Much to Learn

Navigating through the many different waste conversion technologies, understanding the various feedstocks, deciding what type of fuel or energy to produce, and overcoming the economic and legislative hurdles toward commercialization can be quite daunting.

The Waste Conversion Congress East Coast, held in Philadelphia in June, was organized by Renewable Waste Intelligence. It delved into the many issues facing the waste conversion industry through panels of speakers involved in the financing, planning and implementation of waste-to-energy (WTE) projects and technologies ranging from gasification to anaerobic digestion to landfill gas.

Harvey Gershman of Fairfax, Va.-based consulting firm Gershman, Brickner and Bratton Inc. (GBB) told attendees his firm has identified close to 600 technology providers and developers representing a waste conversion technology. “It is just unbelievable how many people are out there,” he said.

Of the nearly 600 companies, he said 150 claim to have commercial facilities. “That is of interest, to know there are that many out there,” he said.

Gershman compared the footprint of a WTE facility to that of a landfill. “Waste to energy, even though it is an expensive way to make energy per production unit, it is a very land-efficient system, and it doesn’t need more land as time goes on as a landfill does.”

He also illustrated how the different fuel or energy products produced from a WTE system can impact the bottom line. Ethanol is much more valuable than electricity, but can be more costly to produce, he said.

Gasification in Motion
Mauricio Vargas, executive vice president of Plasco Energy Group, provided an update on his company’s construction of a commercial scale gasification system in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

The Plasco Trail Road demonstration facility in Ottawa has served as an example of “superior environmental performance, validated by Ontario’s Ministry of Environment,” said Vargas.

Ottawa’s city council has approved a 20-year contract with four 5-year extensions for Plasco to build a 3-module commercial-scale plant. The waste conversion contract was approved in early June, reported Vargas.

Vargas says the Ontario government played a critical role in helping Ottawa-based Plasco move the project forward. The Ministry of Research and Innovation provided a $4 million loan early on and the Ministry of Energy worked with the Ontario Power Authority to ensure acceptance of Plasco’s power.

The new facility will have a capacity of 150,000 tons per year with an expected throughput of 128,000 tons per year. It is expected to produce 153,000 megawatts per year of renewable base load power and eliminate more than 4.7 million tons of CO2 over the contracted period.

Overcoming Obstacles
Unlike in Ontario, the U.S. has been largely unsuccessful in commercial-scale gasification. During a session on gasification, panelists delved into the successes and pitfalls of the technology.

Shapoor Hamid, senior scientist for URS Corp., San Francisco, said he recalled teaching people in the 1990s that gasification would soon be in the U.S.

“Unfortunately I taught at that time that we would have [a commercial gasification system] up and running in the U.S. in five or six years. Now 20 years later, we are still talking about commercialization,” he told attendees.

He gave two reasons for the lack of commercialization of gasification technology in the U.S.: lack of understanding of the technologies and cost.

He talked about the delays with the City of Los Angeles in adopting gasification. “We put a strategic action plan together that was supposed to be up in running in 2007 and they are still evaluating that,” said Hamid of city officials.

Hamid said the definition of gasification needs to be addressed, pointing to some public authorities that say gasification is not conversion, but rather transformation because of the introduction of oxygen in the process.

“We are working to change this definition to bring gasification into the conversion technologies definition because it is not a complete combustion [process],” said Hamid.

Hamid said that even the term gasification “is a little difficult” when comparing different technology suppliers’ systems because there are so many out there.

“These will probably be the obstacles until we have one system in the U.S. on a commercial basis processing municipal solid waste,” said Hamid.

The Waste Conversion Congress East Coast took place June 12 and 13, 2012, at the Radisson Plaza-Warwick Hotel in Philadelphia.

The author is managing editor of Renewable Energy from Waste and can be reached at ksmith@gie.net.