Hitachi Zosen Inova celebrates fifth anniversary of WTE facility

Switzerland-based Hitachi Zosen Inova (HZI) celebrated the fifth anniversary of Kompogas SLO, a waste-to-resource organics diversion facility in San Luis Obispo, California.

To date, the plant has diverted more than 140,000 tons of organic waste with the help of locals, including residents, businesses and agriculture. From this waste, the facility has produced more than 10 million M3 of biogas and fed more than 11 million KwH of electricity into the local grid, powering the equivalent of about 600 homes per year.

Additionally, the facility has produced more than 30,000 tons of compost and 6,500,000 gallons of liquid fertilizer, making it a closed-loop, circular economy initiative.

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Using a proprietary anaerobic digestion (AD) system, the facility is designed to process source-separated organics and green waste as well as fats, oils and greases from the county’s residential collection program. After pre-treatment, the organic waste is fed into the plug-flow digester, where a thermoliphic AD process ensures sanitation of the organic matter. The resulting biogas is used in an on-site combined heat and power unit to produce renewable energy in the form of electricity.

Heath Jones, managing director of HZI, attributed the success of the facility down to the quality of the operation—HZI built the Kompogas SLO plant as a finance, design, build, own, operate model—as well as the cooperation and support of the local community, San Luis Obispo County Integrated Waste Management Authority and local waste hauler Waste Connections.

“This is a small community but boy they sure are punching above their weight when it comes to diverting waste from landfill,” Jones says. “I challenge much bigger, better resourced cities in California like Los Angeles, Sacramento and San Francisco, to take the lead from the trailblazers in SLO and play their part in being stewards of the environment in the way that this dedicated community have.”

CalRecycle contributed $4 million to the Kompogas SLO project, making the facility part of California Climate Investments, and the California Energy Commission also provided $4 million for development under the Electric Program Investment Charge program.

At the anniversary event, Jones thanked the state of California for playing a supportive role in enabling Kompogas SLO to be built. “California’s regulatory and legislative environment makes it easier to build organic waste diversion facilities like Kompogas, in support of the state’s world-leading climate goals of diverting 75 percent of organics from landfills, net-zero carbon emissions and 100 percent clean electricity by 2045,” he says.