Master Plan Shows the Way Forward for Sustainable Food Waste Co-digestion and Beneficial Biogas Utilization Options

This paper will help define the issues around food waste quality but also find strategic solutions to address the questions about digester and biogas processing capacities for co-digestion. A strategic approach and tools were developed to assist agencies with the decision making process to determine revenues and costs for various biogas utilization options. Different outcomes resulting from local infrastructure, access to renewable natural gas (RNG) vehicle fleets and incentives are demonstrated for a case study in southern California; the City of Riverside. An interactive, user-friendly Blue Plan-it® decision-making tool was developed to evaluate the feasibility and existing digester capacity as well as the costs of food waste co-digestion while increasing the biogas yields and revenues. The tool calculated the return on investment (ROI) of up to five biogas utilization projects with varying input variables based on current incentives.