Campus to Tap the Power of Digestion

They call it the digester, a collection of silver silos that gobble up green waste and churn it into a valuable source of fuel. And it soon could be churning out profits for Cal State Channel Islands.

Continuing its push to become an environmentally friendly campus, the university near Camarillo is on track to become home to a $12-million waste conversion facility capable of producing enough energy to power the campus 24 hours a day.

University officials are seeking permission to build the project -- known as an anaerobic digester -- on two acres at the northwest edge of the 670-acre campus.

In addition to the cost savings from generating its own electricity, the university would earn money through tipping fees paid by waste haulers to recycle organic material. A third revenue stream would spring from the sale of organic compost that is a byproduct of the waste conversion process.

Taken together, those revenue sources could yield as much as $2 million a year, a significant sum for a university that has been open less than two years and needs every dollar it can get in a time of spending cuts and budget shortfalls.

But Channel Islands officials said they also were keen on the project because it would advance the university’s “green campus” concept, a plan to create nature preserves, swaths of open space and a network of advanced technological and transportation systems across the sprawling university property.

“How can you become more green than generating your own power by taking stuff out of the landfill and converting it to something useful,” said George Dutra, a university vice president in charge of campus development. “That is as green as it gets.”

Camarillo-based Onsite Power Systems is overseeing the project, tapping technology developed and patented by UC Davis researchers.

As envisioned, the digester would process 250 tons a day of municipal green waste diverted from Ventura County landfills. The process would generate enough methane gas to produce more than two megawatts of electricity on a constant basis, enough to run the university and its adjacent faculty and staff housing complex.

The conversion process also would yield 25 to 50 tons a day of nutrient-rich organic fertilizer, which could be bagged and sold to farmers and nursery operators.

Eventually, energy produced by the facility could be converted into fuel for the university’s fleet of clean-burning natural gas vehicles.

University officials also plan to tap the digester for a variety of academic purposes, bringing students into a classroom at the facility to study everything from resource management to engineering.

Officials plan to pitch the idea to Cal State University trustees in January and, if all goes well, construction could begin next summer, with the plant fully operational by summer 2005.

“This is going to be a showcase project for us, and it’s going to be one of [the university’s] showcases too,” said Dave Konwinski, president of Onsite Power. The company has an office at Channel Islands and holds the exclusive license to develop and market the UC Davis technology.