Carbon Harvest builds greenhouse with hydronic heating systems using waste heat from power generation, eliminating the need for expensive and polluting fossil fuels. Heat exchangers within the combined heat and power plant heat water, which is circulated to the greenhouse to run conventional hot water/steam heaters to heat the air. Hot water is also piped to fish tanks in the aquaponics system. During one year of operations of the 1.6 MW CHP plant in Lebanon, New Hampshire, an estimated 47,000 MMBtu’s of heat will be recovered, displacing the need for 338,129 gallons of #2 fuel oil or 47,000 Tcf of natural gas.
Carbon Harvest’s greenhouses use organic food growing systems that avoid the use of petrochemically-derived fertilizers. Leftover nutrients from recirculating aquaculture provide high-value organic food for the plants using a water- and energy-conserving technology called “aquaponics.” Once these closed-loop systems are mature and balanced, the only necessary additions are fish feed, and iron as foliar-sprayed plant nutrient.