Greentech Innovations: Why Trash-to-Fuel Might Finally Work

When it comes to trash-to-fuel, Ze-Gen is the contrarian.

Most companies try to extract vegetable scraps, manure and other waste products into methane, or natural gas. When scrubbed of impurities, the gas can be safely shipped through pipelines.

“We try to make as little methane as possible,” said Bill Davis, CEO of Ze-Gen in an interview. Instead, Ze-Gen has created a process that harvests carbon monoxide and hydrogen from garbage. The highly combustible gases can then: a.) be burned on site as a gas to power local industrial operations; or b.) exploited to crank a turbine to produce electricity. (Davis will also speak at the upcoming Greentech Innovations End to End Electricity conference on November 17 and 18.)

The process also finally changes the economics of trash-to-fuel. Now, companies in this market garner revenues from two sources: producing power and taking in trash. Unfortunately, because of the high cost of trash-to-fuel systems and the quality and price of the gases being extracted by most companies, most of them have to heavily rely on trash-hauling revenues. To make it, some trash-to-fuel companies will charge up to $70 a ton for taking in trash.

Since traditional landfill operators will take garbage in for $30 a ton, these deals haven’t been well received by investors.

Ze-Gen is far less reliant on hauling fees, he said. So far the company has demonstrated the technology on a small prototype. The next step lay in building a larger, commercial-scale, prototype.