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Biosolids SPOTLIGHT

Biosolids SPOTLIGHT: A focus on the people of biosolids who work in our region

February 2025 - MABA Biosolids Spotlight 

Provided to MABA members by Bill Toffey, Effluential Synergies, LLC 

SPOTLIGHT on the UAJA Biosolids Project

For now, at least, it is simply called the “Biosolids Project.”  But by any standard, the comprehensive set of treatment innovations underway in State College, Pennsylvania, deserves superlatives.  This “project includes advanced digester, dryers, food waste receiving, and biogas recycling, meeting every definition of The Utility of the Future Today or that of a Circular Water Economy facility, definitions that catch global attention among water leaders and that call to mind large, well-known projects in Los Angeles, Milwaukee, and Raleigh.  The project includes descriptors that feature “energy,” as in facilities described in previous MABA SPOTLIGHTS, such as the WSSC Water’s Piscataway Bioenergy Facility, Rahway Valley Sewerage Authority’s food waste augmentation project and DC Water’s Bloom product and Bailey Bioenergy Facility. But these are facilities with large service areas, not the modest base of 14,000 connections of UAJA. Indeed, UAJA can expect its “biosolids project” will catch wide attention for being so clearly a template for hundreds of comparatively small public agencies across the country.

The University Area Joint Authority (UAJA) provides wastewater treatment and biosolids management services for State College, Pennsylvania, and much of the surrounding Centre County region. Under the leadership of executive director Cory Miller and a supportive, engaged board of 10 trustees, the UAJA has embraced sustainability, has a forward-thinking approach to watershed management and takes a leadership role in biosolids management.

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Aerial view of UAJA showing, in the upper part of the frame the composting building which was removed in 2024 for construction of the “biosolids project.” 

Recognizing that UAJA’s composting infrastructure was nearing its useful life, yet remaining committed to making an exceptional quality product for soils in the community and the region, UAJA undertook a comprehensive planning study for biosolids treatment options.  Miller and his board looked to an expanded role for UAJA as a regional organic processing facility, building on the base of a daily flow averaging 5.3 million gallons and an annual biosolids production of 2,400 dry metric tons. Considering as an option taking in wastewater solids and organic wastes from a wider region, the UAJA saw that it could better fulfill its role supporting economic and community development as well as good environmental quality.  

Results of this decade-long visioning and planning has been “solid,” with UAJA embarking on a showcase bioenergy facility. The progress on this project was recently reported by the local newspaper, the Centre Daily Times: “An $81M project underway at UAJA will turn waste into renewable energy. Here’s how.” 

Miller frames the case for the UAJA transformation in this way: “Eighty-one million dollars may be a scary number, but the Authority concluded the new plan is the best alternative for the community. It is affordable, based on revenue bonds supported by the rate payers of the system.  In Pennsylvania, being on the leading edge means doing things without grant money.  The compost facility was a game changer in its day but after nearly 30 years, it was all spent.”  

The UAJA bioenergy vision has multiple features.  The vision for solids is high-rate digesters for wastewater solids and food waste, biogas collection and treatment to pipeline quality, biosolids dryers with capacity to serve as a regional facility, and an excellent soil product that satisfies the demand of long-standing compost customers.  No small part of the program is revenue from accepting food waste and digested solids from nearby agencies, but also added to the pro forma is sale of digester gas supplied to the nearby gas pipeline, biogas which commands a high price when cleaned to natural gas standards.

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This set of photographs is from a Centre Daily Times article of “An $81M project underway at UAJA will turn waste into renewable energy. Here’s how” (12/12/2024),  with pictures showing construction underway on  anaerobic digesters (a), food waste receiving (b), and the drying building (c)

Revenue from tipping fees for food waste will in part pay the way for the capital costs in the receiving and processing facilities.  The tipping fee set by UAJA for food waste disposal is set by the marketplace, as it is an incidental operation to wastewater treatment, which otherwise has a publicly set uniform rate for wastewater disposal  This gives UAJA flexibility in its revenue for this operation, with daily adjustments to optimize digestion feed, to achieve microbial stability and to keep digesters at peak performance, while avoiding negatives, such as foaming.   

UAJA will work closely with the Centre County Recycling and Refuse Authority.  UAJA’s facility is prepared to partner with CCRRA to reach its goal to divert organic waste collected from households in the county from landfills. UAJA anticipates developing a steady source of pre-consumer commercial sources, as from supermarkets and manufacturers.  

