Ontario invests in dead stock gasification plant

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

by BETTER FARMING STAFF

The Ontario government, through its rural economic development program, is investing $3,652,809 into a $10 million gasification system to render and recycle dead stock.

Atwood Pet Food Supplies Limited serves Ontario from Highway 400 west. They currently render 50 to 60 tonnes of beef dead stock per day but, after water and tallow is separated, the meat and bone meal has to be trucked to a landfill in Ottawa. The gasification system, expected to be operational by January 2013, will allow them to render 100 tonnes worth of dead stock per day. They will separate the tallow and water and they will gasify the rest of the carcass leaving nothing but an ash residue. In the process, they expect to create enough gas to replace the natural gas they use now.

“Natural gas is 75 per cent of the cost of rendering,” said owner David Smith. While they are still called Atwood Pet Food Supplies, they have not supplied any material to the pet food industry since BSE was discovered in a cow in Alberta in 20062003.

The new process will involve rendering at 270 degrees Fahrenheit which removes water, 60 per cent of the weight, and tallow, which is 15 per cent. The water is trucked to a water treatment plant and the tallow is sold into the bio diesel market. The remaining 25 per cent will enter the gasification chamber where it will be heated to 1100 to 1400 degrees centigrade.

“Gas comes out of this oxygen starved container,” Smith said. “You just keep heating it. It is not incinerated. It’s just heating it up to get the gas off it. When the gas is off, we are going to fire that gas up and replace our natural gas costs.” The ash that is left may become fertilizer if it meets certain criteria. If it does not, it will be sent to landfill.

Smith said the plant will run 24/7 and four or five workers will be added to the 35 currently employed at the plant. While they expect to get enough gas to run the operation, they are not certain whether they will have extra gas to produce power for the grid. BF