Quadrogen Power Systems won the 2010 BCIC New Ventures third prize and the BC Bioenergy Network Prize and went on to sell its first Integrated Biogas Clean-up System (IBCS) to a high-profile project at Orange County Sanitation District’s (OCSD) wastewater treatment plant in California.
Quadrogen’s system removes the contaminants found in biogas created from the anaerobic decomposition of organic matter such as sewage, manure and green waste. The result is an ultra-clean gas that can then be used for power and heat generation.
Quadrogen’s president, Alakh Prasad, says his company competed against six large, established U.S. companies to install a system at OCSD for cleaning the biogas from a wastewater digester so that it could be used in fuel cells to generate power, heat, and hydrogen.
Quadrogen built its first biogas clean-up system at full-scale (300 kW gas flow equivalent) and installed it at OCSD. The company is now designing megawatt and multi-megawatt clean-up systems based on the good results from this first installation.
“OCSD and the project partners are very happy with it,” says Prasad. “Discussions are under way for follow-on orders worth about $10 million based on the performance we have been able to demonstrate.”
Quadrogen is now close to completing the funding for a first-of-its-kind, $8-million demonstration project using landfill gas in Delta, BC. Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) has approved $2.6 million for this innovative project and is fully supporting the funding process to ensure the project is implemented.
“We’re going to clean the landfill gas and generate power, heat, hydrogen, and clean CO2,” explains Prasad. “Nobody has ever demonstrated a renewably fuelled commercial application that makes use of all four co-generation products.”
Prasad says the hydrogen will be used for peak power generation or industrial applications and the CO2 will be used to fertilize a local commercial greenhouse, owned by the second-largest greenhouse operator in North America. The greenhouse will also use the waste heat, and the baseload power will be sold to the local electricity grid.
Quadrogen has four full-time employees and plans to increase its staffing in 2012. Prasad says the company is on-track with its business plan presented during the BCIC-NV competition and is currently meeting or exceeding all projections.