With the installation of the belt drying processes, UAJA will be providing regional biosolids services.  Once in operation, UAJA will be accepting digested dewatered sludges from nearby boroughs of Tyrone and Bellefonte, along with the Moshannon Valley Joint Sewer Authority in Phillipsburg. UAJA will dry the biosolids and market the product as a Class A EQ soil product, mostly as a turf grass management product. Compared to compost, which has been very popular over more than two decades, UAJA expects its dried product to be in good demand also, with less volume to manage than compost. As was the case with compost distribution, commercial users will arrange their own transportation. UAJA expects its biosolids product to go out the door with little focused marketing on the part of UAJA. Miller has already received a request from one user to purchase the entire supply.  

Miller believes the UAJA will be a role model for other communities. UAJA is a medium sized utility, with a flow rate typical of many boroughs and towns in the mid-Atlantic region.  As UAJA creates a role for itself as an organic waste processing center, it is an example of goal fulfillment for recycling often sought by local leaders, namely the reduction of organic waste disposal in landfills.   Miller advocates for public agencies engaging in master planning for biosolids:  “Master planning really doesn't cost that much, and it opens doors for long term solutions.”  

Innovative technologies motivate the UAJA staff.  Miller is committed to bringing on people who are challenged by new technology and who value continuous learning.  The world-class bioenergy facility is that kind of attractor for talented operators. UAJA’s take on “first in class” technologies is that companies with such technologies have a stake in ensuring smooth operations and in helping ensure authority staff are well-trained.

UAJA invites the community for tours of its facilities.  It has well over 1000 visitors annually, including university students.  Miller is particularly committed to tours for fifth grade students who are studying water.  UAJA is a regular field trip destination, showing the young students not only the impressive array of tanks and pumps, but the control rooms, the laboratories and machine shops as well.  He has witnessed firsthand the value of children and their parent chaperones learning of the wastewater treatment enterprise, as they are or will be future ratepayers who appreciate the value of wastewater services. He recalls early in his career one 5th grader who grew up to become an elected township supervisor in his service area.

About the role of UAJA in the State College community, Miller explains: “The game is not just sewage, but also life quality, business development, and environmental sustainability.  The mindset across the wastewater industry ought to be that we recognize what we are really doing is improving the quality of life and local economy along with enhancing the environment.”

The UAJA project has as its role model the amazing Hermitage Food Waste to Energy Facility and Wastewater Plant in Hermitage, Pennsylvania, a MABA member agency.  Tom Darby, executive director of this small agency with a big game plan, has pioneered the role that Cory Miller is undertaking.  Hermitage Borough has transformed a conventional wastewater plant into a regional processor of commercial food waste, and in so doing has become a reference facility for key equipment -- food depackagers, high solids digesters and biogas collection and clean up systems. The Hermitage facility is well described in its own brochure, and engaging YouTube video, and  professional case studies (Food Waste Co-Digestion at Hermitage Municipal Authority (PA) Business Case Analysis Snapshot).

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Biological hydrolysis is a key aspect of the Veolia two-step anaerobic digestion system under construction at UAJA, that can accommodate the high strength organic feedstocks from food waste and wastewater solids 

While Darby was the force behind this facility, he was aided by engineering wizard Jason Wert, senior engineer with RETTEW, of State College, Pennsylvania.  RETTEW, a MABA member, has had deep “hands on” experience with “waste to energy” at Hermitage that Wert has been able to apply to UAJA.  Wert has emphasized several key features in the design of the UAJA waste-to-energy system, informed by the Hermitage experience.  Anaerobic digestion, provided by Veolia, includes their Monsal biological hydrolysis process. This process allows for two stage digestion of the incoming wastewater solids, separating the hydrolysis and acid formation steps from methanogenesis, optimizing in the first stage for microbial destruction of complex organic matter before feeding digesters in the subsequent gas production stage. In so doing, UAJA can separately process wastewater solids and slurried food waste in separate digesters. This feature thereby enables operators to distinguish biogas derived from food waste from biogas derived from wastewater solids, a distinction that has revenue implications down the line.  This separation also allows for processing times and temperatures to reflect the inherently different digestibility of the two feedstocks.

