DOE OSTI2018
The addition of a second anaerobic digestion process at Landis Sewerage Authority (LSA) in Vineland, N.J., was a project designed to accomplish several major objectives. First, it would replace an inactive digester that Landis had been “cannibalizing” for parts to keep its primary digester operating. Second, and more importantly to the New Jersey Department of Agriculture, this project provided an opportunity to create a tangible, working apparatus to demonstrate whether food waste and manure (provided by food processors and farmers) could be used efficiently and effectively to create gas used to power a co-generation unit that supplies electrical power to run the Authority’s sewage-treatment operations. Additionally, the project would further test an additive (BAE) for its effects on overall gas production. NJDA specifically sought to avoid using the grant funds for a feasibility study that did not result in a working demonstration project, and that goal was met by producing an actual second digestion process at Landis. Finally, this project provided the opportunity to demonstrate how the re-use and re-purposing of existing infrastructure could help lower the costs of providing an energy-production unit without having to build it from the ground up. A key to achieving those goals was limiting the use of outside contractors to build the digestion process. Instead, LSA employed the engineering services of its executive director and another employee to design the project, and the talents of its in-house employees to construct and install components of the digestion process. This minimized expenditures for outside providers while also enabling LSA to have greater control over both the design and construction. Those controls on costs enabled a full fact-finding mission to similar operations in Ohio and Indiana in August 2015. The visits allowed comparisons that found the Midwest operations (at least at two of the three locations) were less constrained by odor control issues than Landis is under New Jersey environmental regulations, and that the Fair Oaks Dairy Farm in Indiana had successfully incorporated its digester operation into its wide-ranging and popular “farm experience” attraction that includes restaurants, stores selling products from the farm’s output, tours of massive robotic milking parlors and a visitors’ center featuring “4D movies” about dairy farming and the use of manure in creating energy. The visit to Fair Oaks allowed the NJDA/Landis team to also examine whether a Fair Oaks “farm experience” model could be replicated in the Mid-Atlantic region, with its higher density of population, given the need for additional odor-control components to account for the closer proximity to population centers, but also benefiting from a larger potential close-in visitor base. Again, by streamlining the fact-finding process and using ground transportation instead of airfare, the travel line-item of the project budget was essentially halved. That enabled the creation of a video about the Landis project, which can be sent electronically – “e-travel,” so to speak – to other states and agencies that want to learn more about what was created in Vineland.