At this year’s plant tour on August 4, 2015, attendees had the opportunity to visit the Harvest Power Energy Garden at Walt Disney World in Orlando, FL. Harvest Power’s Energy Garden in Central Florida is designed to simultaneously address four challenges – to recover energy and nutrients from food waste, manage odors, process biosolids beneficially, and improve the fertilizer end product quality – with one integrated solution. Located at Reedy Creek Improvement District, this anaerobic digester processes 130,000 tons per year of biosolids, fats, oils, grease, and food waste and has 3.2 MW of installed power generation capacity and 3.8 MW of recoverable heat from a biogas-fueled combined heat and power system (CHP), plus class AA granular fertilizer.
Approximately 24 pounds of food waste enters Central Florida’s landfills every second. Organic material and food waste in landfills produce a potent greenhouse gas, known as methane. Methane is the second most prevalent greenhouse gas emitted in the United States from human activities and is a contributor to numerous environmental issues, like global warming.
Harvest Power has found a higher and better use for Central Florida’s pre and post-consumer food waste. Through a patented anaerobic digestion process, Orlando’s food and organic waste can be recycled and converted into clean energy, effectively transforming the community’s organic waste problem into a sustainable local resource.
Harvest Power’s goal is to be the market leader for North America’s 500M+ tons/year of organic materials by providing communities with tailored solutions. They harness additional value from organic materials through the production of renewable energy, soils, mulches, and natural fertilizers. Harvest Power operates three of North America’s largest commercial anaerobic digestion facilities and have won awards for exceptional performance; are one of the top three organics consumer products companies in North America, providing bagged and bulk products millions of backyards; and are the largest processor of yard waste and food waste in North America, managing ~1.8 million tons of organic materials each year.
Tour attendees had the opportunity to learn about the plant’s treatment process and its automated control system. Major pieces of equipment were be explained, and insight was offered as to how the plant’s automated control system works. The tour comprised of a walking tour where attendees had the chance to “walk through the process.” This plant is controlled by Allen Bradley PLCs as well as Factory Talk HMI for primarily monitoring purposes.
Special thanks to Harvest Power and especially our tour guides Jeremy Goodfellow, Mark Greiner and Kelly Saikkonen of Harvest Power for being such great hosts. This year we had 65 attendees and hope to have a great turn out again at next year’s plant tour.
Many thanks to Bryan Sinkler from Trihedral Engineering for acting at the WWAC2015 Tour Coorinator, and for providing this above tour report and photos. Bus transportation to/from the plant tour was kindly provided by Schneider Electric.
Below are some pictures from our 2015 Symposium tour this year:
