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The power of pulp

Posted on | May 19, 2010 | 1,888 views |

Letting your food go to waste is a good thing at the Union

Can’t finish that half-eaten sandwich you bought at the Ohio Union? Don’t worry — it eventually will be used to power someone’s home.

As part of the Union’s success in becoming a “green” building by obtaining Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) silver certification, the university sought a multitude of ways to make the union eco-friendly. One of the most unique was the addition of a food pulper, which mashes up organic waste and turns it into a byproduct that can be recovered and used in multiple ways.

Kurtz Bros. Inc., a 65-year-old Cleveland-based company that has operations in Columbus and a long history of working with Ohio State on landscape material product development, is currently taking the waste and composting it and will use it in topsoil and mulches to increase their nutrient values.

“It is a very innovative process,” said Jeff Moore, Kurtz Bros. director of development. “There are not many of these kinds of systems around the US. OSU has taken a real lead in incorporating this technology into their student union. Essentially they’re diverting all the food scraps from the landfill, and the plateware is compostable too. It all goes into this disposal that masherates it down into a slurry, which is then dewatered so it becomes more of a cake that will be composted within six to eight months.”

The Ohio Union was able to dispense with garbage disposals by utilizing the pulper, reducing the union’s waste and water usage while lightening the burden on the city’s need to treat any wastewater.

But there are bigger plans in the works for the union’s — and all of Ohio State’s — organic waste. Kurtz Bros. is a partner in Quasar Energy Group, which opened a biogas facility on April 8 at the new 95-acre BioHio Research Park developed by OSU’s Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center. The facility is funded in part by a $2 million grant from the state of Ohio’s Third Frontier program, which was created to spur innovation to bolster Ohio’s economy and create jobs.

Moore said Ohio State’s waste eventually will be diverted to a similar facility in Columbus, which Quasar broke ground on May 3 and will begin operating in September. About 25,000 tons of waste annually will be processed and biogas will be fed into a heat and power generator that will produce up to 18 megawatts of electricity per day — potentially enough to power 1,000 homes and businesses.

The technology to utilize solid waste in an anaerobic digestion system was first developed in Germany, but Ohio State’s Yebo Li, an assistant professor in the Department of Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering, improved that technology three-fold (up to 20 percent of the waste can be solid now). The use of new Ohio State-developed technology in the Wooster facility allowed Quasar and OARDC to jointly apply for the Third Frontier grant.

Steven Slack, OSU’s associate vice president for Agricultural Administration and OARDC director, said the partnership is a crucial step in helping move the United States toward energy independence.

“Taking the waste stream to another level, where you’re directly developing a stream of gas that can be put back into the energy system for the state of Ohio, is a direct response to the need to develop alternative energy,” he said. “Ohio State University has an obligation to help the state in this way, and at the Wooster campus, we have land where we can put the facility, test out how well it will function with the various waste streams we have in Ohio and private industry can evaluate it as well.

“It’s absolutely critical that we use our institutions of higher education as places for proof of concept as well as places of discovery.”

Quasar’s biogas facility is the first in central Ohio, though it began operating one in Akron in 2007.

“We are leveraging the biogas business to help us expand all our other business units including landscape supply, sports turf and equestrian footings around the Midwest,” Moore said. “It’s the frontier for Kurtz Bros. in terms of growth and expansion.”

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