Organic Waste Recycling Technology
Our doors are OPEN! Contact us today to learn how your business can divert its food waste from the landfill and turn it into clean energy! Here’s a link directly to a pdf handout that explains the process. If you want to learn more about our other anaerobic digesters check out our handouts page.
Anaerobic digestion uses naturally occurring microorganisms to break down organic materials and produce biogas, a mixture of methane and carbon dioxide. The biogas can be combusted to produce renewable electricity, cleaned to pipeline natural gas standards, or further processed into compressed natural gas (CNG) fuel. Through anaerobic digestion, many goals can be accomplished:
- Divert organic materials from landfills and incinerators
- Generate clean, distributed, renewable energy
- Restore and maintain healthy soils using compost products
- Displace chemical fertilizers
- Create green jobs
Harvest designs and builds several types of anaerobic digestion systems to meet the needs of each site. This is how the Harvest Power Orlando facility works.
The facility uses Low solids anaerobic digestion. This technology is best for pumpable slurries like manure, wastewater and pulped food scraps that are less than 20% solids content. Materials are blended, mixed with heated water and inoculum to kick-start the digestion process and pumped into the chamber(s) where digestion and biogas production occur. After digestion the solids are separated from the liquids and either composted or dried to become a mature soil amendment. The liquids are processed through a wastewater treatment system. Many low solids anaerobic digestion facilities are successfully operating around the world, commonly at municipal wastewater treatment plants and dairy farms.
Learn more about Harvest’s other facilities here.