Metro Vancouver has announced that the renewable gas facility at Lulu Island WWTP is about ready to go on-line. The new installation, seen above, includes a storage tank and an upgrader to turn the raw biogas into renewable natural gas that can be piped using the Fortis natural gas network. The gas production should be enough to heat at least 400 homes (up to 600 homes, according to a different source).
This is a big deal in several ways. The natural gas giant Fortis is a partner as this initiative fits with its strategic plan to reduce GHG down by 45% by 2030, compared to 2010 levels. Renewable gas produces the same CO2 when burn, but doesn’t count in the GHG budget, because its source is biomass.
But is gas that would otherwise have been burned pointlessly. Biogas produced at Metro’s sewage treatment facilities is used to heat up space as well as generating electric power from large stationery internal combustion engines. Which is great, but there is always extra biogas that is flared off; this is because the engines cannot use all that is produced. Putting this gas to productive use is certainly a positive development.
Across Burrard Inlet, the new Lions’ Gate facility is getting closer to completion, but is over budget from a planned $700 million to slightly above $1 billion. This would not normally be good news but I like the main reason for the extra cost: the plant will be upgraded to become a facility providing tertiary treatment instead of secondary as originally designed. Salmon and other sea life will thank us. The rest of the costs overrun can be attributed to the very difficult site the plant is on, as well as the disruptions caused by Covid. That being said, this extra cost is money that will mostly remain in the region: salaries for technical and design people, construction workers, and the like.
Across the ocean, Waste Management World has announced the opening of the first wastewater treatment plant in Sierra Leone. The plant in the capital Freetown will serve about one million people. It is notable for its design; few people in Freetown have access to sanitary sewers, so the plant is equipped to treat concentrated waste: faecal sludge pumped from latrines and trucked in.
Finally, there a new plant in Australia that caught my attention, a smallish installation in the Unesco World Heritage Gondwana Forest in Queensland. The plant will be fully autonomous as the site is off-grid. Power comes from solar panels, and the water from rain collection. Treatment includes nitrogen reduction, no small feat under these conditions – as in Lions’ Gate, this treatment level can be considered tertiary. Details can be found here, and the picture below may give an idea of the type of site the developers were working with. Nice, isn’t it? Soon, we may be able to travel to Australia again…
The culture of what we flush 