energy from waste report

8/6/2019 Energy From Waste Report

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Improving the world through engineering

ENERGYFROM WASTEA WASTEDOPPORTUNITY?


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This report ocuses on the benefts o theUK creating an Energy- rom-Waste networkwhich would help power the nation and reducethe need or landfll. This report has beenproduced in the context o the Institutionsstrategic themes o Energy, Environment,Education and Transport and its vision o Improving the world through engineering.


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contents

02 a wasted opportunity executive summary

05 what is anenergy- rom-waste plant?

08 what are the problemswith waste in the uk?

12 resourcing our waste14 double standards

the proximity principle16 the danish connection18 is this a wasted opportunity?20 re erences


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a wasted opportunityexecutive summary

With the UK producing over 300 million tonnes o waste per year, enough to ll the Albert Hall everytwo hours, and our love a air with land lls sooncoming to an end, we could shortly be up to ournecks in waste with, apparently, ew options ortackling the problem.

The mantra we generally hear is recycle it. But isrecycling a lways the best solution? Not i theresno demand or the recycled materials. Not i moreenergy is consumed and more greenhouse gasesare emitted in the recycling process than wouldbe used to manu acture a new product. Not i wedont actually recycle but instead just sort thewaste into piles o di erent materials and thenship those piles overseas with no control overwhat happens to them a ter that.

Secondly, as the public begins to eel the impact o global energy price rises, the UK needs to quickly

nd sustainable and secure sources o energy,using reliable, well-proven technologies. And tohave any chance o minimising the impacts o global climate change, countries such as the UKmust nds ways to meet their material and energyneeds whilst rapidly and signi cantly cutting theirgreenhouse gas emissions.

Is there a realistic solution to both these issues?Yes. This is a route that the UK could adopt whichwould change our perceptions o waste and itsdisposal, contribute to our battle against climatechange and help meet our needs or a ordabilityand security o energy supplies.

In recent years the Institution o MechanicalEngineers has been advocating that waste shouldnot be regarded as a problem to be dealt with butas a valuable resource which could help us meetour national and regional environmental targetsand commitments.

This is by developing a network o Energy romWaste plants (E W).

In the UK, we traditionally adopted two simpleways o dealing with waste: bury it (known asland lling), or burn it and bury what was le t(known as incineration).

However, as the world becomes moreenvironmentally aware, there is a growingrecognition that harm ul emissions rom boththese methods are unacceptable and thatalternatives need to be ound.

O course, di erent waste streams should beregarded as resources in di erent ways, e.g.metals should be collected, sorted into di erenttypes and re-melted. However, or many othertypes o waste, recovering its value to provideelectricity, heat and/or transport uels is an easy,valuable and more environmentally sound solutionthan recycling or land lling. Modern E W plantsmeet very strict environmental standards andperceptions o them as dirty need to be robustlyand orce ully challenged.

It is important to note that an E W plant shouldnot be seen as a waste treatment plant but moreaccurately as a power station or even a CombinedHeat and Power (CHP) station. A thermal E W

plant, in particular, treats waste in the same waythat a coal- red power station treats coal. Anyother bene t, such as volumetric reduction, is ause ul by-product but is not the primary purpose o an E W plant.

Un ortunately, most legislation over recent yearshas erroneously and dogmatically ocused onE W as waste treatment rather than as energyproduction, and has attempted to deal with anE W plant as i it were an incinerator, rather thana power station. The approach is very di erent inmost other parts o Europe, where recycling andE W are both used to their optimum potential, and,as a result, land lling is success ully minimised.

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what arethe issues?

letting a resourcego up in smoke!


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E W, in its various ormats, is the only renewable(most suitable waste is bio-waste) technologywhich can realistically meet the EU and UK 2020commitments or heat and transport sectorrequirements, whilst at the same time alsoproviding signi cant quantities o electric power.

