www.qbr.com.au
June 04, 2009
An inventive banana waste project has scored horticultural organisation Growcom a Queensland Sustainable Energy Achievement Award. The award was presented at the Queensland Sustainable Energy Innovation Fund Expo 09, as part of the 2009 Brisbane City Council CitySmart Innovation Festival.
It was selected by the Queensland Sustainable Energy Advisory Council from projects short-listed by the Department of Environment and Resource Management. Growcom's Banana Waste to Energy Project was seen to demonstrate the potential to achieve "the greatest environmental benefit through reduced consumption of fossil fuels, water and greenhouse emissions".
Based in Tully, the project consists of an experimental plant which has been set up on a banana plantation to produce methane gas from banana waste. Project Manager and Growcom board member, Keith Noble, says the project proves that methane can be produced and captured from banana waste, yet admits there are still some teething problems.
"As is usual when attempting to translate a laboratory scale project into real world engineering realities, we have faced a number of problems in the two years we have worked on this project which we are gradually overcoming," he says. The system works by conveying waste banana material to a purpose-built anaerobic digester, where gas is being produced.
This digester is then loaded using the pre-existing chopper unit on the host farm, before mulched banana waste enters the digester automatically via the modified chopper. The long-term aim of the project is to enable on-farm generation of electricity using banana waste to run the pack-house and farm equipment.
It is hoped that once perfected, the idea could be replicated on other farms utilising various types of waste. However, more research funds would be required to progress the project. The project was funded by Growcom and the Sustainable Industries Division of the Queensland Environmental Protection Agency. Noble will be addressing the banana industry's annual congress about the project on June 6 at 10.00 am, at Conrad Jupiters on the Gold Coast.
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