GRAND FALLS, N.B. – What do you do with your leftovers? In a few years, you might say you turn them into electricity.
Turning things like leftover french fries and vegetables into bio-fuel is a big process, but it all starts with table scraps. At the Laforge Bio-environmental site in Grand Falls, N.B., the first step is mixing everything together.
“Manure, fries, pizza dough, potato peels, french fry oil, chicken fats, and we build ourselves a recipe with it,” said Rock Laforge. “I’d say our digester would be acting as a stomach, which is always digesting at 38 degrees Celsius, which creates the gas that the engine is burning.”
The mixture is constantly heated and mixed with air, while expelling gas.
The gas is burned, and creates about 200 kilowatts/hour, which is enough energy to power about 1,100 homes.
“What we’ll create in electricity in an hour is what a home will consume in a month,” said Laforge.
The technology starts at the Biorefinery Technology Scale-up Centre in Grand Falls. Teams work to refine the mixture that Laforge uses, and makes sure it can work on a large scale.
Manager Josee Landry says they’re testing to see if it might work on a commercial level.
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“If we take all the agricultural waste and our food waste and farm waste, it would be a good way to create energy,” said Landry.
It’s a shift in energy production that might become more popular as our population grows. Plants like the Laforge site do exist across Canada, but not enough of them.
That’s why MP Rob Moore toured the site Thursday, to see what the potential is for commercial use.
“So much of what would have been waste, we can’t afford to have that as waste anymore with the energy needs that are out there,” said Moore. “That’s why our government has been very supportive of the work that’s been happening at the community college.”
The best part? Once the mixture is done, it gets spread back across the fields as fertilizer. So there’s no waste at all.
Not bad for some leftover french fries.
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