For larger waste streams, combustion technologyinherently produces both heat and power, in theratio o two to three times as much heat energy aselectrical, although in the UK we have traditionallywasted the heat by exhausting it to atmosphere,even more ridiculous when we have over onemillion people classed as being in uel poverty!

It is extremely improbable that the UKs legallybinding renewable energy commitments can bereached unless E W plants cease to be regarded asa less-desirable orm o waste treatment processand become regarded as the best-proven, sa e,clean energy recovery solution available to us.

The Institution o Mechanical Engineers there orerecommends the ollowing:1. The Government should review its energy

strategy and make E W a key component inenergy production, with the added bene t o avoiding waste to land l l.

2. The Government should promote and encourageinvestment in district and community heatingprojects with local waste being used as the

uel resource. Appropriate targeting o suchschemes could help to eliminate energy povertyin the UK within a generation.

3. The Government should rede ne waste as anenergy resource, allowing the new Department

or Energy and Climate Change to ocus on itsoptimal use.

4. The Government should abandon its ocus onrecycling as the only way to rid us o land lls,as this is quite unachievable and is clearlydeceiving the public about what is reallyhappening to their waste.

5. Recycling should only be or waste productswhich cannot be more sustainably convertedinto electricity, heat and/or transport uels.

what needs to happen?


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s e w , v .Using innovative design hasmade this plant a touristattraction or the city whileheating 190,000 homes,generating 36,000 MWh o electricity and removing263,200m 3 o waste.


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An Energy rom Waste (E W) plant works bytaking the waste and converting its potentialenergy into any type o usable energy the threemain orms being heating, electricity and transport

uels just as coal, oil and gas are used as uels inossil- red power stations.

E W can be used with many di erent types o waste rom domestic, commercial, industrial,construction and demolition, to sewage andagricultural etc. The only criterion is that the waste

raction is combustible and /or biodegradable.

It is important to note that an E W plant is notthe same as an incinerator and it is highlymisleading to describe it as such. An incineratoris purpose-built to reduce the volume o waste byburning (incinerating) it to produce an ash whichis disposed o elsewhere, e.g. to land ll. An E Wplant, by contrast, is purpose built to provideusable energy and can be designed to have little orno output to land ll.

1 The Rankine Cycle

Most E W plants should correctly be describedas systems which are the processo burning or any process in which a substancereacts to produce a signi cant rise in temperatureand the emission o light or a process in whicha compound reacts slowly with oxygen with thecreation o energy and heat which can be used.

Most people in the UK, and seemingly theGovernment, do not know the di erence betweenincineration and combustion. The termincineration stems rom the outdated method o burning Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) in orderto destroy it. This thinking, in turn, derives romseeing waste as a problem rather than as aresource; there is a particular issue here, in thatthe UK Government is itsel very unclear on thissubject! De ra, or example, constantly re ers toE W plants as incinerators and despite publicconsultation on this issue appears to have ignoredthe eedback!

Ironically, the European Directive governingE W plants is known as the Waste IncinerationDirective (WID) whereas, or large utility powerstations, the relevant directive is known as theLarge Combustion Plant Directive. Since the

latter is describing a virtually identical processto E W, it is not at all clear why the Governmenthas decided that one is combustion and the otheris incineration. I we were to describe Drax (acoal- red power station in Yorkshire), or instance,as a plant whose primary purpose is to reducethe volume o coal, render it inert and rom whichpower is recovered, we would rightly be treatedwith derision; logically, this should be the sameresponse when people describe E W plants in thesame way.

1

2

3

4

FeedPump

Win

Qout

Boiler SteamTurbine

Condenser

Qin

Wout

what is anenergy- rom-wasteplant?


