The New England model. They incinerate but they also have ash monofill. Seattle area, not King County puts their MSW on a train headed for Oregon. The other option is vertical expansion but that only buys a couple more years.
Waste gasifier?
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Why reinvent the wheel? Take a look around the world and see what works. Japan and large amounts of Europe install urban waste to energy plants with very aggressive front end recycling. I think Sweden and Denmark actually import sorted trash to keep their plants running. Ideally the facilities are publically built and owned preferably by a special purpose public entity that is openly accountable to the general public. Ideally they are located near urban areas so there is demand for the waste hear via district heating systems. This ups the cycle efficiency considerably. Unlike past WTE facilities there are plenty of proven emissions technologies that work. Covanta is a private firm that has several successful plants in the US they are key licensees to European tech.
One thing folks forget about is the emissions related to collection and trucking. Stop and go pick up should not be done with diesel, dependent on the distances, battery powered vehicles are getting close to viable and CNG is proven tech for longer hauls. Ideally a CNG plant is built at the WTE plant so the trucks can refill at the plant every time they make a haul to the plant so there isn’t the downtime thereis with batteries. I am not sure on the viable range for trash but on biomass wood power plants, they were sized for a maximum economic range of a 50 mile radius, if the fuel needed to be trucked more than 50 miles the BTU content of the fuel used to truck the fuel exceeded the fuel value of the wood. There will be a similar range for a WTE plant.
The big thing to note is proper waste disposal is going to cost money, and thus there is a profit motive for entrepreneurs who find a cheaper way to dispose of waste. Most people and politicians want waste to disappear and they do not care where it goes. There is always a cheap way to get rid of trash and if there are not strict regulations on where trash is disposed of, some of its going to end up going the cheap way. Look what happened with a lot of sorted recycling programs that were quite successful in creating clean recycling streams, various private firms stepped in and proposed “zero sort” programs that cost less to the municipalities. The quality of separated waste streams is far lower with higher contaminant levels. A lot of west coast dirty recycling streams ended up being loaded into empty shipping containers that had come over full of goods from the third world. It was labeled as recyclable to sidestep local disposal costs and much of the so called recyclables is just trash. Once those container end up back in the third world they were dumped wherever it was cheapest. China pushed back and then the containers went elsewhere but even the third world countries are now pushing back.
The area I live in is lucky, there were many rural towns that all had old unlined dumps. Basically old gravel pits which are the worst place to dump trash due to access to groundwater. The local pulp and paper mill landfill was not much better. The state had put in a very high barrier for new landfills calling out what at the time was very expensive technology. The state made a deal with the mill that they would ease the permitting cycle with the agreement that the local communities could dispose at the mills cost. The new landfill (now 20 years old) was built double lined in a flat bottomed bowl with an underlying glacial till (rocky clay) base that sloped towards one underground exit. It’s a layer design, on top of the till is layer of gravel with a grid type leak detection system in the gravel. On top of the gravel is a HDPE liner system that is field welded. Ever weld is double weld and every inch of it is inspected by third party inspector using an air lance. Another layer of gravel with leak detection is put on top of the secondary liner and then another primary liner is put in top of it. A third party engineering firm routinely checks the leak detection systems and if a leak was detected, the landfill can localize it and seal the leak. This has never been needed. Waste is piled up on top of the liner system with lined berms on the outer edges. The liners are tipped towards leachate wells and the leachate is piped to a local treatment plant. Due to the large amount of pulp mill waste early in its life it didn’t put out much methane but now it does and that is collected by wells. There is a standby flare but the methane is pumped to local papermill to be burned in boiler. The papermill is struggling but there are folks lined up to either put in landfill gas generators or just clean up the gas and reinject it into a local pipeline. There is currently 60 years of life to the permitted landfill. When it is complete it will be hill, the berms running up the sides are the same liner system as the bottom and at some point the top will be sealed with bentonite clay and graded to shed rainwater. At that point any water in the landfill will drain out as leachate and the waste will effectively be inert as there is no groundwater or surface water entering the landfill. Now that the bonds are paid off the cost to dispose of waste just dropped to around $60 per ton. This includes a long term fund to close the landfill out and so called perpetual monitoring.
The pulp mill closed about 10 years after the landfill was built and prior to that the mills owner needed cash and put the landfill on the market. All sort of shady and not so shady characters showed up to buy it as permitted landfill in New England is a hot property. Some local influential folks discussed this with the state and the state effectively told the mill owner that if it was sold to the local communities the transaction would occur quickly, if it was sold to commercial enterprise it would take many years. That “encouraged” the mill owner to go for the quick cash and the facility has been owned and run by a waste district that is directed by the communities that dump there.
All the communities have single sort. Most are pretty good at it, the one small city does a less good job. One of the small towns has “pay per bag” with free recycling. The “dump” is actually a transfer station and is only open two days a week, they have volunteer dump wardens that keep an eye on new folks on what goes into the recycling bins and if someone tries to put the wrong stuff in a recycling bin they hear about it.
One thing folks forget about is the emissions related to collection and trucking. Stop and go pick up should not be done with diesel, dependent on the distances, battery powered vehicles are getting close to viable and CNG is proven tech for longer hauls. Ideally a CNG plant is built at the WTE plant so the trucks can refill at the plant every time they make a haul to the plant so there isn’t the downtime thereis with batteries. I am not sure on the viable range for trash but on biomass wood power plants, they were sized for a maximum economic range of a 50 mile radius, if the fuel needed to be trucked more than 50 miles the BTU content of the fuel used to truck the fuel exceeded the fuel value of the wood. There will be a similar range for a WTE plant.
