Source Separated Organics Co-digestion and Beneficial use of Biogas Feasibility Study

The City of Timmins’ Mattagami Wastewater Pollution Control Plant was originally built in the 1960s and currently serves approximately 32,000 residents as well as commercial and industrial customers. The city is actively investigating opportunities to transform the plant into a net-zero resource recovery facility. To that end, the proposed feasibility study will explore and assess source-separated organics availability, co-digestion, digester enhancement, and the most beneficial uses of increased biogas production. If successful, the project would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and enable the city to respond to a potential ban on organic materials going to landfill. It is expected that approximately 3,000 tonnes/year of biosolids, 1,250 tonnes/year of residential organic waste, and 500 tonnes/year of waste generated by the industrial, commercial and institutional sector in Timmins could be diverted from landfill. This project would also provide the city with multiple avenues for sludge management and eliminate the need to truck biosolids to landfill. Co-digestion of organic wastes would also increase the rate and volume of biogas production at the plant, and that biogas could be processed to electricity and renewable natural gas. The plant's annual consumption of electricity over the 2013–2018 period was 3.6 million kilowatt hours. After transformation, the amount of biogas convertible to electricity annually is expected to be approximately 1.44 million kilowatt hours—40% of the plant’s annual consumption. The biogas-derived energy could also be fed back into the grid to feed the province in the form of renewable natural gas. This would not only support operations at the facility, but would help the province meet its climate change and greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets. This study is linked in a comprehensive way to many of the city’s existing plans and programs, such as the GHG emissions Reduction Plan (2019) and corporate energy initiative (ECDM plan, updated in 2019). Innovative aspect(s): · The transformation would allow the plant’s existing anaerobic digester to operate at its fullest potential—enhancing biogas production for use as fuel to produce electricity and heat, and/or to create renewable natural gas with equal methane content and energy value as fossil-fuel natural gas · The project demonstrates the practicability of receiving more sludge and waste from surrounding plants and organics from the surrounding city areas to divert waste from the landfill Replicability: There is a strong likelihood that lessons learned from this project will be carried to other facilities because of the Ontario Clean Water Agency's broad involvement with many wastewater treatment facilities in Ontario. (Project description from original funding application)