Making Alberta's garbage part of the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle trifecta, Cielo Waste Solutions Corp. is transforming landfill waste into renewable diesel fuels, starting with an Aldersyde plant.
Using a revolutionary carbon-neutral process, called thermal catalytic depolymerisation, Cielo blends waste materials with used motor oil and a chemical catalyst to produce renewable transportation diesel, jet fuel and naphtha fuel.
“It’s a very green product; there are no harmful emissions out of our plant,” said Don Allan, president and CEO of Cielo. “It’s probably the greenest refinery ever to be built in the world, and we’re using waste which is coming from a landfill, which is the largest contributor to greenhouse gases in the world—landfills contribute over 25 per cent of methane that goes into the atmosphere—so we’re cleaning that up at the same time.
“Our goal here is to make the greenest corporation possible.”
With its green technology patent-pending, Cielo’s refinery in Aldersyde is converting three tonnes of garbage per hour, and as much as 25,000 tonnes per year.
“We’ve been at this thing since November 2004,” said Allan. “We managed to operate a pilot plant in Red Deer for four and a half years, and then we went around the world looking for different types of technology and found some in Germany we liked and brought it back to Red Deer where we ran it until about two years ago.”
From there, Allan said that plant was dismantled and they went forward with the commercial plant.
Cielo bought the existing Western Biodiesel Facility in Aldersyde, before gutting it and putting in their technology. The plant has been running 24/7 since October 2018, before being closed to make improvements to the technology in May.
As of earlier this month, Cielo officially entered the garbage market in order to power the future.
By liquefying the product instead of burning, Allan said there are no harmful emissions out of the plants, and no fossil fuels are being used.
Further, Cielo is able to process single-use plastics which are to be banned in Canada as early as 2021.
“What we do is we take anything that has a cellulose and fibre to it,” said Allan. “So when we say that (it means) basically, if it burns or melts, we can use it.”
Working with landfills, Cielo takes anything the landfill cannot recycle for a profit: a hard-hitter in the current recycling crisis is single-use plastics. Allan said there are small markets for No. 1 and No. 2 plastics, but not for the seven plastic types that go into landfills.
Until now, that is.
“The big talk right now is Calgary is storing the clamshells and that type of plastic that they have no home for,” he said. “So we’re actually processing those for them, we’re working to prove to them that we can take those plastics that there’s no home for.”
Especially important after China’s crack-down on accepting contaminated recyclables from overseas, as far as Cielo is concerned contamination doesn’t matter: everything from dirty pizza boxes to tires is fair game.
“Pretty much, our goal here is to eliminate the need for landfills,” he said. “That’s our sole focus.”
Coming from a mechanical engineering background with a number of trade tickets, Allan said his background for the last 35 years has been in entrepreneurship.
“I like to take companies that are in rough shape and build them up to international standards and then sell them off,” he said
Concerns about the garbage and recycling industry has received extensive global media coverage.
Allan’s background in the industry may be coming at the ideal time.
“Normally I’d only stay on for about three to five years and this one I’ve been at for almost 15 now, but I have no intentions of selling this,” he said. “I want to build this thing to a billion dollar corporation and I think we can do that over the next couple of years.”
Cielo is currently finishing the legal agreements for plans to open joint venture refineries in Grande Prairie, Calgary, Medicine Hat, and Brooks in 2020. When all five refineries are running at capacity, Cielo expects to divert some 128,000 tonnes of waste per year from Canada’s landfills.
But Cielo isn’t stopping there: Canada generates more than 31-million tonnes of garbage per year, while the world produces over 2-billion tonnes—with that number expected to increase to 3.4-billion by 2025.
“Garbage is the largest and fastest growing industry at a time when the pressing nature of the climate crisis demands immediate action,” according to a press release by Cielo.
Cielo’s goal is focused on building up to 40 refineries across North America in the next five years—potentially diverting over 1-million tonnes of landfill waste per year.
“We want to build these plants throughout the world,” said Allan. “Right now we’re concentrating on North America, mostly Alberta right now, but we are looking across Canada and into the States, through to the Caribbean Islands and hopefully work our way into Europe and across the world.”
As Cielo Waste Solutions can process single-use plastics, it is working to change federal and provincial policy against using plastics in the blend for transportation-grade diesel. Approaching federal and provincial regulators to revise the current rules, Cielo aims to reduce the amount of renewable fuels made from imported food sources to meet Canada’s mandated requirements.
Canadian regulations require a minimum blend of renewable diesel be used in all transportation diesel fuel—usually crops, such as canola and soybeans, as well as yellow grease and animal tallow from restaurants.
Traditional biofuels are costly to collect and harvest, in addition to plant-based biofuels being seasonal sources, they use up agricultural space for food.
“Today, Canada imports millions of litres of biodiesel, which is blended into Canadian diesel fuel, to reduce emissions,” said Allan in a statement. “Much of that fuel comes from agriculture, and our solution can replace it, meaning smaller landfills, not less farmland for food.”
Cielo’s refineries will run year-round and will provide a cleaner and more cost-effective alternative to companies currently incinerating landfill waste for electricity, releasing toxins and hazardous materials into the environment.
