Firm turns sludge, road kill into profit.

• Author: Ross, Ian
• Position: Sudbury Report

One man's waste is another's gold.

A new Sudbury green-energy company is searching for some entrepreneurial partners to establish the North's first bio-gas power plant.

Waste material that otherwise might be trucked off to the landfill or flushed down the sewer holds real potential as an additive in a German-developed process to produce methane gas used to generate heat and electricity.

Warren Maskell, manager of sales and technical services for Custom Bio-Gas Inc., believes there are a variety of feed sources in Northern Ontario. These feed sources include brewery waste, abattoir waste, manure, municipal sludge, saw dust and road kill and can be valuable commodities to be ground up and mixed to produce high-value end products, such as methane gas and compost from a bio-gas plant.

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BEA Dithmarschen GmbH has entered into a partnership agreement with Gagnon Renewables, a Sudbury environmental company, to form Custom Bio-Gas Inc.

The partnership will deliver proven German technology to North America for designing and building bio-gas plants or refitting existing North American ones.

BEA has operated a bio-gas plant in St. Michaelisdonn, Germany since 1996, considered one of the country's largest bio-gas operations.

Maskell believes their proposal can create new revenue streams for project partners by creating commodities out of what is generally regarded as waste, and at the same time offset some heating and electrical requirements for developments such as industrial parks or hospitals.

His company is looking to set up a pilot program to demonstrate the technology.

"Our interest is to target municipalities that might be trying to reduce typical waste streams," says Maskell, who adds there are savings to be realized through partnerships in supplying waste material to a bio-gas facility rather paying the costs to transport it to landfill.

"I think this project is an extension of being responsible to the environment. We're mishandling our products and we're re-applying them to the land.

"What we've got to look at is how can we join waste materials and provide another option."

Bio-gas is generated when bacteria degrade biological material in the absence of oxygen in a process known as anaerobic digestion, the same natural process that occurs in digestive systems, marshes and septic tanks.

Since bio-gas is a mixture of methane (also known as marsh gas or natural gas) and carbon dioxide...