PILOT SITE

ACEA Pinerolese Industriale in Turin produces biomethane from organic waste and compost, integrating a biogas plant with a landfill, wastewater treatment, and composting plants.

ACEA Pinerolese Industriale: An Integrated Waste Treatment District Producing Biomethane from Biogas

ACEA Pinerolese Industriale is a multi-utility company set in Torino, North of Italy, responsible for three main areas: water distribution, energy sector and waste management. More specifically the pilot site belongs to the environmental sector, whose main topic is the treatment of organic waste to produce biogas and compost. ACEA is a biogas plant highly connected with the adjacent facilities as it includes landfill, a wastewater treatment plant and a composting plant and represents a virtuous example of integrated waste treatment district. From September 2020, ACEA started to produce biomethane from biogas. The overall capacity of the upgrading plant reaches up 1500 Nm3 /h and directly inject it into the gas grid. At this moment the loop of nutrients is not yet completely closed as from the gas fraction, only biomethane is being recovered as an energy source. CO2 produced during anaerobic digestion is not yet recovered and returned to atmosphere. Processing biowaste generate several waste streams potentially useful to energy recovery to produce syngas. The main streams identified, “D-“ and “F-wastes” come from this process. F-waste are generated by cleaning the biowaste (an over 60 mm hole flow, mainly bags used for separate collection of waste) and D-waste are generated by separation of digestate to clean it in order to guarantee the current agricultural uses of the digestate, namely an over 6 mm hole flow containing plastic residues and not digested biomass fraction, e.g., shells, nuts.

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