​​Rialto Bioenergy Phase 3: Expanded Renewable Natural Gas Refueling​

The Recipient, Rialto Bioenergy Facility, LLC (Recipient), in cooperation with a project team consisting of W.M. Lyles Co., Anaergia Technologies, LLC, and Momentum, sought to expand the capacity of the existing Rialto Bioenergy Facility (Facility). When fully operational, this new commercial-scale system will expand the Facility’s capacity of 2.5 diesel gallon equivalent (DGE) installed by two previous CEC grants (ARV-17-019 and ARV-18-029) with an additional 2.4M DGE for a combined 4.9 DGE per year of carbon negative renewable natural gas (RNG). The first phase of the project, funded partly by ARV-17-019, established an initial Carbon Intensity (CI) score for the Facility of -58 gCO2e/MJ. The second phase, funded partly by ARV-18-029, added a biogas conditioning skid and saw the Carbon Intensity (CI) score drop to -65 gCO2e/MJ. The latest CI score following the installation of the third phase, funded partly by this grant LCF-19-004, has increased to -57 gCO2e/MJ. This increase is due to unscheduled downtime with the biogas upgrader which required some gas to be flared. These issues have been resolved and the CI score is expected to start dropping again. These CI scores are only estimates based on available data collection and will need to be confirmed by California Air Resource Board (CARB) and reviewed with the Facility’s RNG broker Element Markets. The Recipient has executed feedstock agreements and offtake agreements to both receive required feedstock for the project and sell the RNG produced at the facility. When operational, the Facility will convert 300 tons/day of regionally available food / organic waste from municipal solid waste sourced from processing facilities such as Waste Management’s Sun Valley Recycling Park into carbon negative RNG for use as a transportation fuel. 

The Facility has successfully started operations and, with agreement of the California Energy Commission, has collected production data, including throughput, operating hours, Class A soil production, and RNG production.