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There are our main processes which are usedin E W plants, three are thermal (combustion,gasi cation and pyrolysis) and one is biological(anaerobic digestion). For reasons which arenot at all obvious, as all our processes havebeen in widespread use or many decades, theGovernment has decided that gasi cation,pyrolysis and digestion are AdvancedConversion Technologies (ACTs), whilecombustion is not.

c This is the most common and well-proventhermal process using a wide variety o uels. Thecombustion process is that used in all the largecoal- red power stations in the UK, or example,and ollows a process known as the Rankine Cycle.

The Rankine Cycle is a simple thermodynamiccycle in which a steam turbine or engine operates.In the conventional steam Rankine Cycle, thereare our major components, the steam turbine(or engine), the condenser, the boiler eedwaterpump and the boiler itsel . 1 shows these

our components within a system boundaryto demonstrate the main inputs and outputs.Heat rom burning the uel (Q in ) is applied to the

system via the boiler and is dissipated (Q out ) romthe system via the condenser cooling medium.Similarly work (W in ) is applied to the system todrive the boiler eedwater pump (usually in the

orm o electricity) and work (W out ) is exported romthe system via the turbine drive sha t.

The Rankine Cycle inherently produces bothelectric (or mechanical) power and heat. The heatenergy produced is not a by-product, as with someother processes, but is the basic principle on whichthe system works. It is there ore, inherently, a CHPplant. The primary issue in the UK is that we havebecome accustomed to using only the electricaloutput o the plant (the W out in the diagram) and

have wasted the enormous amount o heat energy(Q out ), which can be two to our times as large asthe electrical output o the plant.

g fThis is de ned as a thermal reaction withinsu cient oxygen present or reaction o allhydrocarbons (compounds o carbon, hydrogenand oxygen molecules) to carbon dioxide (CO 2)and water (H 2O). Gasi cation is where oxygen inthe orm o air, steam or pure oxygen is reacted athigh temperature with the available carbon in thewaste to produce a gas (e.g. methane, CH 4), ash orslag and a tar product. Although the gasi cationmethod is very recent in its application to biomassand waste materials, the underlying technology,the gasi cation o coal, is now extremely wellproven. The major bene t o gasi cation o bio-wastes is that the product gas can be useddirectly, a ter signi cant cleaning, to uel a gasturbine generator which itsel will orm part o a CHP or Combined-Cycle Gas Turbine system,thus theoretically improving the overall thermale ciency o the plant. The main disadvantage isthat there are many more items o large equipmentand the capital investment is correspondinglyhigher, so the pay-back period will have to becare ully de ned.

pThis is also a thermal process and involves the

thermal degradation o organic waste in theabsence o ree oxygen to produce a carbonaceouschar, oils and combustible gases.

Although pyrolysis is an age-old technology, itsapplication to biomass and waste materials is arelatively recent development. An alternative term

or pyrolysis is thermolysis, which is technicallymore accurate or biomass energy processesbecause these systems are usually starved-airrather than the total absence o oxygen. Althoughall the products o pyrolysis may be use ul, themain uel or power generation is the pyrolysis oil.Depending on the process, this oil may be used asliquid uel or burning in a boiler or as a substitute

or diesel uel in reciprocating engines, althoughthis normally requires urther processing.

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e w processes


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a d (ad)This is a biological process which is a methodmost commonly used with liquid and semi-liquidslurries such as animal waste. It is also used orobtaining gas rom human sewage, but is nowbeing applied to a limited degree to certain otherwastes and biomass streams. AD utilises thesame biological processes that occur in a land llsite, but under controlled conditions in a digestersystem. The our-stage process o hydrolysis,acidi cation, acetogenesis and methanogenesistakes place in the digester tank, which is awarmed, sealed, airless container where bacteria

erment organic material in oxygen- ree conditionsto produce biogas. The amount o biogas producedis limited by the size o the digester tank, so islargely used as a uel which may be burned in aconventional gas boiler to heat nearby buildingsor in a reciprocating engine which is used togenerate electricity.

