https://www.americancityandcounty.com/wp-content/themes/acc_child/assets/images/logo/footer-logo.png
  • Home
  • Co-op Solutions
  • Hybrid Work
  • Commentaries
  • News
  • In-Depth
  • Multimedia
    • Back
    • Podcast
  • Resources & Events
    • Back
    • Resources
    • Webinars
    • White Papers
    • IWCE 2022
    • How to Contribute
    • Municipal Cost Index – Archive
    • Equipment Watch Page
    • American City & County Awards
  • About Us
    • Back
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
    • Advertise
    • Privacy Statement
    • Terms of Service
American City and County
  • NEWSLETTER
  • Home
  • Co-op Solutions
  • Hybrid Work
  • Commentaries
  • News
  • In-Depth
  • Multimedia
    • Back
    • Podcasts
    • Latest videos
  • Resources/Events
    • Back
    • Webinars
    • White Papers/eBooks
    • IWCE 2022
    • How to Contribute
    • American City & County Awards
    • Municipal Cost Index
    • Equipment Watch Page
  • About Us
    • Back
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
    • Advertise
    • Cookie Policy
    • Privacy Stament
    • Terms of Service
  • newsletter
  • Administration
  • Economy & Finance
  • Procurement
  • Public Safety
  • Public Works & Utilities
  • Smart Cities & Technology
  • Magazine
acc.com

Public Works & Utilities


Pixabay

News

Innovative wastewater treatment system eliminates methane, generates electricity

Innovative wastewater treatment system eliminates methane, generates electricity

  • Written by Andy Castillo
  • 25th August 2021

For advanced and wealthy countries, conventional wastewater treatment systems are considered a necessity required to maintain good hygiene. The public health benefits far outweigh their comparatively high price tag and the environmental impact that comes with sludge disposal. 

But for countries that don’t have large coffers, wastewater treatment plants pose “an expensive, unattainable pipe dream,” according to Dr. Sebastien Tilmans, executive director of the Codiga Resource Recovery Center at Stanford University, speaking in an interview earlier this year with Gate 5 Energy Partners Inc., a sustainable energy corporation. 

It doesn’t have to be that way. 

“Conventional treatment approaches wastewater as a hazardous substance requiring mitigation. We need to instead understand wastewater as raw material ore with impurities,” Tilmans said. Traditional treatment plants expend “energy (often derived from fossil fuels) to destroy renewable biomass energy. If we instead focused on harnessing that renewable energy, we would do much better.” 

A first-of-its-kind waste elimination system from Gate 5 that generates enough electricity to pay for itself will soon put Tilman’s theories to a real-world test. 

On Wednesday, the Gate 5 System, which dries and then burns solid waste, was awarded a $1.6 million grant from the California Energy Commission “to build and demonstrate an innovative wastewater treatment and resource recovery system at the Santa Margarita Water District, Chiquita Water Reclamation Facility in Orange County, Calif.,” according to a press statement. 

Through the grant, Charlene Rainey, director of investor relations at Gate 5, said a demo system—the first one ever built—will be installed at the University of California Irvine. It will take about 18 months to construct and will eliminate the university’s need to haul away food waste. 

“The Gate 5 system has notable advantages over current processes because it can produce a net surplus of energy and has the potential to transform the Chiquita WRF into a net power exporter,” said Santa Margarita Water District Deputy General Manager Don Bunts in a statement.

Notably, Tilmans and a team of researchers from Stanford University, working in partnership with MicroMedia Filtration Inc. and Gate 5, won a Water Resource Recovery Prize last year from the U.S. Department of Energy for their paper, “Get it Fast, Get it Early: Extracting Solids from Wastewater to Maximize Energy Recovery.” The paper explains how filters can be used to separate waste solids early in the treatment process before it’s burned for energy. 

“Wastewater solids have tremendous energy. Pound for pound, dry human feces have more energy than coal. Diverting the solids early in the process makes it easier to dry them, or to manage them through other processes for energy extraction,” Tilmans said. 

According to Rainey, Gate 5’s technological innovation—which has been under development for about a decade—was accelerated by recent legislation. California placed a restriction on the amount of methane that can be produced, even though “they knew no one had solutions for what to do with this unavoidable waste,” Rainey said. 

Simultaneously, the state’s Department of Energy and its Energy Commission launched a grant competition, offering monetary awards for promising solutions. It was the opportunity Gate 5 needed. Since launching in 2010, Rainey said the California-based energy business has obtained patents for the technology in eight countries (among them the United States), as well as local approval in various California jurisdictions, including for air quality in Orange County, which has some of the most stringent standards in the nation. 

“We just needed the grant and the funding,” Rainey said, noting that along with energy production, the system creates “clean air and clean water—the water coming off is distilled from the drier—then the only other product at the end, instead of sludge, is clean ash. And that ash can be sold to replace coal ash to make asphalt or cement.” 

To that end, Gate 5’s system is retrofitted onto existing wastewater treatment systems with a small footprint. 

It’s built “where the trucks load up the sludge and drive that sludge away hundreds of miles to landfills and land-spreading,” Rainey said. After the solid waste is filtered out using a micro-filtration system from Micro Media Filtrations, the Gate 5 system “air dries the sludge so it’s a dry biofuel, and that dry biofuel can be burnt in burners just like coal is burnt, and the burner has a turbine that generates electricity to run the whole thing.” 

Compared to other methane-reducing methods like anaerobic digestion, which reduces about 30 percent of methane, “we’re the only solution that completely eliminates them from putting sludge and leftover waste into landfills,” Rainey said. “We are the end system where there’s no hauling away—and it’s scalable.” 

