Conference Agenda

The Pacific Northwest has become a key area of North America in the application of thermal enegy from wastewater (TEW) for indoor heating. The combination of GHG goals and buidling code requirements has motivated high-density development to look at its options for geo-exchange type heat pump applications for meeting heating needs but with out main reliance on fossil natural gas. Because of its subteranean proximty to high density development in urban landscapes TEW is increasingly becoming yet another resource to be extracted from wastewater. And hence, a new role is emerging for wastewater utilities to contibute towards a circular economy. In temperate and cold climates most of the residential energy requirement is for indoor heating and hot water.

Tapping into TEW for campus and district scale heating in the built envrionment can can be particularly attractive due to the proximity of interceptor sewers in areas where high-density development tends to occur and the fact that by its nature, wastewater is warm. Traditional ground-source heat pump systems are challenging due to the lack of land area for horizontal systems and the challenges of drilling deep systems in urban settings. While much attention is already given to energy recovery from biogas at Water Resource Recovery Facilities (WRRFs) it is only recently that more attention is being given to TEW. The energy recovery potential from TEW is several times greater than the amount of energy that can be recovered through biogas. In the full submission, the author will provide the audience with knowledge transfer based on case study examples of the technical, financial, and partnership opportunities and challenges that need to be addressed in order to bring a TEW campus or district scale system from concept to reality.

The full presentation will provide an overview of the technical as well as the partnership components that must come together in order to deliver a campus scale TEW system.

Since its founding in 2013, Bioforcetech has been working to prevent carbon emissions from the wastewater treatment process, and create a valuable product from its solid ‘waste.’ In 2018, 18% of the emissions generated in the United States came from organics breaking down in landfills. While this number alone is overwhelming, it doesn’t even begin to capture the total emissions released during the processes of drying and transporting solids from wastewater treatment.

Our proprietary two step process of drying and pyrolyzing biosolids utilizes our patented Bioforcetech BioDryer and P-Series Pyrolysis machines. These two technologies work together to reduce material volume and weight by 90%, lock available carbon in place for centuries, and produce a clean, valuable biochar at net-zero energy.

The biochar produced from our process is called OurCarbon™, and we’re using this material to develop sustainable replacements for petroleum based materials and to close the loop on waste streams both in the municipalities where our plants are installed and in products that are sold across the country. The Parks Department in the community where our California installation is located has begun incorporating our biochar into their local parks and plantings. Our first suite of products, called Den™, is a set of soil mixes showcasing our biochar as its main ingredient formally called OurCarbon™. Other empirical testing in pigmentation, fabric dyes, paint colorants, and material additives to concrete show promising opportunities to expand the use of biochar into these markets. The promise of this investigation allows us to offer a no-cost biochar off-take agreement to municipal clients with a profit share back to our client for any biochar sales made in profitable applications. At no cost guaranteed, our off take agreement ensures that excess biochar will never be a future issue for our clients.