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This is an aerial photograph of the Hermitage Food Waste to Energy facility at the borough wastewater plant which is a model for the project underway in State College.

One elaborate feature of the UAJA facility, compared to most municipal co-digestion operations, is the scale of the food waste processing capabilities.  Harnessing Darby’s experience at Hermitage, UAJA will be using the Veolia Excrusor Food Depackaging System, an industrial scale system more commonly deployed at commercial solid waste facilities than wastewater plants.  This equipment will allow UAJA, as with Hermitage, to accept packaged food products that require disposal, separating metal, plastic, and paper packaging from food waste, and thereby decontaminating slurried feed stock ahead of the digesters. The food waste processing area, with its enclosed food waste acceptance area, the Ecrusor and the slurry tank, is separate from the acceptance area for municipal biosolids cake.  Cake will be received by UAJA from other wastewater plants for drying in Veolia BioCon, a belt dryer system that is another element of the new solids system producing a Class A EQ product for marketing. While the current plan of operation does not include digested food waste drying, this is a possible future step.

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A key to the food waste receiving facility at UAJA will be the Veolia Excrusor that “depackages” commercial food waste, effectively separating organic materials from metals and plastics that are in packaging, and in use at Hermitage.

Biogas from digesters has maximum revenue potential when brought to “pipeline standards.” This is an elaborate set up for removing moisture and CO2, and for removing gaseous contaminants, notably hydrogen sulfide and siloxane, such that the biogas is transformed into Renewable Natural Gas, essentially indistinguishable chemically from its fossil-sourced gas.  

Veolia is clearly a key part of the UAJA development as UAJA is installing Veolia’s first Biological Hydrolysis system at a wastewater facility in North America .  This arises from the good track record of high solids two phase digestion at Hermitage and the success of Ecrusor equipment. But the selection of an integrated system from Veolia is in part due to the development of commercial scale biogas production facilities using Veolia equipment in the mid-Atlantic region. Veolia’s Nick Bonkoski, a MABA Board member, has for many years been an advocate and technical salesperson for the Monsal Biological Hydrolysis methods of digestion, having learned the trade from his father William Bonkoski, who spent almost 50 years in the business.  Bonkoski has seen the food waste-to-biogas industry take off over recent years. He points to two privately developed projects in the region that are under construction: Linden (New Jersey) Renewable Energy Project, the brainchild of RNG Energy Solutions, and the American Organic Energy digester project in Yaphank, New York, a project headed by Charles Vigliotti, who has provided leadership in the composting arena for decades with the Long Island Compost facility. These facilities draw upon the vast volumes of food waste generated in the New York / New Jersey metropolitan region.  But even boroughs the size of State College produce a volume of organic wastes suitable as a feedstock for anaerobic digestion. 

UAJA is in the mid-point of its solids system transformation. In Spring 2023, the last of UAJA biosolids was put through the enclosed compost system, and landscape customers worked through the final compost inventory by Summer 2024. A year ago, in January 2024, contracts were signed, and by mid-year, the compost building had been removed, and foundational work began for the dryers and waste handling areas began.  Later in 2024, construction of hydrolysis and digester units began. Much of the construction is expected to be completed by the end of 2025, with start up extending into mid-2026.  

One year from now we ought to be receiving our invitations to the opening of this state of the art digestion facility.  It will surely become the destination of choice for biosolids managers throughout the Mid Atlantic. Perhaps UAJA will have a naming contest for this facility.   The ”biosolids project” could become the “Centre Region Ecofactory for Food Waste and Wastewater Solids Transformation to Bioenergy and Biofertilizer.”  We have a year to work on this name…

For more information, contact Mary Baker at [email protected] or 845-901-7905.
 

January 2025 - MABA Biosolids Spotlight 

Provided to MABA members by Bill Toffey, Effluential Synergies, LLC 

SPOTLIGHT on Maryland Environmental Services

“Biosolids in a plain brown wrapper” is how Al Razik describes the program he designed and implemented as senior engineer at the Maryland Environmental Services (MES). Though officially retired in 2024 after 38 years, Al remains engaged with MES’s biosolids program, aiding new manager Heather Fritz and the team of four field personnel who conduct inspections, prepare compliance documents, and aid in public communications.  The entire biosolids team at MES embodies a deep and infectious commitment to environmental stewardship and community that has turned this “brown” into gold for farmers, ratepayers and soils. 

