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World's First Large-Scale Waste-to-Biofuels Facility Opens In Canada
Zothecula (1870348) writes Thanks to its extensive composting and recycling facilities, the city of Edmonton, Canada is already diverting approximately 60 percent of its municipal waste from the landfill. That figure is expected to rise to 90 percent, however, once the city's new Waste-to-Biofuels and Chemicals Facility starts converting garbage (that can't be composted or recycled) into methanol and ethanol. It's the world's first such plant to operate on an industrial scale, and Gizmag recently got a guided tour of the place.
I predict within 24 months this plant will be shut down. Write it down. This is just more bullshit left wing crap that someone somehow got funded. Many people will lose their jobs and some may lose their retirement savings. Why Canada is fucking around with this when they enormous reserves of tar sands and other conventional fuels is beyond me. Huge fuck up.
Would like to see the efficiency numbers for the process. They just say how much garbage goes in and how much they expect to get out but not how much energy it's going to take or how much pollution or garbage is going to be resulting from the operation.
Also when it comes to the 60 and 90 percent diversion rates I think the article is talking about the residential waste stream. From the pictures that is where the garbage for the plant is coming from. I'd like to know if the plant is going to take anything from the commercial or industrial streams. Those diversion rates are usually much worse.
Extracting energy out of garbage instead of shoveling it into the ground and dumping it into the oceans? Sounds like some kind of liberal conspiracy.
This was tried nearby, it was shutdown and dismantled about a year after it opened due to the stench that lingered across town.
By guided tour they mean 11 pictures of piles of trash and 2 pictures of the outside of the plant. From a distance.
Seriously, where are the shots of the reactors? The end product?
What solvents does it use? Is it done in a vacuum?
As an Edmontonian, I'm glad to see our municipal government take an initiative like this, but it's sure not enough to alleviate the fact that the tar sands in our province are the worldwide epicentre of global warming and all our power comes from burning coal :(
This was being done in the 1970's, if I am not mistaken. It was called EcoFuel II (tm). It might be the worlds first in terms of this exact process, but there have been plenty of other "garbage to fuel" processes in the past.
The brains of a chicken, coupled with the claws of two eagles, may well hatch the eggs of our destruction.
What is unique is that the garbage gets sorted just like the recycling gets sorted. Though this is not new for Edmonton they have been doing this for a while. I hate when people call it burning garbage. It is gasification of garbage. The gas is collected and sorted just like oil is separated. Unsellable gas still needs to be burnt off though.
Toronto will be running into a garbage wall soon. They have a good organics processing plant. But, they can't find enough buyers for the recyclables. Garbage is still shipped to the US.
Depends where they built it. If it is on the east side there is a large refinery there and I cannot imagine it will out stink that! Also it is not burning the rubbish but is converting it into useful chemicals so it is not clear that it will produce anything like the same levels of odour and pollution that burning refuse will cause.
I thought this was going to be something about Evan Chrapko's venture out at Hairy Hill.. also near Edmonton.
http://growingpower.com/
He doesn't avoid the fact that his investment in turning manure into energy plays along with his last name. He's among the most successful, driven and hardest working people I've ever met. He and Elon Musk would get along quite well.
J
The city of Linköping in Sweden has been doing this since 1997. Here is a paper written by that time about what they are doing and how they want it to develop further: http://ec.europa.eu/energy/res/publications/doc2/EN/LINKO_EN.PDF
Since then it has grown to a major operation where they even have to import waste from other European countries (which they get paid for :) ) and they sell a LOT of gas. It is also financially profitable through means that are explained in that paper.
Large scale, as in even importing biological waste from their Norwegian, Finnish and Danish neighbours? I believe I read an article about this a year ago.
My grandfather was a chemist and worked in the lighting gas industry in the 1920's. The city of Halifax recycled waste into methane for street lighting.
I live in Ontario and work in an associated field.
