SWACO Green Energy Center wins award

The Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio’s (SWACO) Green Energy Center has received the “Innovation Award of Excellence” from The Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA).

The Green Energy Center turns landfill methane from decomposing trash into vehicle fuel (Compressed Natural Gas). The Center also is designed to power itself via a 250 kw micro-turbine which uses the clean natural gas generated by the process.

Earlier this year, The Green Energy Center was honored as a “project of the year” by the EPA’s Landfill Methane Outreach Program. It also received a 2009 Clean Air Award from the Mid Ohio Regional Planning Commission.

The completed phase one of SWACO’s has the capacity to produce 250,000 gasoline gallon equivalents (GGE) of compressed natural gas (CNG) annually using just 8 percent of the methane from SWACO’s Franklin County landfill. Phase two, when completed, will have the annual capacity of 5-to-7-million gasoline gallon equivalents.