A quiet, open piece of land in Louisville Township, near Shakopee could soon be home to a new technology that could help reduce Minnesota’s carbon footprint.

It’s called an ‘anaerobic digester’- a machine that almost has some human qualities.

“At the simplest level, an anaerobic digester is like your stomach,” declares Bill Keegan, the president of Dem-Con Companies, a Scott County waste processing and recycling business.

Dem-Con wants to build a $100 million facility that would convert yard waste, food scraps, and other organics into natural gas.

Keegan says the process could generate 185,000 MMBtus of natural gas a year, for the 30-year life of the project. One MMBTu is equal to about 28 cubic meters of gas.

“It’s oxygen-free, it’s a closed vessel,” Keegan explains. “You can put food waste in, actually culture this with a bacteria similar to your stomach, and food waste goes in, and liquids and solids and gases come out.”

The process would also produce a byproduct called biochar, a kind of charcoal that can improve soil health, lower greenhouse gas emissions, and improve soil moisture, Keegan notes.

He says the plant could produce 10,000 tons of the material annually.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) says the biochar would be sold to a third party ‘for use as a soil amendment or remediation purposes.’ The MPCA says the facility in turn could process more than 75,000 tons of waste a year, versus dumping it into landfills.

“This being the first of its kind in Minnesota is very important, because it’ll show it can be done and be duplicated,” says Kirk Koudelka, an Assistant Commissioner of Land Policy with the MPCA.  “We’re going to need more capacity as we move forward.”

Koudelka says Dem-Con’s plan to use two anaerobic digesters could help Minnesota reach its goal of 100% clean energy by 2040, and net zero carbon neutrality by 2050.

“Food waste in landfills create a very potent greenhouse gas called methane,” he explains. “About 58% of the methane created in a landfill is food waste alone, according to the EPA.”

The agency says Minnesota generates about 6.1 million tons of waste a year, and Koudelka says about 2.2 million tons end up in landfills.

But Keegan says the anaerobic digesters could reduce greenhouse gases by 900,000 tons during the plant’s 30-year run.

“That’s the environmental side, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and producing renewable energy,” he notes. “That greenhouse gas reduction is equivalent to removing about 6,200 cars from the road each year.”

The MPCA says the project will use about 3.5 million gallons of groundwater annually, with the potential of using 8.8 million gallons.

The agency says the facility will need an air emissions permit, because of the production of biochar.

That permit will require the company to install and maintain emission controls, including using activated charcoal injection, a fabric filter baghouse for particulate matter and heavy metals, and a liquid scrubber for acid gases, particulate matter, heavy metals, and dioxins.

The MPCA says there will be a public comment period to discuss the project.

There will also be a public meeting for community members on August 5^th at Jackson Town Hall, from 6-8 p.m.

Keegan says the permitting process should be completed by November, and if the project gets approved, construction could begin in 2025 and last about two years.

The facility would provide about 30 construction jobs for that period, and then 12 full-time positions once it begins operations.

“We can, not only have a viable business, but also reduce the materials going to landfills and help our state meet our climate change goals,” he says.

“Because we’re going to take that food organic waste and turn it into a product,” Koudelka adds. “Not have greenhouse gases, compared to if it was sitting in a landfill.”