A mere month ago, the San Antonio Water System in Texas announced that it had become the first ever U.S. municipal wastewater treatment plant to sell renewable methane biogas through a commercial natural gas pipe line. Well roll me over Beethoven if California isn’t already going to trump Texas in the exciting world of biogas, because not one but two California utilities are applying for permission to produce methane biogas from multiple wastewater treatement plants as well as farms and other operations, too.
What’s the Big Deal About Biogas?
Methane is produced when microorganisms feed on human and animal waste. At conventional wastewater treatment plants, the process takes place in tanks called anaerobic digesters. The goal is to render the solid wastes into an inert, non-smelly material for ease of disposal, and methane is simply been flared off as a byproduct. More recently, treatment plants have begun to reclaim the methane and use it to run equipment on site. In agriculture, the federal AgStar program is encouraging livestock farmers to install digesters for reclaiming methane, as a means of cutting their utility bills, protecting the environment from excess animal waste and producing a marketable fertilizer, too.
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