The main advantage o AD is that it deals wellwith wet waste, which is a real problem orall other orms. It is also ideal or small-scaleoperations, such as arms, where enough energy(electricity and heat) can be produced to run the

arm (including uelling some o the vehicles) rom

what is produced on the arm. Its drawbacks arethat it takes up a relatively large amount o spaceand it is o ten di cult to avoid odours, both o which make it less suitable or urban installations.Furthermore, it is relatively ine cient (i.e. amounto use ul energy recovered) when compared on alike- or-like basis with other orms o E W, becausenot all o the organic matter is converted; guresas low as 20-25% o the e ciency o a combustionE W plant have been heard. Furthermore, most ADsystems tend to be batch rather than continuousprocesses, which means that parallel systems arerequired i a continuous output is needed.

Combustion is, by ar, the most commonly usedtechnology, both in the UK and other Europeancountries, although the incidence o plants in manyother countries is very much greater than it is inthe UK, where the public distrust o these plants(e.g. by erroneously calling them incinerators)has been encouraged by several NGOs and otherpressure groups over the years.

The second is AD, mainly because it is seen byGovernment, NGOs and the like as a sa er andmore environmentally riendly option. There islittle substance to these claims.

Neither pyrolysis nor gasi cation has yet achievedany great market penetration, mainly due toenormous teething problems with both o theseprocesses where they have been tried, mainly inother countries.

By 2005 there were 19 E W plants operating in theUK uelled by MSW or Re use-Derived Fuel; ourmore were under construction, three more hadplanning consent and a urther our had applied

or planning consent. The situation has changedsubstantially over the intervening years and someo the plants planned at that time are now in

operation.However, because o the lack o real operatingexperience with other processes, almost allthe current E W plants in the UK are o thecombustion type. This is largely becausegasi cation and pyrolysis processes are still notadequately proven or use with waste and AD,while growing in popularity, is better suited tosmaller rural installations such as arms.

the current situation


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what are the problemswith waste in the uk?

t uk.

h [11%], i.e., the waste weproduce in our homes; this will be a varyingmixture o , or example, ood waste thatis biodegradable, plastics which are notbiodegradable but combustible, metals which areneither biodegradable nor combustible but arerecyclable, glass which is neither biodegradablenor combustible and is di cult to recycle,paper which is biodegradable, combustible andrecyclable, etc. This simple description exposesthe olly o assuming that all domestic waste is, orcan be, recyclable in the narrow de nition thatthis word has been given in the UK.

c [13%], which is predominantlyo ce waste emanating rom the service sector,is similar in consistency to domestic waste and isincreasingly being regarded with domestic wasteas MSW.

i [10%] contains all the elementso commercial waste but with the additionalby-products o liquid e fuents, oils, which areincreasingly being regarded as hazardous and

which have to be dealt with separately.c (c&d) [36%]; this generally di ers considerably romthe oregoing waste streams in that it containsa high proportion o minerals which are notbiodegradable or combustible and which are o tennot worth recycling. There is, however, normallya percentage o wood waste which is, o course,readily combustible or biodegradable over time.The major problem with the wood element o C&D waste is that it is almost invariably treatedin some way, chemically or painted or otherwisecontaminated, which may be classi ed ashazardous under present legislation and may have

to be dealt with in specially designated acilities.

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Accurate statistics or total waste are notoriouslyhard to come by in the UK. This is largely becauseo what is de ned as waste and the legislativepre-occupation with Municipal Solid Waste (MSW),to the virtual exclusion o all other types. In 2005,it was estimated that the UK produced 307 milliontonnes o waste (per year) 1 or enough to ll theAlbert Hall every two hours 2 . This is quite simplynot sustainable.

O that, De ra also estimated that 46.4 milliontonnes o household and similar waste wereproduced in the UK with 60% o this land lled,34% recycled and 6% incinerated. According tothe o cial statistics, none o this resource wasused as uel in E W plants. 3 However in real ity,the 6% classi ed as incinerated was actuallycombusted in E W plants.

w :

types o waste

Household waste (11%) Commercial waste (13%) Industrial (10%) Construction and demolition (36%) Agriculture (1%) Sewage (1%) Mining and q uarrying (28%)


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a [


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government should reviewits energy strategy andmake e w a key componentin energy production,with the added bene it oavoiding waste to land ill.