I do not know the actual specifics of this case, but it usually is NIMBY that causes the problems. Ontario has several large groups of "green" activists and pour money into lobbying and lawyers, when in reality they are mostly home/cottage owners associations fronting as environmental groups. Shutting down wind power due to OMG bird strikes, and the like when really they are just looking after what the value of their properties are worth in the area. A garbage processing plant? Yeah you can bet it got shut down by land owners protecting their self interest and investments.
We had a big gas plant scandal a few years ago where some were supposed to be built, NIMBY and the resulting political pressure had the government shut the project down, costing taxpayers like 2 billion dollars. These things have to go someplace. Isn't the ONE job of the state to look after the interests of the many at possibly the expense of the few? Looking after the few at the expense of the many seem a bit corrupt.
Granted they're not turning the stuff into fuel, but they are generating electricity from their garbage (and they want yours, they're running out). It would be interesting to compare the carbon/pollution/energy profiles of the two approaches. Wonder if the Scandinavian way is cleaner?
-- This
I remember reading about some projects that attempted to create fuel from processed sewage/bacteria. IIRC they planned to have some test plants in eastern Canada (Ontario?). Anyone know about those
Garbage-in-gas-out seems like a good plan. If we could also get "human waste in, gas out" then we're doing even better in terms of managing the nasty side-products of "civilization"
The record needs to be corrected here. This is NOT gasification, incineration, or any other chemical or consumptive process. It differs from these processes including those used in Sweden. This is anerobic digestion. The inputs are manure, plant waste, good waste, or even human waste. The outputs are literally enriched fertilizer fluid (available for direct use and requiring no additional mined phosphate or potassium), and biogas. By monetary value, the fertilizer is most valuable to the local farming community followed by the value in waste management savings (and that of participating businesses who are willing to sort their trash), and then finally the biogas itself. Biogas is a blend of primarily methane with a small amount of hydrogen (also combustible) and nitrogen (biologically and chemically inert) gases, and some trace amounts of hydrogen sulfide. Hydrogen sulfide has an odor, but it's almost never released into the air in a well-managed plant. The purified gas is identical to natural gas, the same stuff harvested from the tar sands. However, biogas does not require you to harvest and pipe it from thousands of miles away. You make it in the same place where the raw materials are produce, in the cities. This natural gas can be compressed for use in automobiles, trucks, city fleet vehicles, or to power municipal utilities such as the nyc steam system powered by the Newtown Creek wastewater treatment plant.
I applaud Edmonton for being the first to implement this brilliant technology at such large scale. The US has 40 such smaller scale plants in CA and Quasar Energy out of Ohio trying to implement food waste collection and CNG production through the Midwest and northeast US. Not surprisingly, you Canadians are leading us in the right direction. Cheers!
The gas to biofuels part is the new part. The 60% recycling part has been around for about 10 years. They take household waste, strip out the metal wood and plastic, add poop (fecal waste), and add bacteria. It takes about 30 days and some industrial grade mixers, and you get very nice black soil coming out. They have already been taking methane out of *that* process, de-watering it (there are a *lot* of chemical engineers here: there are 3 large refineries here), compress it, and use it as fuel for vans and trucks (even in cold winter). One clown posted "give it 6 months and see if its still running..." and my thoughts were "its been running for 10 years and you think its going to die in 6 months?" Also the whole thing is run cash neutral to cash positive. The costs of running a fleet of garbage trucks are common to other places with 1.5 million people. You don't have dumping fees, you don't have long drives. You have expenses running the sorting and mixing equipment (but not that much). You can sell the high quality soil that comes out. You save money on fuel because of the ethane/methane used to power vehicles. Again, that has been running for 10+ years. Its just the last chunk that is new (going from 60% to 90%). They wouldn't have built a large-scale plant if they didn't already have outstanding results from several small scale plants.
This technology is developed by Enerkem, if you want to look it up. The plant in Edmonton is the first commercial scale facility but, according to their website, there are already 2 new facilities planned, 1 in Canada and 1 in the US. They ave been testing this stuff for 10 years ...