BioCycle June 2009, Vol. 50, No. 6, p. 18

A recently established protocol will encourage landfill diversion of organic wastes to composting and anaerobic digestion.

Stephen McComb

BioCycle June 2009, Vol. 50, No. 6, p. 22

Deconstructing, as opposed to demolishing, abandoned buildings will revitalize our cities by reducing waste, creating green jobs, providing high-quality recycled materials for new construction, and more.

Neil Seldman

BioCycle June 2009, Vol. 50, No. 6, p. 32

Codigestion maximizes energy production in an AD plant by adding substrates that produce much more biogas per unit mass than the base substrate.

Dennis Totzke

BioCycle June 2009, Vol. 50, No. 6, p. 28

At a renowned composting facility, a perfect storm of odor causing events necessitated the implementation of a series of odor mitigation steps.

Jerry Bartlett

BioCycle June 2009, Vol. 50, No. 6, p. 36

With digesters producing excess gas, California dairy takes advantage of a public-private partnership that provided a grant to design and install a biogas upgrading and compression system.

Diane Greer

BioCycle June 2009, Vol. 50, No. 6, p. 40

Difficulty in achieving positive facility economics by digesting only manure has led to considerable experience with processing options for codigestion of various substrates.

Katrin Kayser and Katharina Backes

BioCycle June 2009, Vol. 50, No. 6, p. 43

Climate Change Connections

Sally Brown

BioCycle June 2009, Vol. 50, No. 6, p. 44

Biomass Energy Outlook

Mark Jenner

BioCycle June 2009, Vol. 50, No. 6, p. 45

Compost Canada

Susan Antler

BioCycle June 2009, Vol. 50, No. 6, p. 14

San Diego, California
PILOT EVALUATES COVERED COMPOSTING OF FOOD WASTE
The City of San Diego Environmental Services Department (ESD) initiated a pilot project to evaluate the GORE Cover composting system versus its current windrow composting to process food waste with green waste. The pilot is located at the city’s Miramar Greenery composting and mulch facility, which is built on the closed portion of the Miramar Landfill. The GORE system started operating in April. Phase I was 28 days. Phases II and III are each 15 days for a total of roughly 60 days for the trial. Materials being composted under cover are 112 tons of food waste from various commercial sources, 150 tons (about 400 cubic yards) of green waste from landscapers and the city’s collection and about 15 tons (100 cy) of overs from the screened compost, used as a bulking agent.

BioCycle June 2009, Vol. 50, No. 6, p. 6

Watermelons Tapped For Ethanol
Studies at the USDA Agricultural Research Service’s South Central Agricultural Research Laboratory in Lane, Oklahoma have shown that simple sugars in watermelon juice can be made into ethanol. In 2007, growers in the U.S. harvested 4 billion pounds (lbs) of watermelon for fresh and cut-fruit markets. Around 800 million lbs, or 20 percent of the total, were left in fields because of external blemishes or deformities. Now, instead of being plowed under, such melons could get an economic “new lease on life as ethanol,” says ARS.

BioCycle June 2009, Vol. 50, No. 6, p. 4

Figuring It Out

THE original title of this month’s editorial was going to be Growing The Infrastructure. But I feared we’ve used that title before, as the rallying cry to build more infrastructure to process organic waste streams is an almost daily rant. But as the days, months and years go by, the need to grow the infrastructure has become more urgent. Why?