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Posted: Sunday, 18 October 2009 11:18PM
With proper controls, Indiana trash-to-gas plant safe
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ARGONNE (STNG) -- Properly controlled and monitored, a $285 million garbage-to-ethanol plant planned for the town of Schneider, Ind. should be environmentally safe, a prominent biotechnology researcher with Argonne National Laboratory said.
"With the right management team and oversight by the community it can be a very safe process," said Seth Snyder, leader of the Chemical and Biotechnology Section of Argonne's Energy Systems Division, who leads a team of 40 researchers.
Snyder, who has conducted research on syngas fermentation since 2002, is very familiar with Ineos Bio, the chemical company whose patented process will turn 10,000 tons of garbage a day into ethanol at the new plant.
The plant, if it comes to fruition, will be one of the first to turn garbage into ethanol by gasification of garbage into syngas, then fermented by the application of anaerobic bacteria into ethanol.
"Syngas is used in basically all developed countries around the world," Snyder said. "You take something biological and in Ineos Bio its garbage, and you make syngas, which is hydrogen and carbon monoxide. It's done all over the place. It's a very common and well-known technology."
Evansville-based Powers Energy of America, which is contracting with Ineos Bio to use its process to convert syngas into bioethanol through gasification and anaerobic bacteria, recently purchased property in Schneider to locate the plant in the community of 300 people on the banks of the Kankakee River.
"What are the concerns? They are going to burn garbage and people are worried," Snyder said. "I would be worried that all that stuff is going to be released into the air."
But, Snyder said, "Gasification is not incineration. There are differences. In incineration you burn something with a lot of oxygen and it burns cooler, and you can have a lot of releases. In gasification it's done hotter and without oxygen, so everything is going to get broken down into carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, so you're not going to be spewing smelly things."
The Waste District contracted with Powers to process all of Lake County's municipal solid waste. Powers has said the plant will also take garbage from surrounding counties and Chicago.
Another concern is the making of carbon monoxide. What comes out in terms of air emission will be carbon dioxide, Snyder said. "As a rule of thumb, the municipal solid waste you start with, half the carbon will wind up in the ethanol and half will be released as carbon dioxide."
The anaerobic bacteria used in the process is also harmless, Snyder said.
"Syngas has no oxygen, and anaerobes die in the presence of oxygen," Snyder said. If the plant accidentally released the bacteria into the river, it would immediately die.
The bacteria will probably be sterilized in bleach or peroxide before disposal and can go through wastewater treatment before being released into a public sewer system.
"There really is not a biological concern," said Snyder. "Honestly, it's no different than flushing a toilet."
Conservatively, a ton of garbage will produce 50 gallons of ethanol, which Snyder calculated, means that the Schneider plant would produce about 175 million gallons of ethanol a year, compared to a typical new corn refinery that produces 100 to 150 million gallons a year.
Snyder said the plant should pre-sort garbage to make sure hazardous products such as batteries are removed to keep mercury and lead out of the process, a point that should be noted when the proposal goes through public hearings, he said.
Powers has stated that all garbage coming into the plant will be sorted before being processed.
Snyder pointed out the societal benefits, as well.
"Argonne has done an analysis on syngas fermentation," he said. "It does result in substantial net overall reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, so there are strong benefits to society for this to go forward."
Snyder is working on a project with the city of Naperville, Ill., and Packer Engineering using syngas fermentation.
He's also working with a large wastewater treatment company in Illinois, funded by the Department of Energy, to recycle water used in the power plant without taking the water from the river, an idea that Powers could use in Schneider to avoid any possibility of lowering the water table.
"The rule of thumb is that it takes three gallons of water to produce a gallon of ethanol," Snyder said. For the Schneider plant, that would mean about 500 million gallons of water a year, or more than a million gallons a day.
Powers must still address water usage, drainage, possible emissions and other issues affecting the environment in the Schneider area. It also must first obtain about a dozen local and state permits, including some from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management before it can build a plant.
Now that the Schneider site has been selected, Solid Waste Management District chief Jeff Langbehn said the company is concentrating on engineering and water studies on the site, at the northern edge of Schneider, which is in a lowland area near the Kankakee River.
"They hope to submit paperwork for permitting to IDEM in January, then break ground in spring," Langbehn said.
IDEM should conduct public hearings early next year as part of the permitting process for operating a processing facility, Langbehn said.
"They don't expect the permitting to take more than 90 days," he said.
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