On the South Shore of Quebec City, in Saint-Patrice-de-Beaurivage, the firm Innoventé arranges new installations to transform into fuel organic residues, like grass, purification sludge or manure. The project will be used to decrease greenhouse gases, affirm its promoters.
The president, and only shareholder of the company, Richard Painchaud, devotes 2,3 million $ to the adventure. In collaboration with two levels of government (for starting): the Agency for Energy Efficiency of Quebec for its program Technoclimat with 3 million $ and Technology of sustainable development of Canada with 2,6 million $.
The company will be using a technology developped by the scientists of a research centre in agro-environment, the IRDA group. The process consists in taking organic residues to make granules of them by a system of drying which does not release any greenhouse gas. The granules could be burned to produce heat, energy or ethanol.
The project is ecologically interesting on several levels. The raw material is plentyful, points out the chairman of the Agency, Luce Asselin: each year, in Quebec, more in particular 30 million tons of manure are produced; a million tons of municipal mud; as many by the paste and paper mills; and two million tons of compost.
The factory must produce 7500 tons of granules annually. This fuel will replace as many tons of oil which industrial facilities will use otherwise.
The Quebec Minister for Natural resources, Nathalie Normandeau, made a point of underlining an initiative which creates “jobs in this sector with a future”.
In the long term, Innoventé wants to build a power station capable of generating five megawatts, by using what its factory will produce. The project would require an investment of 15 million $. The company could be registered at the Stock Exchange to obtain the funds necessary in order to sell energy to Hydro-Quebec.
