Luc De Baere
Luc De Baere is a Belgian native. He obtained a Bachelor’s in Chemistry (1978) and a Master’s Degree at UWGB in Environmental Arts and Sciences with a focus on Waste Management (1980).
Luc’s graduate work on anaerobic digestion at UWGB landed him, upon his return to his native country, a job with a large Belgian company, owned in the 70’s by Westinghouse of Pittsburg, PA. He was hired to develop a process to produce biogas from municipal solid waste. He became the inventor of the Dranco technology for the anaerobic digestion of organics derived from household solid waste, with several patents in over 35 countries. This technology operates under ‘dry’ conditions in a similar way as the generation of gas in a landfill, but the Dranco technology controls and optimizes the anaerobic degradation so that the production is complete within 25 days instead of 100 years in a landfill.
In 1988, he formed the company Organic Waste Systems (OWS) together with investors in the Antwerp area of Belgium, and became its managing director. The company has constructed and sold more than 35 waste treatment plants in 16 countries, mostly in Europe but also including facilities in South Korea, Japan and China. OWS is currently pursuing several projects for cities in California, Minnesota and other states that are looking to build infrastructure to treat household waste. The OWS technology, combined with some upfront recycling, can achieve 90% landfill diversion, by producing biogas, a very clean compost, clean inerts (glass/stones/ceramics) and a paper/textile fraction as a combustible material. The compost can be used in agriculture and has been shown to increase yields of corn and other crops. Projects range from $10 to 50 million of investment for the Dranco part.
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