Photograph provided courtesyo SITA, Isle o Man: This E W

acility provides 10% o theIslands electricity.


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resourcingour waste

The type o waste taken by an E W plant isdependent on which o the our main technologieshas been chosen. In act, the type o wastestream may itsel determine which technology ischosen. For example, wet biowaste can reallybe dealt with only in an AD system which is moste ective in dealing with slurries rather than solids.Examples o wastes which are best dealt withby AD are animal waste, e.g., cattle dung, oodwaste, e.g., rom kitchen and catering, althoughincreasingly green waste and vegetable matter areproving to be good eedstock or AD systems.

Thermal processes, on the other hand, are moree cient when the dryness raction is high, i.e.,moisture content is low. The thermal processesare ideally suited to solid wastes, althoughcertain liquids and gases can also be used i theyare suitable or combustion. Wood waste romconstruction and demolition sources, or example,is usually very dry and makes an ideal eedstock

or thermal processes. Green wood, such as isderived rom thinning and trimmings in orestry,will have to be dried or a certain period, be oreentering the thermal process.

Non-combustibles, such as metals, glass and other

inert materials, are unsuitable or E W plantsand are normally recycled by other means. Mostplastics cannot be dealt with by biological process,but usually have a very high energy content whichmakes them very suitable or the combustionprocess. It should be noted, however, that the vastmajority o plastics will have been manu actured

rom ossil uels and this portion o any wastestream cannot there ore be classed as renewable.

The other main output o a conventional,combustion E W plant is ash. This is normally o two di erent types: a relatively small quantityo fy ash which is legal ly considered to behazardous and there ore is disposed o in a

hazardous land ll site. The much larger quantityo bottom ash is inert and can be used as road llor aggregate or concrete manu acture althoughsome still goes to land ll.

It is in this area that the greatest myths havearisen about E W plants. It is also wherethe malicious con usion o E W plants withincinerators has been most misleading to both thepublic and Government.

The emissions rom the E W plant itsel will varydepending on a) the technology used and b) thewaste eedstock. Since most o the public concernis related to combustion E W using MSW as a uel,we shall concentrate on this area.

Most o the worlds thermal power stationsuse the combustion process, and this processhas been re ned over many years to ensure ascomplete combustion o the uel as possible. As ageneral rule, the more complete the combustion,the cleaner will be the resulting emissions. Theresultant emissions rom the Rankine Cycleprocess will range rom most dirty in the case o coal as uel, to least dirty in the case o naturalgas as uel, with MSW as uel lying somewherebetween the two.

Logically, the dirtier the emissions rom the powerstation are, the more they must be cleaned up inan emissions control plant be ore they are nally

released into the atmosphere. So even a dirtycombustion process need not necessarily lead toharm ul emissions to atmosphere.

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sugar lumps in loch nessthe emissions myth.

the dioxin emissionslimit or an e w plantis an eQuivalentconcentration to onethird o a sugar lumpdissolved in loch ness.


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The emissions control plant (which is not anintegral part o the Rankine Cycle process) isnowadays designed in a series o clean-up stageswhich may include cyclonic separators, bag

lters and/or active carbon lters 7. Progressivelytightening legislation over several decades has ledto any power plant nowadays being considerablycleaner in its emissions than has ever previouslybeen the case.

Modern emissions control systems are capable o reducing particulate matter in the power stationemissions to incredibly low proportions; indeed,many modern power stations actually clean theambient air as it passes through the power station!

Because o public concerns about the emissionsrom E W plants, a European Directive on the

Incineration o Waste 8 was developed in 2000,which is now almost always re erred to as theWaste Incineration Directive (WID), passed intolaw in England and Wales in 2002 9 and in Scotlandthe same year 10 .