Those of us with our heads always in biosolids may not fully appreciate the wide range of environmental management services MES offers in Maryland, of which biosolids is merely one. MES is an unusual organization. It is a not-for-profit agency of the State of Maryland established to manage the quality of air, land, water, and natural resources, employing over 800 people and operating more than 1,000 environmental projects.  Biosolids management is one of the units under the Water and Wastewater Group.  Another unit close in kind to biosolids is the MES operation of the Prince George’s County Organics Composting Facility, which accepts yard debris and food waste for composting, and manages the distribution and marketing of LeafGro. MES also advises on waste recycling and on management of solid waste landfills.  In addition, MES provides for Marylander’s operations and maintenance of dredging facilities, wetlands management, forest conservation surveys, site remediation consultation, and engineering and survey services. 

Heather Fritz assumed the senior position in the biosolids management program at MES with Razik’s retirement.  For public sector managers accustomed to one or a few biosolids sources, the MES program can seem bewildering in its web of origins and destinations for solids.  Fritz explains “the Biosolids Program [in 2024] managed 72 WWTP facilities' sludge and biosolids in 2024. The majority of the smaller facilities transfer their sludge to three larger plants throughout the State for further treatment to Class B biosolids using lime stabilization. These three facilities are: Dorsey Run Advanced WWTP, Freedom District WWTP, and MD Correctional Institution WWTP. Dewatered Class B biosolids are then land applied by a contractor to agricultural land in the State of Virginia. This land application program is a simple ‘no frills’ cost effective program for managing biosolids and has been reliably practiced for the past 30 years with few problems. The MES Biosolids Program also includes preparation of nutrient management plans in Maryland for a few aerobically digested liquid biosolids land application sites and wastewater spray irrigation fields for our clients.”

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MES operates three wastewater facilities that separate, stabilize and dewater solids for recycling to farmlands in the state. The Freedom WWTP operates a centrifuge, and the Maryland Correctional Facility WWTP has a belt press. The third and larger plant, the Dorsey Run Advanced WWTP is currently undergoing an upgrade from belt press to centrifuge dewatering. 

Fritz explains further that “another key function of the program is its third-party independent field monitoring service. MES provides this function for DC Water's Blue Plains Advanced WWTP” which produces Bloom, a “first in class” biosolids product that is thermally hydrolyzed, then anaerobically digested and dewatered by belt presses. MES participates in the utilization program for that portion of the production of Bloom delivered to agricultural customers in Virginia. Under the current permits issued by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (VADEQ), permits that may be revised in the future, the VADEQ requires a third-party to witness and verify compliance of bulk sales of Bloom on Virginia farms and forests.   MES also provides third-party monitoring for WSSC Water's biosolids, historically the lime-amended solids generated by five WRRFs and now recently the thermally hydrolyzed anaerobically digested biosolids coming out of the Piscataway Bioenergy Plant. 

While Fritz provides the central office control of this tapestry of biosolids services, the field personnel have been the key to the nearly four-decade biosolids success story. Fritz says the field inspectors “are pivotal to the success of the field monitoring program. As Virginia certified land appliers, they gather pertinent field and biosolids data to ensure the biosolids of our clients meet required standards and are field applied following State and Federal regulations. Not only do they monitor land application, but they are on scene during incidents such as vehicle accidents resulting in material spills of our clients biosolids and stay throughout to assist and confirm successful cleanup.”

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This springtime picture of a land application operation shows it all. The dump trailer unloading biosolids cake, the front-end loader waiting at the temporary pile, and the tractor-pulled manure spreader ready to spread the biosolids. The landscape is nearly level, and the sky clear for a great day of biosolids recycling.

