Anaerobic Co-Digestion for Carbon neutral electricity

Department of Civil, Engvironmental & Geomatics Engineering

Overview

Currently, the City of Boca Raton Utility Services uses anaerobic digestion to treat solids at the wastewater treatment facility. Renew Engineering will upgrade the existing anaerobic digestion treatment process to accept 15 tons of food waste per day. The increase in organic material will bolster the methane rich bio-gas produced during the waste treatment. The design will include methods to capture, clean and use the methane to generate electricity.

Community Benefit: The design maximizes existing infrastructure and processes to treat and utilize 15 tons of organic waste as an energy source that would otherwise be trucked to the Solid Waste Authority. The captured gas has the potential to generate 28,000 KW/day of electricity. The solids will be treated to a minimum of EPA 503 Class B and used as to produce fertilizer. Assuming a power cost of 10 cents per kilowatt hour the 11 million pounds of treated food waste will be used to generate $1,000,000 dollars of carbon neutral electricity per year.

Team Members

• Laura Clavo
• Clarens Fleury
• Leara Guzman
  
• Brandyn Nutter
• Shane Ostrander

Sponsor

Hazen and Sawyer & City of Boca Raton Utilities Services