Conversion process | Two facilities in Alberta will process specified risk material from cattle
A plant that will convert specified risk material from cattle into fertilizer and biogas may break ground later this year in Lacombe, Alta.
BioRefinex Canada has received environmental and regulatory approvals for a $35 million plant in Lacombe’s industrial park. Now it’s a matter of completing the financing, said BioRefinex president Chris Thrall.
“We are intending to process roughly 45,000 tons a year of animal byproducts, and over and above that, we’ll be processing some commercial organic wastes,” said Thrall.
The bulk of those animal byproducts will be SRMs that are removed during cattle slaughter as a result of safeguards against BSE. That material is now incinerated or put in landfills.
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The plant will use patented technology developed by Eric Schmidt, who serves as executive chair and chief science officer on the BioRefinex board.
The process uses heat to break down organic waste into a liquid, which is then subjected to centrifuge to separate it into various nutrient streams. Those nutrients can be used to make phosphorus and nitrogen based fertilizers.
“The plant converts organic waste to high grade organic fertilizer and feedstock for biogas that we’ll be turning into renewable electricity. Those are the main outputs,” Thrall said.
No chemicals are required, and the thermal hydrolysis process destroys all pathogens including prions associated with BSE.
Thrall said the process has been certified by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, the European Union and the World Organization for Animal Health as a successful way to destroy prions.
Nutrients from the organic waste are retained. Fats are converted to fatty acids that help fuel biodigesters. Proteins become amino acids used in nitrogen-based fertilizer, and carbohydrates convert to sugar for use in fertilizer. Minerals become the principal part of phosphate fertilizer.
Thrall, who comes from a family with a long history in the Alberta cattle business, said he is pleased with the plant’s potential to provide greater returns to cattle producers by using material now unprofitable and wasted.
“The ultimate goal, of course, through all this is to increasingly bring more value to the cattle producers,” he said.
“It’s something that we’re very enthusiastic about and we expect that this have a very positive impact on the producers.”
The technology that will be used in the full-scale Lacombe plant has been licensed for use at a $40 million biogas plant in Lethbridge, which has been under construction since 2011.
Lethbridge Biogas is expected to use manure, SRMs, dead stock and other waste to produce an estimated 2.85 megawatts of electricity. That would make it one of the largest biogas operations in Canada.
Thrall said the Lethbridge plant will be bigger than the one planned in Lacombe. The difference is that Lacombe will apply its fractionation process to its feedstock so the material can be used in fertilizer. Lethbridge will divert its material to anaerobic digesters to produce biogas.
“Lethbridge will be the first commercial facility that is utilizing the BioRefinex thermal hydrolysis technology, and then our facility is going to be the full application of our patented technology and process that does the thermal hydrolysis and then the fractionation,” said Thrall.