Will Forbes is the Senior Operations Manager in the biosolids unit.  An employee with MES for 25 years, Forbes today manages the logistics of the third-party field monitoring program. He directs inspector duties and works with clients, contractors, the public, and other regulatory professionals. As much as any biosolids manager, Forbes has seen the sweep of changes in biosolids programs. When he started out, “all of the farmers in Virginia and Maryland wanted to sign up for the free fertilizer…”  MES inspectors, always present at application sites and willing to step up and talk to the public, have worked hard to engage in responsive public education.  And for years one hard issue to work through was odors, with a lot of public complaints, and it had to work though an urban stigma (“sludge is infested with drugs”).  Forbes says the digestion process at DC Water’s Blue Plains plant is a “game changer,” so that conversations with folks who stop to ask questions about field operations end up ignoring the odor issue, turning to topics of sports and current events, and neighbors come to understand that MES field inspectors are trusted professionals, ready to answer questions and record complaints and concerns. Police have occasionally stopped for information, and Forbes finds that these conversations effectively get back to local citizens who may have reported concerns. Forbes and his fellow inspectors have been tracking the growing concern for “forever chemicals,” and will be waiting for developments in Maryland and Virginia on PFAS regulation.  He is wary of looming public concern for health and environmental risks for biosolids-borne PFAS, but, so far, no questions have been raised during field inspections.  

Skylar Harris is now 18 years as a field inspector in the biosolids program.  “I love every part of my job, what it is doing for the environment and farmers and for what it means to my family… I want to do it every day until I retire.” Harris’s commitment is borne of his direct experience working with farmers and landowners. He carries within his smart phone a picture of tree trunk cores showing the growth response to a biosolids silviculture application made in 2018, with the landowner’s note “looks like 3X growth… huge, huge difference.”  His commitment is also borne of his confidence from completing the Virginia DEQ Land Appliers Certification program, as has the full team of inspectors, and also from becoming a certified nutrient manager planner, allowing him to see the complete picture of nutrient issues, animal and human.

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This is a set of three tree cores provided to Skylar Harris by a forest landowner raving about the “huge, huge” growth effects of a biosolids application to a plantation. The core on the top shows the far wider rings of tree growth in a biosolids-fertilized tree compared to two other cores of trees in unfertilized lands. 

Dennis Harris has been a biosolids inspector for 18 years and can provide personal testimony to the tremendously improved quality of the Blue Plains biosolids that anaerobic digestion has created. In particular, he notes that half the number of truck deliveries are needed to meet farmer needs as a result of the thermal hydrolysis treatment, and he points to the consistency of the product’s moisture and texture, ensuring an even spreading for good crop response. In the past, Blue Plain’s limed product tended to have hard clumps that did not break down properly, leading to uneven crop response and odor complaints. Among the improvements Harris witnessed was the introduction of barcodes on truck weigh tickets, which feed a GIS-based information system for tracking loads of biosolids from WRRFs to farms. Harris also has been in the field to witness the tragic and the comic: he has for example attended to truck accident incidents, and on another occasion, he raised a red flag when he noted a spreading operation was proposed at a farm advertising a public hayride.  

A feature of the MES biosolids program that is renowned is its odor assessment work. A key part of the program to manage the Blue Plains and WSSC’s biosolids programs over the past three decades had been to reduce the frequency of odor complaints associated with the use of DC’s lime stabilized biosolids. As part of that commitment to best practices, MES’s third party monitoring included establishing for each daily operation the intensity of biosolids odors.  The field inspectors were trained in the use of a “Nasal Ranger,” a field olfactometer that provides an objective measure of odor intensity. Over 30,000 odor readings have been captured in the MES database since introduction of this tool, including field odor measures for biosolids from Alexandria, Virginia, and the city of Philadelphia, in addition to the Blue Plains and WSSC biosolids.

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The inspector is measuring with a Nasal Ranger Field Olfactometer the odor strength in air downwind of the land spreading operation to objectively judge risks of odor nuisances. 

MES’s “simple plain brown wrapper” biosolids program,  while today well-serving agencies, farmers and regulators, may see changes in the future. Drivers include evolving biosolids standards for PFAS and evolving technologies for destroying PFAS and other compounds of potentially long-term concern (e.g., microplastics).  MES Biosolids Management continues to gather data on best processing practices in the ever changing climate of biosolids, and in the meantime, farmers will continue to line up for the biosolids nutrients generated from communities in Maryland and DC and provided to them with this “plain brown wrapper” biosolids program.

For more information, contact Mary Baker at [email protected] or 845-901-7905.
 

