December 9, 2020. The City of Grand Junction, Colorado, is moving forward with a project to increase its storage capacity of bio compressed natural gas (CNG) produced at the Persigo Wastewater Treatment Plant.
Five years ago the city began a program to capture methane gas that is produced during the treatment of wastewater and use it to fuel some city vehicles. Currently more than 75% of the gas is able to be used, but Utilities Director Randi Kim said additional storage capacity and automation of some systems at the fueling station is needed in order to utilize 100% of the gas.
“We built the facility to clean the gas and then pipe it to our fleet fueling station at our maintenance shop,” Kim said. “Over the course of those five years it has been extremely successful. We now are able to fuel up to 70 vehicles, which include our maintenance vehicles as well as our Grand Valley Transit vehicles.”
The project will cost around $1 million. The Colorado Department of Local Affairs awarded the city a renewable energy grant for 50% of the project cost, Kim said.
She said the project will help the city defray some of the cost of fuel it purchases fleet vehicles to supplement the gas it produces itself. Currently the fleet demands about twice as much gas as is produced at the Persigo plant.
“We proposed a project to add additional storage and to automate some of the features that allows us to manage that gas between the time it’s captured and the time that the vehicles are able to be fueled,” Kim said.
The City Council voted unanimously last week to approve the design and construction of the new storage of the bioCNG and upgrades to the fueling station.