Maine waste facility to open in March

Construction of a waste processing facility in Hampden, Maine, that’s been nearly two years in the making is scheduled to wrap up by the end of March, according to an article in the Bangor Daily News.

The completion time is nearly a full year after the waste processing and refining facility was supposed to begin receiving waste from more than 100 towns and cities in Maine.

The facility, a project between Catonsville, Maryland-based Fiberight LLC and the nonprofit that represents solid waste interests of about 115 Maine communities called the Municipal Review Committee (MRC), will turn municipal solid waste into biofuels. Fiberight broke ground on the facility in early 2017, and it’s cost nearly $70 million to build. It will feature Fiberight’s first full-scale biofuels and biogas processing systems.

Fiberight CEO Craig Stuart-Paul said the plant should be ready to accept waste in April, but he cautioned that the timeline could stretch longer in case other issues arise, like a change in equipment, which could push date back to May.

Officials have attributed the delay to multiple factors, including weather that slowed construction last winter, a legal challenge to the project’s environmental permits and a changing market for recycled goods.

The plant was originally scheduled to start accepting waste in April 2018.

The 144,000-square-foot facility will feature technologies from CP Group, San Diego, for recovering recyclables and preparing residual waste for further processing on-site. A MRF will take up one end of the plant and will be used to sort recyclables and garbage. Residual waste at the facility will be processed by Fiberight’s technology, upgrading the municipal solid waste (MSW) residue into industrial bioenergy products.

Construction on the back end of the plant is still wrapping up, where waste will be process in a pulper and a 600,000-gallon anaerobic digestion tank. Fiberight’s proprietary anaerobic digestion and biogas technology will convert organic waste to biofuel and refined bioproducts.