What’s with Canadians and turning trash to energy, eh? The latest ingenious idea is to convert waste soda and beer (because no self-respecting Canadian would throw good beer down the drain) into ethanol that will in turn be used to power a waste plant on the Atlantic seaboard.
The pilot project is an initiative of New Brunswick Community College’s Bio-energy and Bio-products Applied Research and Technology facility in Grand Falls, New Brunswick. Because the ethanol is being used to fuel a plant that previously put the unwanted liquids in landfills, the project makes sense not only from an energy perspective, but also from a cost one.
Ethanol is no holy grail, but it burns cleaner than fossil fuels and, when it diverts waste from landfills, it’s a good step in the right direction.
Photo: foilman/Flickr
Diagram: Diversified Metal Engineering