The big thing to note is proper waste disposal is going to cost money, and thus there is a profit motive for entrepreneurs who find a cheaper way to dispose of waste. Most people and politicians want waste to disappear and they do not care where it goes. There is always a cheap way to get rid of trash and if there are not strict regulations on where trash is disposed of, some of its going to end up going the cheap way. Look what happened with a lot of sorted recycling programs that were quite successful in creating clean recycling streams, various private firms stepped in and proposed “zero sort” programs that cost less to the municipalities. The quality of separated waste streams is far lower with higher contaminant levels. A lot of west coast dirty recycling streams ended up being loaded into empty shipping containers that had come over full of goods from the third world. It was labeled as recyclable to sidestep local disposal costs and much of the so called recyclables is just trash. Once those container end up back in the third world they were dumped wherever it was cheapest. China pushed back and then the containers went elsewhere but even the third world countries are now pushing back.
The area I live in is lucky, there were many rural towns that all had old unlined dumps. Basically old gravel pits which are the worst place to dump trash due to access to groundwater. The local pulp and paper mill landfill was not much better. The state had put in a very high barrier for new landfills calling out what at the time was very expensive technology. The state made a deal with the mill that they would ease the permitting cycle with the agreement that the local communities could dispose at the mills cost. The new landfill (now 20 years old) was built double lined in a flat bottomed bowl with an underlying glacial till (rocky clay) base that sloped towards one underground exit. It’s a layer design, on top of the till is layer of gravel with a grid type leak detection system in the gravel. On top of the gravel is a HDPE liner system that is field welded. Ever weld is double weld and every inch of it is inspected by third party inspector using an air lance. Another layer of gravel with leak detection is put on top of the secondary liner and then another primary liner is put in top of it. A third party engineering firm routinely checks the leak detection systems and if a leak was detected, the landfill can localize it and seal the leak. This has never been needed. Waste is piled up on top of the liner system with lined berms on the outer edges. The liners are tipped towards leachate wells and the leachate is piped to a local treatment plant. Due to the large amount of pulp mill waste early in its life it didn’t put out much methane but now it does and that is collected by wells. There is a standby flare but the methane is pumped to local papermill to be burned in boiler. The papermill is struggling but there are folks lined up to either put in landfill gas generators or just clean up the gas and reinject it into a local pipeline. There is currently 60 years of life to the permitted landfill. When it is complete it will be hill, the berms running up the sides are the same liner system as the bottom and at some point the top will be sealed with bentonite clay and graded to shed rainwater. At that point any water in the landfill will drain out as leachate and the waste will effectively be inert as there is no groundwater or surface water entering the landfill. Now that the bonds are paid off the cost to dispose of waste just dropped to around $60 per ton. This includes a long term fund to close the landfill out and so called perpetual monitoring.
The pulp mill closed about 10 years after the landfill was built and prior to that the mills owner needed cash and put the landfill on the market. All sort of shady and not so shady characters showed up to buy it as permitted landfill in New England is a hot property. Some local influential folks discussed this with the state and the state effectively told the mill owner that if it was sold to the local communities the transaction would occur quickly, if it was sold to commercial enterprise it would take many years. That “encouraged” the mill owner to go for the quick cash and the facility has been owned and run by a waste district that is directed by the communities that dump there.
All the communities have single sort. Most are pretty good at it, the one small city does a less good job. One of the small towns has “pay per bag” with free recycling. The “dump” is actually a transfer station and is only open two days a week, they have volunteer dump wardens that keep an eye on new folks on what goes into the recycling bins and if someone tries to put the wrong stuff in a recycling bin they hear about it.
Recycling has been a lie for years in the US. It was not recycling it was exporting garbage to countries that do not have the environmental regulations the US does. Give the film Plastic China a watch or at least the trailer for the film, it will take away all the recycling warm fuzzies you feel.
Not disagreeing, but the recycling scene is changing. A lot gets downcycled, but new options are coming online. Showed Plastic China locally. BTW, the majority of the plastic waste in that movie comes from China. Recycling is improving in some areas. The Seattle area is a leader. We track where it goes. The location depends on the market that week. Everything besides plastics is now recycled in North America here. Plastics go to the highest bidder for the week. Sometimes it is domestic, sometimes it is SE Asia. Eastman is building a refinery that will intake all plastics and create the base products for virgin plastics. When this type plant comes online we will have better domestic markets for plastics.
Actually battery recycling has been quite successful. Most cardboard is extensively recycled, folks forget Bob Kraft of the Patriots was rich before he bought the team and he owns recycled box mills. Aluminum is extensively recycled. Glass is being used for agregate and for road base. Most paper is recycled, long ago I worked for a large tissue mill that had never used virgin pulp it had been around for 50 years and always used recycled fiber. Certain plastics are used for plastic decking and polartech fleece. Clean well sorted recyclables have markets but its lot cheaper to just push it offshore. If the loopholes get plugged than the markets for the products start to work.
As producers are made to be more responsible for waste, methods for recycling and the products themselves will improve.
www.wastedive.com
National plastics draft bill gains momentum amid industry push to tackle pollution
Sweeping nationwide plastics legislation is creeping closer to reality with a new draft. But the plan is likely to meet with resistance from recycling industry groups and product manufacturers, who prefer more voluntary solutions.
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