Energy Recovery
What is energy recovery?
Public Acceptance
Energy recovery and the 3Rs
Energy recovery and recycling
Reducing greenhouse gases
Types of energy recovery
Articles
Dealing with waste is fast becoming a concern for municipalities all across the country. The more proactive of these governments look at municipal solid waste as a valuable resource offering inherent value even after the package or product has fulfilled its initial use. These innovative governments manage municipal waste via an integrated waste management strategy that draws upon a variety of different options to include reduce, reuse, recycle, recover and landfill. In Canada, approximately only 22 per cent of total municipal solid waste (all materials) is recycled and eight per cent is reclaimed through energy recovery – leaving a staggering 70 per cent being disposed in landfill.
Energy recovery is becoming an increasingly popular waste management option for residual waste that can’t practically or efficiently be dealt with through the traditional 3Rs. Europe, Asia and the U.S. have widely adopted this option and are actively increasing their activity in this area.
What is energy recovery?
Energy recovery is the use of a fuel source to generate heat or electricity. Many people often confuse energy recovery with the old-fashioned incinerators of 50 years ago. The rudimentary incineration that was practiced from 1910 to the 1950s was not a form of energy recovery – it was simply an attempt to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill.
Today’s energy recovery technologies “transform” the inherent value of municipal waste into renewable energy. There are several different types of technologies currently available, but all use sophisticated pollution control technologies to ensure that emissions meet strict government air quality control standards.
Currently, only four per cent of Canada’s municipal waste is being treated through energy recovery technologies. There are four facilities in Canada (Charlottetown, Quebec City, Peel Region and Burnaby). Together, they process approximately 1.5 million tonnes of waste. This compares to the 260 facilities in Europe that handle more than 40 million tonnes of waste per year. The U.S. alone has over 87 facilities that process around 30 million tonnes per year.
Through energy recovery, approximately one tonne of waste can produce the equivalent of 550 net kilowatt hours of energy. A typical energy recovery facility can process approximately 2,000 tonnes of waste per day, which can generate about 50 net megawatts of electricity. This is enough to power about 60,000 homes.
Public acceptance
Energy recovery is increasingly been seen as a viable waste management option – not just by government. Residents, too, recognize the benefits inherent in energy recovery.
Canadian studies show that public support for energy recovery technologies has increased by more than 24 per cent over the last four years to reach rates of over 80 per cent. And, polls identifying the “Most Livable Cities in the World” show that 9 out of 13 of the most attractive international cities use energy recovery to manage a significant portion of their waste.
Energy recovery and the 3Rs
In the past, the U.S. and Canada especially have relied heavily on landfill as a viable waste management option. Dwindling capacity, coupled with difficulties in citing new landfills, have swayed opinion in this area. Additionally, landfills have been associated with potential water contamination issues and with the release of powerful greenhouse gases. The U.S. alone has seen a 78 per cent reduction in the number of landfills over the last 19 years.
Although great inroads have been made with recycling, the fact is that mechanical recycling will not be able to deal adequately with all waste. Even the most advanced recycling countries in Europe (such as Germany, Belgium and Austria) have total mechanical recycling rates (all materials) of about 22 per cent – making it near impossible to reach aggressive diversion targets alone. For one, there is no uniform national approach when it comes to the collection of recyclable materials. There are also very distinctive types of packaging being used today (such as multi-layer films or foodservice ware) that are uneconomical and/or unsuitable for current methods of recycling because of their unique compositions or contamination from food waste residuals.
True, there are improvements to be made in recycling, particularly with plastics. But there are limits. The best performing countries in Europe have average plastic packaging recycling rates of only between 29 to 40 per cent. That means that recycling will never be able to handle all of our waste.
In Canada, for example, approximately 13 per cent of plastics packaging waste is considered unsuitable for recycling. Plastics are high-value captured energy. Their energy value (45 megajoules/kilogram) is closer to oil (48 MJ/Kg) than coal (26 MJ/kg) yet society continues to mine coal for energy while throwing waste plastic in landfills. Because municipal recovery facilities process other waste components, plastics’ high energy value helps to significantly increase the efficiency of the municipal energy recovery process.
