A project that will make Chatham smell fresher and more competitive gets underway next week.
Greenfield Global is piping waste heat and carbon dioxide underground into the Truly Green greenhouse across the street on Bloomfield Rd. and that means less smelly steam from the stack at the ethanol plant. Greenfield admits the vapor won't be completely gone but the smell and the pollutant-free steam will be greatly reduced over the next few weeks.
Greenfield Global is piping waste heat underground into the Truly Green greenhouse across the street. (Photo by Paul Pedro)
Hilco Tamminga, vice president of operations at Truly Green, says the project had many obstacles to overcome, including finding the correct technology.
"We looked at the whole project with Greenfield. We were originally looking at 42 to 43 degree water and we were going back and forth to Europe looking for a design that would allow us to use that temperature of water to heat the greenhouse," says Tamminga. "Would have been a heat transfer system and where we are today, we'll be receiving 65 degree water from Greenfield and it'll be more of a radiating effect than a real heat exchanger," Tamminga says.
He says he can't wait until next week because this project has been in the works for many years.
"We're all excited for next week when it starts to be commissioned and hopefully the plume slowly disappears and we start receiving all the heat that we have been anticipating to get," says Tamminga.
Greenfield Global says the ethanol plant only gets one or two complaints about the smell each year.
The company says the steam comes from driers used to dry grains that are then sold to feed livestock and the residual waste water is sent to the Chatham-Kent water treatment plant.
This is the first partnership of its kind in North America.