December 2024 - MABA Biosolids Spotlight 

Provided to MABA members by Bill Toffey, Effluential Synergies, LLC 

SPOTLIGHT on Updates for 2024

2024 has felt like a year of looming transitions. In the political realm in the United States, this certainly is true. In the world of biosolids, this is particularly true with PFAS.  EPA’s assessment of biosolids-borne PFAS is awaited, with no small amount of trepidation, with state-sponsored surveys of biosolids generators in Maryland and New York, and with research into biosolids-borne PFAS pathways, notably Dr. Ian Pepper.  But we also have transitions in the forms of retirements and job changes.  Greg Kester is retiring from CASA, the California counterpart to MABA, and his position is being filled by Maile Lono-Batura, signaling the need at WEF to fill the position of national biosolids lead.  Big projects are nearing completion, enabling agencies to transition to Class A levels of pathogen reduction, none bigger than the WSSC Water’s Piscataway Bioenergy Plant.  Several thermal destruction projects were underway in 2024 and awaiting completion in 2025 which may also fundamentally expand technology options in the region. If 2024 is a year of transition, then 2025 may naturally become the year of conclusions. 

All MABA SPOTLIGHTS in 2024 have acknowledged strong efforts by teams of biosolids practitioners to “make things work well” with biosolids. No SPOTLIGHT is more compelling than that of Bloom, the DC Water soil product marketed by Blue Drop. It demonstrates the perseverance of a strong vision, one that combines a great product that “sells itself” and meets the test of consumer preferences, with that of a sound story of resource recovery and a circular economy, genuinely and uniquely serving the farm and garden community.  The September 2024 SPOTLIGHT describes the important public works, golf courses and recreational facilities for which Bloom supplies nutrients and organic matter. In 2024, yet more new golf courses, landscape companies and farms were added to their growing roster of customers. For agricultural outlets of Bloom, the summer drought underscored the economic and environmental benefits of Bloom over commercial fertilizers. In 2025, DC Water and Blue Drop look forward to the completion of a paved, covered curing pad that will provide increased storage and production capacity for Bloom’s value-added customers. 

DC Water’s strong vision inspired the region’s largest new biosolids project of 2024, the WSSC Water Piscataway Bioenergy Plant.  This new plant was explored in detail in the November 2024 SPOTLIGHT, as the ribbon cutting on October 30th marked the near full operation of this transformational solids system. This transformation included an interlinked transportation system for the agency’s six plants, the centralized thermal hydrolysis of solids, digestion of treated solids through new mesophilic digesters, treatment of biogas for energy capture, and production of a Class A dewatered biosolids product. The project was managed through a special contract system that brought it to completion on schedule and on budget even during the disruption of the global pandemic.

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The Cambi Thermal Hydrolysis Process, with its reactors at WSSC Water shown here, is a key component of solids treatment for both DC Water Blue Plains Advanced WWTP and for WSSC Water’s Piscataway Bioenergy Project for achieving through mesophilic digestion a high degree of volatile solids destruction, superior biogas production and low odor biosolids cake.

While WSSC Water is at one end of the scale of transformations, the Borough of Quakertown’s project, reported in the February 2024 SPOTLIGHT, is at the other end, but for this Pennsylvania community, no less transformational. Using the proprietary high-solids digester technology of the Anaergia company, Quakertown has new digesters under construction and has prepared for the biogas fueled generators and its high strength organic waste receiving station, as it moves toward energy self-sufficiency.  Much of this work is expected to be completed in 2025. 

Though not a focus of a SPOTLIGHT in 2024, a project similar to Quakertown’s is underway at State College, Pennsylvania. Having reached the life expectancy of an enclosed biosolids composting facility, which for its time was a groundbreaking Class A treatment facility, the University Area Joint Authority embarked on a project to optimize energy and resource recovery, with a focus on digestion and biogas. As reported in the local newspaper (An $81M project underway at UAJA will turn waste into renewable energy. Here’s how), this is a $81 million replacement to the compost plant.  The project for UAJA has been led by Jason Wert, of Rettew Engineers, a MABA member who has participated in MABA programs in which his client Tom Darby of the Hermitage Food Waste to Energy Facility was featured.  A key partner in supplying equipment to UAJA has been Veolia Water Technologies & Solutions, also a MABA member, which offers its proprietary Monsal 55 digester system, featuring thermophilic batch tanks. The Monsal tanks will separately digest to Class A standards the wastewater solids and trucked-in food waste, but the two digestates will be blended together.  The biogas off of the digesters will be cleaned up for pipeline injection as a renewable natural gas.  The blended digestate will be sent to Veolia belt dryers for a second point of Class A pathogen compliance, and the resulting product is expected to be low odor and suitable for commercial uses.

