Wastewater plant will produce more electricity with upgrade

From an article by Bob Petrie in the Sheboygan Press:

It took a giant crane and a giant tug and about an hour longer than expected, but the job of lifting the huge lid off a huge anaerobic digester at the Sheboygan Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant was finally completed Wednesday morning.

Now comes the next step: clean, sandblast, paint and rehabilitate the 750,000-gallon digester so it can produce more methane gas, which will be used to help generate gas and electricity to provide nearly all the heat and power needed to operate the treatment plant at 3333 Lakeshore Drive.

The $4.5 million project to upgrade the plant also includes installing two, 200-kilowatt Capstone microturbines, which will boost the on-site electrical generation capacity from 225 kilowatts to about 525 kilowatts per hour, enough to take care of between 90 and 100 percent of the electricity needed to run the plant. The two new turbines bring the total number at the plant to 12.

The job of the digester is to take the sludge created at the plant, churn it up to create the methane and send the biogas to run the turbines.

Exhaust from running the turbines will be used to heat water, the buildings and the digesters at the plant.

"I guess from the standpoint of sustainability, it's something about doing the right thing," said Dale Doerr, Sheboygan wastewater superintendent. "This isn't costing us a lot of money, when you look at we had to do some of these things anyhow."