Would you believe that a bug’s fart can help save energy? In the case of the 85 percent power generated by the methane gas captured from micro-organisms at the Joint Meeting of Union and Essex Counties wastewater treatment plant in Elizabeth, part of the “food” the bugs digest is collected from grease traps at Rutgers University.
Known as FOG (fats, oils and grease), the byproduct is collected by Russell Reid, an industrial waste management company in the Keasbey section of Woodbridge, carted from university dining halls, offloaded at the treatment plant, and served to millions microscopic critters.
The process has large environmental and economic impacts, representatives of Russell Reid and Joint Meeting said. “In a big industrial kitchen, Rutgers is serving thousands of meals for the university,” said Devin Dam, a Russell Reid sales manager. “All of the food prep, the cleaning of plates and dishes, comes through their sinks, makes their way into a trap. In the wash water that comes out is fats, oils and grease, things that you don’t want to get into your sewer because when that makes its way into your sewer, you end up clogging up sewer pipes, much like an artery would. You choke off the flow and you get sewer backups … The food waste sinks to the bottom of the trap, the fat and the oil floats to the top, and the relatively clean water makes it way out to the sewer, so we’re removing the separated grease and food waste that settled in the trap and didn’t make its way out to the sewer.”
For 10 years, Russell Reid has collected FOG at Rutgers and about 1,000 other locations throughout North and Central Jersey and brought the messy goop either to Joint Meeting or a Pennsylvania-based wastewater treatment plant. They too feed the waste to bugs and generate renewable energy from their methane, which also is produced from their feasting on waster water sludge.
In Elizabeth, that gas is captured by digesters that feed into a filtering system that converts the raw methane into reusable natural gas, as well as electricity that is sent to a power distribution operation connected to nearby power lines. The fuel powers the plant’s three 800-kilowatt generators, creating up to 3.2 megawatts of electricity.