Few public utilities in the United States can claim the integration of energy and resource recovery better than that achieved by Rahway Valley Sewerage Authority (RVSA).  As explained in the October 2024 SPOTLIGHT, RVSA’s digesters produce biogas, the gas drives electric generators, waste heat from generators dries biosolids into recyclable products, and food waste supplements the digesters to produce more gas for plant electricity. To this equation will be added in 2025 an agreement hammered out in 2024 to have Waste Management, the current supplier of the food waste, install, own and operate a gas clean up system that will produce a Renewable Natural Gas (RNG) meeting pipeline injection standards.  The value of RNG is substantially higher than the natural gas needed to power the generators, so RVSA has a financial gain with this relationship.

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Rahway Valley Sewerage Authority is a leader in the Mid-Atlantic region in implementing a vision of deploying capacity in its anaerobic digesters to accept supplemental high strength organic waste, as shown in this picture of the receiving station for Waste Management’s “engineered bioslurry,” for the enhanced production of renewable natural gas planned by RVSA for pipeline injection.

The MABA SPOTLIGHT for 2024 has shown its light on some important expansions within the region in biosolids “productification” capacities.  This is the evolution of solids treatment systems to produce materials that meet the Class A pathogen standard and that are suited for professional and consumer use in landscapes and gardens.  This evolution includes two large regional composting plants, featured in the April 2024 SPOTLIGHT.  Both were completed in mid-2024 and both are located adjoining municipal solid waste landfills. One was built by McGill Compost in Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania (McGill Fairless Hills), and the other by Synagro, in Cumberland County, New Jersey (Cumberland County Organics Recycling Facility). Both facilities enter 2025 very nearly at full operating capacity, and both are deploying composting systems that, while drawing on well-known principles and practices, inevitably require tweaking for best performance. Both facilities accept biosolids from multiple public agencies.  Both facilities have begun shipments of compost and are preparing for their first Spring market, and together they will more than double the volume of biosolids compost currently in production in the mid-Atlantic region. Tom Herlihy of Synagro is particularly proud that the compost produced in Cumberland, using the turned aerated pile composting system, has been achieving very high scores on the US Composting Council’s Seal of Testing Assurance measures for germination and seedling vigor, which Tom believes is the single most important “bioassay” for compost. And while many biosolids practitioners have been sitting back, waiting for words from EPA on the future of regulations of PFAS contaminants, neither compost plant has seen PFAS become an issue for its biosolids suppliers or for its compost customers.

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Biofiltration of indoor air is a key aspect of commercial scale biosolids composting process, this picture illustrates the scale of the biofilter at Synagro’s Cumberland County Organics Recycling Facility.

The July 2024 SPOTLIGHT featured emerging thermal conversion technologies – EarthCare Solutions, Bioforcetech, Ecoremedy and CHAR Technologies. 

The merchant gasifier facility installed by EarthCare Solutions in Bethel, Pennsylvania, is the furthest along of the thermal projects in the mid-Atlantic region. It has two process gasifier trains, one devoted to poultry manure and the other to biosolids. Both lines have been in full operation, though both also are occasionally held offline so that improvements can be made. Sean Sweeney, director of operations, explains that the biosolids gasification system is being upgraded to better handle fine particles, reducing the proportion that are captured in air pollution control equipment and enabling their reintroduction to the gasifier itself. EarthCare is also modifying the receiving area for quicker unloading of trucks, including a higher speed belt and a longer conveyor reach for higher stacking.

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Of the five thermal facilities under construction in the Mid-Atlantic region, the Earthcare Solutions facility in Bethel, Pennsylvania, is the closest to full operation, with the two gasifier trains shown in this photograph, one for poultry litter and the other dedicated to biosolids cake.

Bioforcetech has been working at the Ephrata Borough treatment plant to bring its Pyreg pyrolysis unit into full performance. Ephrata expects that in first quarter 2025 commissioning can begin, so heat coming off the pyrolyzer can replace the temporary use of propane for the drying of the solids ahead of gasification. 

Two other thermal units continue to be pursued, the CHAR Technologies mobile unit by Synagro and the Ecoremedy gasifier by the Derry Township Municipal Authority. This latter facility met a milestone with the signing of contracts in November for construction of the gasifier and related equipment.  Maryland regulators have the CHAR unit in front of its permit writers, and Synagro expects approval in 2025.

