GS&P’s Jody Barksdale to Talk Resource Recovery

5月 16, 2018

Gresham, Smith and Partners is proud to announce that Jody Barksdale, P.E., ENV SP, a senior vice president in the firm’s Water + Environment market, will discuss biosolids recycling through co-digestion at the Water Environment Federation’s (WEF) Residuals and Biosolids Conference on May 18 in Phoenix, Ariz.

Gresham, Smith and Partners is proud to announce that Jody Barksdale, P.E., ENV SP, a senior vice president in the firm’s Water + Environment market, will discuss biosolids recycling through co-digestion at the Water Environment Federation’s (WEF) Residuals and Biosolids Conference on May 18 in Phoenix, Ariz.

“By using co-digestion to produce additional biogas, we can sustainably offset energy usage, promote compliance and reduce costs,” commented Barksdale. “I look forward to sharing our experience working with the City of Atlanta to evaluate energy usage and resource recovery at the Water Environment Federation’s Residuals and Biosolids Conference.”

A summary of the discussion follows.

Evaluation of High Strength Wastes for Co-Digestion Using a Bench Scale Approach
Presentation by Jody Barksdale, P.E., ENV SP, Nolton Johnson, P.E., Spyros Pavlostathis, Ph.D., BCEEM, and Dan Shaw, P.E.

To meet its goals for environmental stewardship and energy net neutrality, the City of Atlanta’s Department of Watershed Management is evaluating energy conservation and resource recovery measures. They began by looking for ways to produce additional gas for heat and energy recovery by evaluating co-digestion and cogeneration processes at the Utoy Creek Water Reclamation Center. When implemented, co-digestion will provide a way to harness more energy through the addition of high strength wastes to the existing digestion process. The City has conducted a high-strength wastes bench scale co-digestion evaluation, which included testing the co-digestion process on a variety of wastes from local food and beverage processing industries. After carefully examining the test results, the team decided that three substances were best suited for co-digestion and energy recovery.

In this presentation, GS&P’s Jody Barksdale will discuss the co-digestion evaluation work conducted by the project team, which included professionals from the City of Atlanta’s Department of Watershed Management, Black and Veatch and the Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. The presentation will focus on the benefits of conducting a bench-scale evaluation before fully implementing a co-digestion program at water reclamation facilities for energy recovery and sustainability.