The Township of Georgian Bluffs and the Township of Chatsworth, two rural municipalities in the Owen Sound area, awarded a contract to Maple Reinders to develop a biodigester for waste disposal and produce biogas to be converted to electrical power. Although similar private facilities have been built, mostly on farms, this is the first municipally-owned biodigester in the province of Ontario. The project includes yard piping, an anaerobic digester, dry substrate feeder, 100 kW cogeneration biogas generator, standby diesel generator, flare system, a biogas control facility and pumping building, and a pasteurizer system. The facility was built beside Georgian Bluffs’ sewage lagoons, where septage is piped to the facility from atop a hill. The liquid component travels to the lagoon, while the solids are diverted to the digester tank, where it is broken down to create methane gas. Grains, corn stover, abattoir scraps and organic household waste are fed directly into the 1,000-cubic-metre biodigester. Material not broken down can be used as a nutrient-rich liquid fertilizer that is safe for agricultural fields. The process also has a pasteurizer, where fat, oil and grease from restaurants can be sterilized with heat before being broken down in the digester. The digestate bi-product following the treatment is 99.5% pathogen free while retaining characteristics of a good land applied soil conditioner. It is considered a safe, environmentally friendly, odourless and inexpensive alternative to direct application of raw septage on farm fields.
