s strategy calls for adding other enterprises that make use of the byproducts of energy production.

“What we are going to do is demonstrate a complete use of resources,” McCormick said. “Nothing is wasted.”

Brattleboro
Phase one of the $1.8 million Brattleboro project calls for repairing and upgrading the methane-collection system and rehabilitating and firing up the 250-kilowatt power generator still at the site.

McCormick said he hopes the landfill will begin generating electricity in early winter.

A second, 310-kilowatt generator will be added, so total power production is expected to reach 560 kilowatts. McCormick predicted there will be sufficient methane to produce electricity and sell it on the grid for a decade. After that, there would remain sufficient methane to power and heat the greenhouse for an additional 20 years.

In spring, Carbon Harvest will construct the heat recovery system that will funnel heat produced from the power generation into a half-acre greenhouse with a 30,000 gallon fish tank. “By fall, we hope to come on line with fresh produce,” McCormick said. “A majority of our food will be directed to the Vermont Food Bank.”

The Food Bank recently opened a new warehouse in Brattleboro to supply food shelves in the southern half of the state.

“Maybe we will have a volunteer program through the Food Bank so people will know where their food comes from,” McCormick said. He also expects to sell food and fish to the community, saying there will be lots of food produced.

The Carbon Harvest team and its business partners have experience with these components of the Brattleboro project, McCormick said. The algae initiative is the experimental piece, he said.

Algae enterprise
Referring to the acre that’s planned for algae farming, McCormick said, “This part, to be honest, is in the future.”

Carbon Harvest has partnered with Mary Watzin, dean of the University of Vermont’s Rubenstein School of the Environment and Natural Resources. Watzin will oversee research on algae production funded by a $20,000 grant from the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund.

“The reason I was very interested in partnering with them is they want to turn a waste problem into something useful,” Watzin said. “That is where we need to go if we are developing a sustainable way of living.”

Anju Dahiya is a UVM researcher whose work focuses on algae oil. She isn’t involved with McCormick’s project but offered some insight into the potential and challenges of working with algae.

Algae can produce significantly more oil per acre than crops such as corn, Dahiya said. Corn, for example, produces 29 gallons of oil per acre compared with 5,000 to 15,000 gallons from algae, she said. Some algae produce more lipids (oil) than others. Dahiya is currently researching the lipid potential of Vermont algae strains.

Extracting the oil from the algae is challenging, Dahiya said. She noted, too, that the byproduct left after the oil is harvested would have to be evaluated as a fish food, she said.

Watzin added a few other questions that need answering: What’s the makeup of the waste gas from power production that would be mixed with fish waste? What’s the composition of the fish waste? Is anything potentially toxic to algae?

Research will begin in the coming weeks, Watzin said.

South Burlington

McCormick would like to see a second project in Vermont and has made a presentation to the South Burlington City Council about its closed landfill near the western boundary of Burlington International Airport.

The council agreed to submit two applications on Carbon Harvest’s behalf to ask for favorable rates for producing electricity from renewable-energy sources under a new state program.

The project McCormick outlined for South Burlington would involve more than tapping the methane from the landfill for a chain of enterprises such as a greenhouse, fish production and algae farm. It also would link up with South Burlington’s nearby solid-waste treatment plant and a future food-waste biodigester.

When methane emissions peter out, there would still be gas for energy production from the treatment plant and food digester, McCormick said: “They are the majority of the energy potential.”

Chuck Hafter, South Burlington’s city manager, said the deal struck with Carbon Harvest to secure eligibility for favorable electric rates doesn’t obligate the city to go forward with the project.

“It’s very preliminary,” he said, but then he added, “I’m very impressed.”

November 09, 2009

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