It may sound gross, but gas emitted by bacteria may one day fuel the buses of the Stark Area Regional Transit Authority.
SARTA’s board Wednesday ap-proved paying a Cleveland-based company $90,000 to conduct a feasibility study on the idea, said SARTA’s executive director Kirt Conrad.
The company, quasar energy group (which spells its name without capital letters) will during the next 60 to 90 days determine whether it would be viable to set up an “anaerobic digestion” plant and a fueling facility on a 5-acre site near SARTA’s Gateway headquarters in southeast Canton, said Conrad. If feasible, quasar would sell SARTA the gas.
Organic waste from wastewater treatment plants, alcohol and ethanol distillers and food manufacturing companies along with farm manure would be placed into a hopper, according to quasar’s website. The material, which is strained, would be pumped into a 500,000-gallon, 30-foot-tall Biomass Equalization Tank, the company says. Bacteria in an oxygen-free environment, which would multiply in “seed sludge,” would convert the organic waste into a methane/carbon dioxide gas that can be refined into compressed natural gas.
“It’s a natural process,” said quasar spokeswoman Caroline Henry. “It’s like your stomach. You have bacteria who process the food waste in your stomach.”
quasar says the facility, which would be built at a cost of more than $1 million to quasar, would have odor controls.
Conrad said the money for the study is being covered by the $3.8 million in federal planning grants that SARTA receives each year from the Federal Transit Administration.
To use the gas, SARTA would have to buy buses that use compressed natural gas at a cost of $400,000 for each large bus and $90,000 for each small bus, which is slightly more than the price tag of standard diesel buses, Conrad said. A hybrid bus, which uses both gas and electricity, can cost $575,000. He said Akron Metro has more than 50 buses that use natural gas.
Conrad said quasar would sell the gas to SARTA and possibly other local governments at yet-to-be determined below-market rates. He said that using the gas could save SARTA the equivalent of 50 cents per gallon of diesel fuel. If half of SARTA’s buses are replaced with natural gas buses over five years, it could save the agency $250,000 per year. Conrad said the new buses still would emit carbon dioxide, but he says that has far less adverse effects on climate than methane.
He said the arrangement to pay quasar for the study was not a conflict of interest because quasar was taking the business risk and communities commonly have similar arrangements in spending economic development funds.
