The sewage solution — Innovative new plant will turn waste into power
By the end of this year, the $160 million plant that EnerTech Environmental Inc. is building in this community east of Los Angeles is expected to take hundreds of tons of sewage sludge — which technically isn't just treated human waste, but anything and everything that passes through the drain — from local sanitation districts. The plant will process the sludge with a mixture of high heat and high pressure, turning it into pellet-like "e-fuel" that can run small power plants.
The poo-to-power process is the brainchild of former Atlanta ad man Kevin Bolin and his grandfather, a Florida retiree.
In addition to being a former chemical engineer, "my grandfather is kind of a mad inventor," said Bolin, 45. A former accountant and advertising executive for Atlanta television station WAGA-TV, Bolin today is fluent in the workings of effluent and sharp in the ways of finance and business. "It was really a dream of mine to help form a company and commercialize some of these inventions," he said.
"This stuff comes to us seven days a week, 24 hours a day," said Ed Torres, director of technical services for the Orange County, Calif., Sanitation District, one of five local sewage systems that have signed on with the EnerTech plant. "We can't just turn the valve off. We have to do something with it."
Currently, Orange County and other local sanitation districts dispose of the sludge mainly by trucking it to farms — some of them hundreds of miles away in Arizona — where it fertilizes livestock feed crops or nonedible plants.
Tougher environmental regulations and high diesel fuel costs, however, are making that practice increasingly prohibitive.
In all, the five Southern California sanitation districts have agreed to pay EnerTech $390 million for taking about 670 tons of sewage sludge per day for the next 25 years.
"In the past, that might have been fairly expensive," said Mike Sullivan, supervising engineer for the Los Angeles County Sanitation District, another participant. "But with other alternatives disappearing and the cost of diesel fuel rising, it's becoming much more (attractive)."
Getting paid to process the smelly sludge will generate about 97 percent of EnerTech's revenues, said CEO Bolin. He expects the other 3 percent to come from selling the "e-fuel," first to local cement kilns and other businesses that run their own power plants, and perhaps eventually to bigger utilities.
Recent comments
"The Poo-To-Power?" Now that's one creative name.....
LOL!! | July 8, 2008 at 8:47 p.m.
Old News, No, Payson's power plant is a Natural Gas power plant...
Payson's power plant | July 8, 2008 at 11:38 a.m.
I hope the process of making pellet 'e-fuel' will take time...
By the way | July 8, 2008 at 10:45 a.m.
