A biogas processing facility planned near Lethbridge will use local livestock manure and food processing waste as feedstock to generate electricity, heat and methane gas, with $1.5 million in provincial start-up funding.
The grant to ECB Enviro North America from the Alberta government’s biorefining commercialization and market development program and bioenergy infrastructure development program was announced Monday.
The ECB project, first proposed for the area in late 2005, is expected to generate three megawatts of power while also providing 110,000 gigajoules of thermal energy, which could be used in district heating systems or in neighbouring operations that need heat, such as for drying grain.
The gas burned for energy will be generated from anaerobic digestion of organic waste, processed at a rate of about 150,000 tonnes of manure and organic waste per year. The digestion process takes about 15 days at 55°C to make biogas, the company said. Organic fertilizer will also be produced at the plant.
ECB has another cogeneration project on the drawing board, partnering with a waste management company at a landfill at Moose Creek, Ont., east of Ottawa.
