Drainage group to make sewage plant self-sufficient in electricity

Beijing Drainage Group plans to realize electricity self-sufficiency in one of its sewage treatment plant in the capital, as the State-owned company strives to work toward carbon neutrality, the company announced.

The plan has proven to be feasible after long-term operation of a facility for disposing sewage sludge in its Gaoantun sewage treatment plant in Beijing's Chaoyang district, which generates a considerable amount of methane in one of the disposal procedures that applies anaerobic digestion, according to the company.

The company plans to use the facility to dispose 700 metric tons of sewage sludge and also 550 tons of kitchen waste every day. This means that 3,000 cubic meters of methane will be generated per day in the Gaoantun plant, it said.

With the help of a methane-fired power generation facility with an installed capacity of 6 megawatts, the plant can output 48 million kilowatt hours of electricity a year, which is more than its annual power consumption demand, it stated.

All the power generation facility is in place and the company is going through government procedures to greenlight its operation, according to the company.

Once into service, the facility will make the Gaoantun plant the country's first such plant that can realize electricity self-sufficiency. It can also annually reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 29,000 tons, it said.

The company said it has also fully tapped the potential of the plant's roof tops for solar energy development.

Currently, the plant boasts of 1.6 megawatts of installed capacity for solar energy generation, which can generate over 1.8 million kilowatt hours of electricity and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 1,105 tons, it said.

Established in 2016, the Gaoantun plant has a daily capacity to treat 200,000 cubic meters of sewage and 1,836 tons of sewage sludge.