Garbage-to-diesel plant to open near Tacoma
Green Power Inc., an Issaquah-based alternative energy company, plans to build an $82 million garbage-to-diesel plant in Fife, the company’s chief executive officer said Tuesday.
The company says it has technology that can turn household trash into diesel fuel in a matter of minutes with a process that generates almost no pollution.
The plant is set to be built on 12 acres of private property inside the Puyallup Tribe of Indians reservation. Green Power will lease the land, which is owned by Michael Turnipseed, a Puyallup Tribe member and owner of an excavation business. Michael Spitzauer, Green Power’s CEO, brought a small-scale demonstration plant to Turnipseed’s property in July.
“People say it’s too good to be true,� Spitzauer said Tuesday. “By showing it, we make it clear to them that it is true.�
Many who attended Green Power’s summer demonstration were amazed by the technology, though others were skeptical.
The company owns rights to a technology developed by a German inventor that turns trash – with the exception of metal, glass and porcelain – into a kind of diesel fuel that Green Power calls “nanodiesel.� Green Power officials say the process is so inexpensive that the diesel produced would cost between $1 and $1.50 per gallon – quite a savings compared to the average price of diesel in Tacoma on Tuesday, which was $2.83 per gallon.
State energy experts and Green Power say this could be the first plant of its kind in Washington.
But Fife wasn’t Green Power’s first stop.
The company was in negotiations in June with the Cheyenne, Wyo., City Council to lease property there. But plans fell through after city officials discovered Spitzauer had been convicted of fraud in 1992 and served time in prison in his home country of Austria.
Court documents obtained by The News Tribune confirm that conviction. Spitzauer says it was overturned.
The Austrian government later attempted to arrest and extradite him from the United States on other fraud charges, though the request was dropped in 2001. Spitzauer also was found guilty in this country of making a false statement on his immigration forms by misstating his criminal history, court records show.
Land owner Michael Turnipseed said he was drawn to the Green Power project for “what it could do for the environment.� Following the July event, Turnipseed had the diesel that came out of the plant tested and he watched another demonstration.
“It’s time to go forward,� he said Tuesday. “The test results were very positive.�
Spitzauer and Turnipseed said construction on the plant could begin within the month and be completed by next summer. Once built, the plant would be the first Green Power plant in the United States and the largest one the company owns. It would produce up to 2,800 gallons of diesel per hour, Spitzauer said – a feat that requires 500 tons of trash per day.
The company says it has operated a smaller plant in Mexico for two years, and also owns 350 acres in northeast Montana, where Spitzauer plans to build another plant.
Plans for the first phase of the Fife plant show separate buildings for sorting the trash and then converting it to diesel. Large tanks would store the diesel on site. Spitzauer and Turnipseed anticipate that most of the trash will be provided by private trash haulers. The diesel will likely be sold to large-scale users such as railroads, cities and the military, they said. A fuel pump for individual drivers might be part of a second phase of construction.
Spitzauer said the plant’s technology – which uses a chemical catalyst and turbines to transform trash to fuel – produces no air pollution and that its only byproducts are salts and water.
Continue reading this article from the Tacoma News Tribune:
Garbage-to-diesel plant headed for Fife, company announces
