Gemini Synergy Center to be developed in two phases.
2G Cenergy Power Systems Technologies Inc., St. Augustine, Fla., announced that it received a large order with totaling nearly $8 million to supply equipment to a state-of-the-art waste management facility being built in Grove City, Ohio.
Team Gemini, a sustainable project design and development company based in Orlando, Fla., has entered into an agreement with the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio (SWACO) to build the world’s largest waste-to-energy (WTE) and materials recovery facility (MRF) of its kind on SWACO property in Grove City. The agreement sets the stage for integrating a viably sustainable solution that reduces SWACO’s use of landfills and will eventually eliminate the need for their use by replacing them with a state-of-the-art waste management facility, the Gemini Synergy Center.
Team Gemini will build both a waste receiving facility and a waste stream recovery plant including anaerobic digesters, which have been dubbed the Center for Resource Recovery and Recycling or COR3. Both buildings will have a combined area of over 185,000 square feet. The project is divided into Phase 1 and 2. Initially, the plant will be able to process up to 2,000 tons per day (about 30 percent of the current waste stream), with plans to process the entire waste stream in the future - thus achieving nearly 100 percent recycling of all the waste received. After recyclable materials are recovered, which include metals and plastics, the balance of the organic waste will be preprocessed for use in anaerobic digesters.
The modular 2G biogas cogeneration system to be installed for Phase 1 is rated 5.55 megawatt (MW) hours consisting of three fully integrated 2G avus series combined heat and power (CHP) systems. The cogeneration system comes with what the company describes as “ultra-low NOx (nitric oxide) and CO (carbon monoxide) emissions control technology.” Delivery of phase one is expected in late 2014, and phase 2 is following in 2015.
During Phase 1, landfill gas (LFG) from the adjacent SWACO landfill site will be utilized to fuel the 2G avus cogeneration modules. Enco2 from Germany was commissioned to engineer and construct the 8.4 MW biogas/biomass plant, applying their patented UDR Technology. It will be built by its U.S. contractor partner Manhattan Construction.
In addition to the waste receiving facility and COR3 project, Team Gemini has signed a lease with SWACO to develop a 343-acre tract of land north of S.R. 665 to create an industrial and research park that will serve as a sustainable business cluster powered by the waste stream located within a Community Reinvestment Area (CRA). An integral benefit for tenants of the sustainable industrial park will include access to recyclable by-products recovered from the waste processing, which can be used to create new products from recycled materials.
“Historically, we always considered trash something that costs money to get rid of, a cost center," says Ronald J. Mills, executive director of SWACO. "We will be turning trash management from a cost center to a true profit center by extracting the value that is intrinsically contained within that trash stream. This allows us to get closer to our vision of finding a viable alternative to landfilling," he adds.
"Team Gemini set out to develop several clusters of technology in an industrial park setting that are fueled synergistically with renewable energy of different types, from solar to anaerobic digestion, biogas, biomass and others, in order to create synergy within the park so that the industry can share off each other's waste stream,” says Doug Haughn, one of Team Gemini’s founders. “Team Gemini’s approach, however, is unique by bringing all the technology together into one sustainable development park.”
2G Cenergy is also supplying the gas treatment technology package, as well as an advanced combustion management system. The automation and control technology enables the operator to monitor their energy efficiency and lower the environmental impact, reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitric oxide (NOx) emissions to low, insignificant levels.
“This is an important investment for Team Gemini. Their engineers searched the market for the most reliable, proven, and modular CHP cogeneration technology available. They selected the 2G product, and we are very pleased with this decision,” says Michael Turwitt, president and CEO of 2G Cenergy Power Systems Technologies Inc. “When you invest millions of dollars in a CHP plant, you don’t want to take chances. This order shows again that 2G is a first choice manufacturer and supplier of modular CHP systems in the US, providing the most proven, reliable, and cost-effective solution.”