Energy recovery also contributes positively to landfill in that it reduces waste volumes by 90 per cent. It results in an ash residue that, upon having the metals reduced, passes through the most rigorous testing available to ensure it is non-hazardous and safe for disposal and reuse.
Energy recovery and recycling
One of the misconceptions surrounding energy recovery is that it detracts from recycling. On the contrary, energy recovery complements recycling. Energy recovery is reserved only for those waste residues that can’t be dealt with efficiently through the 3Rs.
U.S. communities with energy recovery plants recycle about 33 percent of their waste, whereas the national average is 28 per cent. Additionally, European data consistently shows that countries with high energy recovery rates have a correspondingly higher level of recycling.
In Europe, for example, recycling rates of plastic packaging in countries that practice energy recovery were as high as 39% in 2008, as was the case for Belgium. In Germany, it was more than 40%. Recycling rates for plastics packaging in Austria and Sweden were 35 and 38 per cent. These countries also achieved a total diversion rate of more than 90 per cent, made possible through waste management options that included energy recovery.
Reducing greenhouse gases
Energy recovery is one of the cleanest forms of energy generation available today. Facilities must operate within very strict emission standards – in Ontario, these standards are known as the A-7 Guidelines. Energy recovery facilities track, record and store up to 1,200 data points of information every second of the day to ensure that plan inputs/outputs are kept within clearly defined operating parameters established by government regulators.
The use of energy recovery facilities can also help prevent the release of greenhouse gases (GHGs). The U.S. Department of Energy’s Voluntary Reporting of Greenhouse Gases Program shows that that U.S. energy recovery plants prevent the annual release of 24,000 tons of nitrogen oxides and 2.6 million tons of volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
In fact, energy recovery facilities emit two-thirds less carbon dioxide than coal-fired plants and less than one-half of the carbon dioxide emitted by oil and natural gas plants.
Many people often equate energy recovery with dioxins. In actuality, the amount of dioxin emitted by a single mass-burn energy recovery facility is barely detectable by the most sophisticated scientific detection equipment, and is well below health-based air emissions standards. In 2002, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimated that the total annual dioxin emission rate from all energy recovery facilities in the U.S. was less than 12 grams compared to a toxic equivalent of 550 grams emitted by backyard barrel burning.
Much larger quantities of dioxin are produced every day by both manmade sources (such as diesel trucks and wood burning stoves) and natural sources (such as forest fires and volcanoes). For example, the annual dioxins generated from an energy recovery facility processing 200,000 tonnes/year is equivalent to 1,700 diesel trucks each traveling a typical 91,200 kilometres per year. There are approximately 65,000 of these trucks registered in Ontario alone.
Types of energy recovery
There are many different types of energy recovery technologies available today (e.g. mass-burn combustion, gasification/pyrolysis plasma arc, microwave) and plastics are a good candidate for all of them because of their high inherent calorific value. Often considered “frozen natural gas”, plastic residuals can be used as a fuel source to help maintain the high temperatures required for efficient of energy recovery facilities.
One area of energy recovery where CPIA has done some significant research is gasification. This advanced energy recovery technology enables a wide variety of materials to be converted from a solid form into a gas called “syngas”. This syngas is composed largely of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, which may be used as feedstock to manufacture products (a form of recycling).
This research into gasification has led to more interest in energy recovery. The City of Edmonton, for example, is in the midst of building a gasification facility that will use municipal waste residues as its main feedstock. The facility is expected to be up and running by the end of 2010. Additionally, Metro Vancouver is looking to expand its current facility, Durham and York Region are in the process of building an energy recovery facility, and the City of Ottawa has entered into a partnership with PlascoEnergy to operate a demonstration facility.
Energy recovery facilities also contribute to the local economy. A modern energy recovery facility generates approximately $1 billion in economic activity, including value-added, high-paying jobs. Some 250 jobs are created through the design and construction of an energy recovery facility and another 45 to 50 permanent positions for the ongoing operation and maintenance of that facility.
Overall, Canada would be wise to follow the examples of European countries, as well as the United States, to use practice energy recovery more widely as a viable end-of-life resource management option for all residual municipal solid waste. The benefits of such far outweigh those inherent in landfilling.
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