‘Innovative’ onsite anaerobic digestion system for US naval base
SEaB Energy has won a contract to supply the State of California Energy Commission with Flexibuster, an innovative waste-to-energy system.
The agreement comes as part of a four year research programme into sustainable energy generation from food waste. The project aims to “demonstrate and evaluate environmentally and economically sustainable food waste biomass to electricity systems”.
Flexibuster is Southampton, UK, based SEaB Energy’s innovative decentralised anaerobic digestion system. Converting food waste to biogas, anaerobic digestion facilities are generally large scale and centralised. Although they enable energy recovery and reduce GHG emissions through processing food waste, they require the expensive and carbon emitting transportation of the food waste from its point of origin to the AD facility. Flexibuster, however, is a de-centralised and onsite solution, removing the need for waste transportation.
SEaB Energy will install a large Flexibuster at a US Naval Base in Ventura County in October 2017. It marks the expansion of the company’s US operations to the West Coast, having already gained contracts in the Midwest and East Coast regions.
The new facility will process 2,500 kg of mixed food waste every day. Food which is no longer fit for human consumption will be collected from local enterprises within seven miles, and processed to deliver 480 MWh/year of renewable electricity for the naval base.
“This is a prestigious win for SEaB Energy and gives us coast-to-coast visibility in the US where we already have a burgeoning pipeline of contracts to fulfil this year. British engineering and manufacturing has an important place in the UK economy and we’re very proud to be creating jobs and exporting worldwide.”
The deal was approved on March 24th and is the latest in a series of export orders for SEaB Energy which has experienced rapid growth since the second half of 2016.” Said SEaB Energy CEO and co-founder, Sandra Sassow, in a press release.
