Biogas plant to supply energy to UW-Oshkosh

From an article by Rick Barrett of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

The University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh will soon use food waste and yard waste to produce electricity and heat for the campus.

An anaerobic bio-digester will convert the waste into biogas, which will fuel an on-campus power generator.

When completed this year, the $3.5 million system is expected to generate 5% to 10% of the university's electricity, according to UW-Oshkosh officials.

It also will produce heat for campus buildings and serve as a renewable energy laboratory.

Through energy savings, university officials say the system could pay for itself in seven to 10 years.

UW-Oshkosh ranks 35th in the nation on the Sierra Club's list of environmentally conscious colleges.

"We are not just talking about it. We are doing some things," Tom Sonnleitner, UW-Oshkosh vice chancellor for administration, said Monday.

An anaerobic digester is a system that converts energy stored in organic materials into methane that's used to power a turbine or engine that produces electricity. Excess heat can be used in buildings, and leftover solids can be used as animal bedding or fertilizer.

Wisconsin is the national leader in creating energy from cow manure-using digesters.

The UW-Oshkosh system will use about 8,000 tons of organic waste per year, including garbage from campus cafeterias. It also could use waste from food-processing plants, yard waste such as grass clippings, animal bedding from dairy farms, and methane gas from a nearby sewage treatment plant.

Much of the material normally would be headed for a landfill, said Carolyn Chappell, an engineer with BIOFerm Energy Systems, a Madison firm that's building the bio-digester.

It is the first commercial-scale system of its kind in the United States, according to BIOFerm, whose parent company is in Germany where there are thousands of bio-digesters.