Antioch

The California Energy Commission (CEC) awarded nearly $1 million recently for a research project on the conversion of biosolids to energy. The $999,924 from CEC’s Public Interest Energy Research program was awarded to Antioch, CA-based Delta Diablo Sanitation District to develop, demonstrate and implement a system for turning biosolids into energy. The project’s total cost is $4.7 million, with the rest of the funding coming from Intellergy Corp. in Richmond, CA. Biosolids are the treated byproducts produced by wastewater treatment facilities when organics are removed from municipal sewage. Biosolids contain latent energy that potentially can be harnessed in several ways, one of which is to heat the material, breaking it down into gases that are converted to energy. In the Delta Diablo facility, steam and carbon dioxide will be added to produce a hydrogen-rich synthetic gas that will be used to run a fuel cell to produce electricity.