The Anaerobic Digestion of Rendering Waste to Make Compressed Natural Gas Vehicle Fuel report documents North State Rendering’s efforts to process rendering waste into compressed bio-natural gas vehicle fuel. North State Rendering researched and installed waste reception technology, anaerobic digesters, biogas cleaning technologies, and compressed natural gas vehicle fuel technologies into an integrated whole within the rendering facility.
Rendering plants are a significant consumer of diesel truck fuel as they pick up their core business feedstocks. There is a compelling need and incentive for renderers to offset their diesel consumption with a self-made source of bio-natural gas.
The production of bio-natural gas via anaerobic digestion also enables renderers to dispose of rendering wastewater and difficult-to-render feedstocks such as grease trap waste, food waste, and liquefied animal carcasses.
The goal of ARV-10-040 was to construct an anaerobic digestion facility generating biogas as a vehicle fuel to a) prove the economic viability of the technology and promote broader adoption of waste-to-fuel systems; b) reduce air pollution from vehicles in the state of California, including carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide, smog, particulate matter, etc.; and c) create an integrated waste-to-vehicle fuel system to produce California-sourced fuel technology.
The results of ARV-10-040 showed that biogas could be generated from rendering waste, that biogas can be effectively processed into bio-natural gas, and on-site fueling of waste hauling trucks is an economically sound proposition.
The rendering industry is an ideal example of how anaerobic digestion technologies can have multiplier effects on a core business: reducing operating costs, reducing fuel costs, reducing electricity costs, and managing problematic waste streams.
