Partnership Building Anaerobic Digestion Facility at Massachusetts Landfill

A private-public partnership is building an anaerobic digestion facility at a landfill in Dartmouth, Mass.

CommonWealth Resource Management Corp. (CRMC), a Boston-based environmental firm, is developing the Dartmouth Bioenergy Facility at the Crapo Hill Landfill, working with the landfill’s owner, the Greater New Bedford Regional Refuse Management District.

The facility will produce biogas for use as a supplemental fuel for the existing 3.3 megawatt landfill gas-powered electric power generating facility at the landfill that is owned and operated by a CRMC subsidiary, according to a news release. That subsidiary currently buys landfill gas from the district and leases the site at the landfill on which the two projects will be co-located.

As well as the production of biogas, operating the new facility will enable the district to adapt to the impending state ban of commercial food waste and other organics. The district serves the town of Dartmouth and the city of New Bedford.

The project will be the first of its kind sited at an operating Massachusetts landfill and the first in the state to produce biogas for an existing landfill gas-to-energy (LFGTE) facility.

The project will be built in two phases. In the first the facility will be sized to accept about 3,000 gallons per day of organic waste for processing and digestion, in a digester with 100,000 gallons of holding capacity.

If that phase is successful, CRMC will expand the facility tenfold to allow for the processing and digestion of up to 30,000 gallons per day of feedstock.

CRMC expects the amount of biogas produced in the second phase will provide a 25-percent increase in the generating capacity of the exiting LFGTE facility to 4.1 megawatts.