Carbon Cycle Energy has started construction of a $100m biogas facility in North Carolina, US to produce biomethane for Duke Energy.

The biogas facility, which is touted to become the largest in the US and located near Warsaw, will convert animal and food waste into pipeline-quality biomethane.

Construction of the facility on an 82-acre land in southeastern North Carolina will be completed in late 2017.

Named as C2e Renewables NC, the biogas plant will generate clean energy for 32,000 homes per year from the annually processed 750,000 tons of organic waste.

C2e CEO James Powell said that it will produce sufficient fuel which in turn would generate around 290,000MWH of electricity.

The Colorado company will supply 100% of the biomethane produced from the C2e Renewables NC biogas facility to Duke Energy and also to an unnamed company listed in Fortune 500.

C2e Renewables NC facility will daily generate 6,500 dekatherms of biomethane at its full capacity, which equals to around 50,000 gallons of diesel fuel.

Powell said: "The sheer size of this project means that it will have a huge environmental impact both by addressing the major pollution problem caused by greenhouse gas emissions from decomposing food and animal waste, and by producing an alternative to fossil fuels in commercially significant volumes.”

The company has opted for Duplin County for the plant owing to a nearby natural gas pipeline in the area besides its access to significant volumes of agricultural and food waste. Duplin County sees over 530 hog operations which release swine waste that can be processed through anaerobic digestion at the new biogas plant.

C2e COO and co-founder Jerry Kovacich said: "By ensuring that vital energy value is not lost in the form of fugitive air emissions, odors are also dramatically reduced. Residents near our plants will actually be exposed to fewer odors and less risk of water contamination than what's often been experienced by neighbors of hog farm and pork processing operations in the past.”

The C2e Renewables NC facility is said to be first of other large-scale anaerobic digestion and biogas treatment plants that are likely to be build by the Boulder based renewable energy development company.

Image: Carbon Cycle’s biogas facility in NC will convert swine and other animal waste into biomethane. Photo: courtesy of Duke Energy Corporation.