Because it’s retrofitted, the Gate 5 system can be built to meet the waste-production needs of every type of organization from businesses to dairy farms, and for small cities, universities and large metropolitan centers.  

And while it requires an upfront payment, it pays for itself in the long run through energy production and by saving “hauling and land fees for the sludge,” Rainey said.  

Pending the results of the first-of-its-kind test run, Rainey said there are 30 other cities across the U.S. that are interested in installing systems of their own, along with Puerto Rico, which is purchasing a brand-new system through a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency. 

Additionally, the patent can be licensed out to third-party contractors, so the Gate 5 system can be constructed or retrofitted to existing systems by other companies. 

“The answer that everyone asks—‘why haven’t we been doing this all alone?—is ‘Why haven’t there been grants?” Rainey said. “All of those things are coming about at the right time, and we were in the right place at the right time.” 

For more information, visit gate-5.com. 

Tags: homepage-featured-1 homepage-featured-2 homepage-featured-4 News Public Works & Utilities News Public Works & Utilities News

Most Recent


  • When spending federal stimulus dollars, local governments are considering long-term, community impact
    From staffing constraints to budget shortfalls and an unprecedented pivot into the digital realm (driven by the pandemic), local governments have confronted myriad challenges over the last few years. But in this, there’s a bright spot: The federal government is investing an unprecedented amount of money into local governments. “The covid pandemic shuffled the deck […]
  • Reno, NV
    In Nevada county, data underpins efforts to address climate change
    Across the United States, cities and counties are doing their best to confront climate change in myriad ways—from bolstering seawalls to updating electrical grids and everything in between. But in order for communities to best direct their efforts and responsibly spend hard-earned taxpayer dollars, administrators need data. In Washoe County and Reno, Nev., for example, […]
  • $52B semiconductor investment intended to rejuvenate American manufacturing
    Three decades ago, American manufacturing dominated the semiconductor industry, producing about 40 percent of the global supply annually. But over time, companies shipped business overseas looking to cut costs, and today, the nation produces only 10 percent of all semiconductors. It’s something the Biden Administration is trying to change through CHIPS and Science Act. “There […]
  • How capital improvement project prioritization helps secure infrastructure funding
    Trillions of dollars in federal infrastructure funding have been made available to state and local governments across the U.S. since early 2020. This money has been allocated to address the nation’s aging infrastructure, much of which is at or near the end of its useful life, and to bolster the U.S. economy in the wake […]

Leave a comment Cancel reply

-or-

Log in with your American City and County account

Alternatively, post a comment by completing the form below:

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Content

  • Decentralized wastewater treatment systems projected to become more common as droughts persist
  • Harrison, Mich. offsets energy costs, reduces carbon footprint with solar project
  • Hi-tech sewers can help safeguard public health, environment and economies
  • When considering municipal wastewater treatment upgrades, cast a wide net

White papers


Modern American Perspectives on Law Enforcement

14th July 2022

Reimagine the Employee Experience

12th July 2022

How to Assemble a Rockstar Website Redesign Steering Committee

7th June 2022
view all

Events


PODCAST


Young Leaders Episode 4 – Cyril Jefferson – City Councilman, High Point, North Carolina

13th October 2020

Young Leaders Episode 3 – Shannon Hardin – City Council President, Columbus, Ohio

27th July 2020

Young Leaders Episode 2 – Christian Williams – Development Services Planner, Goodyear, Ariz.

1st July 2020
view all

Twitter


AmerCityCounty

When spending federal stimulus dollars, local governments should consider long-term, community impact dlvr.it/SWXJWZ

12th August 2022
AmerCityCounty

In Nevada county, data underpins efforts to address climate change dlvr.it/SWTGHy

11th August 2022
AmerCityCounty

$52B semiconductor investment intended to rejuvenate American manufacturing dlvr.it/SWPqHQ

10th August 2022
AmerCityCounty

How capital improvement project prioritization helps secure infrastructure funding dlvr.it/SWLQB7

9th August 2022
AmerCityCounty

Climate bill lauded; predicted to reduce nation’s carbon foot print by 40% within decade dlvr.it/SWHGQL

8th August 2022
AmerCityCounty

Partnership launches no-cost wastewater monitoring service for local governments dlvr.it/SW7N74

5th August 2022
AmerCityCounty

Investing in America’s onsite wastewater treatment systems for equity and sustainability dlvr.it/SW4Mb9

4th August 2022
AmerCityCounty

With passage of PACT Act, veterans service officers are preparing for an influx in applicants dlvr.it/SW4KTg

4th August 2022

Newsletters

Sign up for American City & County’s newsletters to receive regular news and information updates about local governments.

Resale Insights Dashboard

The Resale Insights Dashboard provides model-level data for the entire used equipment market to help you save time and money.

Municipal Cost Index

Updated monthly since 1978, our exclusive Municipal Cost Index shows the effects of inflation on the cost of providing municipal services

Media Kit and Advertising

Want to reach our digital audience? Learn more here.

DISCOVER MORE FROM INFORMA TECH

  • IWCE’s Urgent Communications
  • IWCE Expo

WORKING WITH US

  • About Us
  • Contact Us

FOLLOW American City and County ON SOCIAL

  • Privacy
  • CCPA: “Do Not Sell My Data”
  • Cookies Policy
  • Terms
Copyright © 2022 Informa PLC. Informa PLC is registered in England and Wales with company number 8860726 whose registered and Head office is 5 Howick Place, London, SW1P 1WG.
This website uses cookies, including third party ones, to allow for analysis of how people use our website in order to improve your experience and our services. By continuing to use our website, you agree to the use of such cookies. Click here for more information on our Cookie Policy and Privacy Policy.
X