PHG Energy of Nashville has  acquired multiple intellectual property assets and a municipal gasification plant in the bankruptcy of Florida-based MaxWest Environmental Systems Inc. In addition, Jeff Snyder, formerly head of sales and marketing with MaxWest, joined PHG Energy and will lead the sales division.

MaxWest began in 2008 and ceased operation of its Sanford, Fla.-based installation that served three cities in the region in May of 2013. Tom Stanzione, president of PHGE, expects the acquisition to enhance the company’s ability to diversify its offerings in the waste-to-energy marketplace. 

PHGE has focused on waste-to-energy projects since 2010. They include:

• Demonstrated the ability to produce renewable electricity — 1 MW from a Caterpillar generator — from scrap wood chips at its test facility in Gleason, Tenn. PHGE sold the electricity generated back to the grid as a part of the TVA Generation Partners Program.
• Commissioned new integrated technology at a waste-to-energy plant in Covington, TN.
• Obtained five new patents on the company’s downdraft gasification technology.
• Collaborated with GE Power and Water to develop a combination of technologies to create power with the use of GE’s Clean Cycle heat-to-power generator.
• Installed 13 gasifiers in industrial and municipal settings and logged nearly 50,000 hours in production time.

Assets purchased in the bankruptcy auction included previously issued patent work as well as in-progress intellectual works, the Sanford gasification plant, and other confidential technology, financial information and essential data owned by the company. The future of the biosolids gasification plant in Sanford has not yet been determined. The system had been in service since the fall of 2009 processing sludge from the city’s wastewater treatment plant, and it also had taken care of sludge from two other nearby cities.