Special to the Tribune-Star
TERRE HAUTE —
MeadWestvaco Corp., VOW Resources and Zera Energy on Wednesday announced a strategic, collaborative development effort to enable the conversion of organic waste streams into biogas and other value added products. The companies will immediately begin construction on a demonstration plant adjacent to MWV’s Evadale, Texas, mill.
VOW Resources, an organic waste management and resource recovery company with its U.S. office in Terre Haute, will provide the design, engineering and testing of the process to be used at the plant. Zera Energy will be responsible for the construction and operation of the plant, and MWV will determine the technical and commercial feasibility of the biogas generation process and, upon successful testing, will apply the technology to its waste treatment operations.
Construction of the demonstration plant is expected to be complete around November. Initially, the biogas facility will create about 30 construction jobs and provide 12 full-time positions at the demonstration plant.
Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
“This is an exciting opportunity to apply advancements in green technology to enhance our operations and generate renewable energy sources,” said Jim Gresham, vice president, MWV’s Evadale Operations. “We anticipate numerous benefits from this collaborative effort, including reducing consumption of water and natural gas, lowering our landfill requirements and creating a valuable organic fertilizer.”
MeadWestvaco Corp. provides packaging solutions to industries in the fields of health care, beauty and personal care, food, beverage, media and entertainment, home and garden, tobacco and commercial print. With 20,000 employees worldwide, MWV operates in 30 countries and serves customers in more than 100 nations. For more information, visit www.mwv.com.
Zera Energy Inc. is a closely held U.S. corporation based in Woodville, Texas, whose senior leadership collectively bring extensive management, technical and operating experience in providing sustainable solutions to the emerging green-energy business arenas. Zera Energy applies proven technologies in innovative facilities that operate under mild, environmentally friendly conditions to produce green fuel gas as well as protein meal and organic fertilizer from 100 percent bio-waste feed stocks.
VOW Resources is a privately held company and has more than 35 years experience in the development and implementation of unique processes for the treatment and resource recovery of organic waste. VOW offers a suite of technologies utilizing the innovative bioaugmentation approach developed by Dr. Dennis Evers, CTO-Global of VOW Resources. The VOW Process optimizes the output of commercially desirable end products such as high quality biogas which can be used to generate electricity and/or heat, organic matter for animal feed or fertilizer, and recyclable water.
