EBNet Co-I Prof Tom Curtis and Network co-Manager Angela Bywater headed to Fairbanks Alaska from 4th to 7th March 2024 to discuss renewable energy from anaerobic digestion in remote and off-grid applications. The meeting was hosted by the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) and funded by the NATO Science for Peace and Security programme with further sponsorship from Target Renewables, Zender Environmental, cré, the Composting and Anaerobic Digestion Association of Ireland, IARPC Collaborations, Biocycle Connect, Thoni, the Mount Everest Biogas project, and the ERDC Cold Regions Research Engineering Laboratory.
Angela spoke on Day 1 on the Impact of anaerobic digestion on sustainable development goals, and also outlined a number of elements of successful micro-AD projects. Day 2 saw Tom describing the Microbial ecology of seeding low temperature reactors, as this region has a lot of snow and very low temperatures for many months of the year.
The group toured the NREL labs, acquainting themselves with some of the challenges of living in these polar regions: ensuring that insulation is good, but organic if at all possible; creating sustainable buildings on permafrost, and the provision of good sanitation. In many areas, toilets are simply âhoney bucketsâ (a plastic bin with a plastic bag liner) which is put outside to freeze and then disposed of, sometimes into a big pond or a pile. There were some excellent examples of separator toilets which were transportable to a site, used simple materials, where solids could be dried and liquids could be treated separately.
The group also visited the permafrost research tunnel, a fascinating look at how the permafrost appears from deep underground, and some of the international group carried on to Chena hot springs where waste hot springs heat is utilised for greenhouse growing with other renewable technologies.