Southern California Gas Erects Wastewater Biogas Demo Plant in Escondido

Southern California Gas (SoCalGas), and the city of Escondido, declared the beginning of the first renewable energy project to cleanse the wastewater biogas to achieve the criteria of natural gas provided to homes and businesses.

The Resource Recovery Facility located at Hale Avenue of Escondido city is chosen as a test site to introduce a new pressure swing absorption system to absorb the raw gas generated during the normal operation from the facility and promotes it to the quality of a natural gas sent through the pipe lines through a multi-stage cleansing process. Normally, the biogas from the sewage treatment systems is found to be unsuitable for use along with natural gas systems and wasted into the atmosphere through a burning process. The newly introduced process will allow the city of Escondido to generate enough quantity of natural gas to meet the supply requirement of around 1,200 homes.

The demo project commenced with an investment of around $2.7 million will be continued for a period of 12 months to test the technology, its cost- efficiency and its quality, meeting the rigorous gas quality standards maintained by the state of California. On successful completion and acceptance, the equipment utilized will be put into commercial usage on the same site or in another location. The expenses of the demo project will be met by the research and development group of SolCalGas.