To these four thermal processes in the region can be added a fifth project, the Aries Kearny Biosolids Processing Facility. For a few years now, Aries Clean Technologies has worked to iron out problems with this facility, which is designed to daily gasify over 400 tons of biosolids cake for disposal, with the ash used as a concrete additive.  According to an October 3 press release, the facility has now achieved “integrated processing.” An operator at the Linden-Roselle Sewerage Authority says that Aries is still in “shake down,” and has not yet sought any biosolids for processing.

The January 2024 SPOTLIGHT on BaltimoreDepartment of Public Works’s biosolids operations featured plans to turn around conditions that had threatened regulatory and permit compliance by the city at both the Patapsco and Back River plants.  As 2025 approaches, elements are in place for the turn around: Jacobs Solutions was contracted to handle the solids side of treatment, and major repairs are underway on the Egg-Shaped Digesters. While dryers located at each of the two plants are not operating, their owner, Synagro, is taking the contractually required solids for disposal. Biosolids that are dewatered by Jacob at Back River are delivered to Veolia for composting, an element of the original biosolids plan that has performed throughout the troubles.  To provide a long-range solution, Dr. Mahmudul Hasan, Chief Technology Officer, has led the issuance in November 2024 of a Request for Proposals, due in 2025, to provide Baltimore with a comprehensive DBFOM biosolids project (design-build-finance-operate-maintain) for a “best-in-class solution.”  

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Baltimore City Composting Facility has been operating through the changes underway to solids processing at the Back River plant, and is now receiving its dewatered cake from Jacobs, the contractor for the city managing the solids treatment systems.

The May 2024 SPOTLIGHT featured sludge incinerators.DELCORA in Chester, Pennsylvania, has the largest incinerator operation, with twin Multiple Hearth Incinerators (MHIs) handling 20,000 dry metric tons of solids annually (DMT/a). The Atlantic County Utilities Authority (ACUA)incinerates 10,000 DMT/a and operates the region’s fourth largest set.  Both facilities serve as regional sludge disposal centers, and both have been modified in recent years to meet national standards for Sewage Sludge Incinerators (SSI).  Nevertheless, the search for improvements is constant.  For DELCORA’s Mike Disantis, the challenge has been dealing with cyanide formation in the incinerators, which can give rise to compliance issues on the liquid side. To fix this problem, the agency is installing an afterburner to destroy the compounds that can form cyanide.  At ACUA, Joe Pantalone has been sorting through options for improved reliability and fuel efficiencies, setting up some straightforward replacements of induction fans on the scrubbers and looking to make consistent the moisture content of the sludge feedstock, by improving dewatering and blending of outside cakes. Disantis and Pantalone are both watching the unfolding issue with PFAS, as incineration is regarded as a potential technology for destroying biosolids-borne PFAS, yet neither manager expects to be on a leading edge of studying stack emissions for PFAS, at least until a federally approved test method is available.

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DELCORA operates the largest set of sewage sludge incinerators in the Mid-Atlantic region, with its multiple hearth incinerators processing 20,000 dry metric tons of sludges annually; installation of afterburners is planned in 2025 to reduce cyanide formation.

If the September SPOTLIGHT on Bloom discusses one of the finest examples of a program for Class A biosolids, then the June 2024 SPOTLIGHT feature of Henrico County, Virginia, is one of the finest examples of a program for a Class B biosolids.  The Henrico process and program were the subject of a tour for attendees of the MABA Summer Symposium.  Division Director James Grandstaff, Henrico Department of Public Utilities Water Reclamation Facility (WRF), stands by his biosolids program for meeting today’s goals, which include a focus on serving his nearby agricultural community, while looking well into the future.

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Henrico County’s Water Reclamation Plant produces a Class B biosolids cake supplied by Synagro to a loyal roster of farmers in eastern Virginia who benefit from the close attention by Henrico’s plant operators to high biosolids quality.

The many agencies and companies that MABA SPOTLIGHTs presented in 2024 have in common the story of how diligence and perseverance are hallmarks of success in accomplishing cost effective, sustainable and environmentally beneficial biosolids management.  2025 will be a great year for biosolids in the Mid-Atlantic region.

For more information, contact Mary Baker at [email protected] or 845-901-7905.
 
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