We already operate a successful food waste to energy facility at Wollert, in Melbourne’s north. This multi-award-winning facility has operated successfully since 2017, diverting over 140,000 tonnes of food waste from landfill. It has generated enough power to meet over 20% of our entire energy needs.
The new facility in Lilydale will operate in the same way, taking food waste from approved businesses and using it to generate electricity.
It will be one of the largest food waste to energy facilities of its kind in Victoria. Unlike some other waste to energy plants, it will not use a gasifier or incinerator to burn waste. It uses a natural process to convert organic waste to energy.
What are the benefits?
The facility will process about 150 tonnes of commercial food waste a day to generate about 33,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity, which will meet up to 30 per cent of our total energy needs.
By diverting food waste from landfill to create electricity, the facility will also help reduce greenhouse gas emissions – equivalent to taking 18,000 family-sized cars off the road.
How will this facility benefit the local community?
There’s more to this project than turning food waste into energy. Yarra Valley wineries, breweries, orchards and dairies are all potential suppliers. As well as reducing trucking costs and tip fees, their waste will deliver environmental benefits.
In 2023, we’ll be turning to the people of Lilydale and Coldstream to help us co-design the way we deliver additional benefits to the community. We’ll be working with Yarra Ranges Council and locals to come up with ideas about how our waste to energy project can add more benefits for the community, such as enhancing the open space around the facility, and potentially diverting other commercial and residential food wastes to the facility. We also see the construction phase as providing further economic benefits in the local area.
How it works
Our food waste to energy facility will not use a gasifier or incinerator to burn food waste. It uses a natural process called anaerobic digestion to break down food scraps to produce biogas. The biogas can be used as a fuel to generate heat and electricity.
The process works in a similar way to the human body, taking food in and breaking it down to create energy.
It essentially works in three key steps:
- Receiving the food waste - We turn commercial food waste into renewable energy using a natural scientific process called ‘anaerobic digestion’, which is similar to the way a human body breaks down waste. Approved commercial suppliers deliver food waste to our facility in trucks, and it gets fed into a sealed tank called a ‘digester’.
- Processing the waste to make biogas - Like a human stomach, bacteria inside the digester breaks down the food waste, generating a mixture of gases known as ‘biogas’. The main gas is methane which is the odourless gas that natural gas is mostly made up of. The biogas is then cleaned to remove odours and impurities.
- Burning the biogas to make energy - The facility won’t be using a gasifier or incinerator to burn food waste. Instead, we burn the biogas in an engine, which generates electricity. This will be used to power our facility and the neighbouring Lilydale sewage treatment plant. Any excess energy is exported to the power grid.