Applying WID to a combustion E W plant isrelatively straight orward in technical terms,but has required substantial redesign o the

combustion process technology and is there orevery costly. The net result, however, is that theemission concentrations rom a combustion E Wplant are required to be ten times lower than roman equivalent large, coal- red combustion plant.

Former incinerators acquired something o areputation or producing certain toxins, mainlydioxins and urans. Nevertheless, bad thoughthey were in this respect, incinerators were neverthe sole, or even major, cause o the emission o such toxins. Other sources, such as barbecues,

reworks, etc still produce as many dioxins butthere are more emissions emanating, or example,

rom our coal- red power stations.

Speci cally regarding dioxins, Enviros and theUniversity o Birmingham concluded: Dioxinsand urans are emitted approximately equally

rom land ll and incineration. 11 De ra concluded:Dioxin emissions rom modern energy romwaste plants all o which must now meet thevery stringent requirements o the EU WasteIncineration Directive are very small comparedwith other common environmental sources such asbuilding and orest res, and even reworks. Theemission limits under this directive are lower thanthose or non-waste energy generation sources. 12

The dioxin emission limit value required byWID rom an E W plant is a concentration in thechimney o 0.1 ng/m (one billionth o a gram percubic metre at ambient temperature and pressure).

This is an equivalent concentration to one third o a sugar lump dissolved evenly in Loch Ness.

However, unlike dissolving sugar in Loch Nesswhere the concentration would increase as moresugar is added, emissions rom the E W plant arediluted an in nite amount as they mix with thesurrounding air. 13


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double standardsthe proximityprinciple

E W plants can be designed or a very widerange o sizes and can be suited to either local orregional energy production. However, documentssuch as the De ra Waste Strategy 2000 insisted onthe proximity principle regarding the transport o waste, so the o cial trend is towards local plantsrather than regional or centralised plants.

The proximity principle does indeed make sensei the heat energy rom the E W can be utilised in adistrict or community heating scheme, heat beingmore di cult to transport over long distances.However, i the UK continues its present policy o using only the electrical output o an E W plantand simply wasting the heat energy, then thereare economies o scale to be gained rom larger,more centralised, plants 14 .

Furthermore, the proximity principle is rathera double standard in the way it is applied in theUK. It is very rigorously applied to E W plants andtruck movements are requently cited to re useplanning permission or larger E W plants. On theother hand, the proximity principle is not appliedat all to recycling plants.

Once recyclables are delivered to the Material

Recycling Facility which is normally a separatingand sorting centre, not a recycling plant theyare o cially declared as recycled (i.e. they arecounted towards the local or national recyclingtargets because those statistics, as explainedearlier, treat sent or recycling to be the same asrecycled). Because actual recycling plants in theUK are still ew and ar between, many recyclablesare actually transported or considerable distanceswithin the UK. However, there is a much moreserious issue in that huge quantities o some majorrecyclables (particularly paper and plastics), whichhave already been classi ed as recycled andcounted towards UK and local targets, are beingshipped to countries such as China, where we do

not know whether they are actually recycled ormerely used as cheap uel.

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There are several modern E W technologies whichhave now moved on rom the conventional E Wdescribed above to become all-in-one acilities orenergy production and recycling. These are betterknown as Waste-as-Resource (WaR) acilities.

An integral part o a WaR acility is that itrecovers as much energy as possible rom thethermal process, which is usually a combinationo combustion and gasi cation. Not only is ahigher proportion o energy normally produced aselectricity, but much o the thermal energy (wasteheat) is recovered and used in district heatingschemes and/or in the various industrial processesin the plant.

A urther objective in WaR acilities is tosigni cantly reduce or eliminate sending ash toland ll. A WaR plant may incorporates a plasmavitri cation system ( or recycling wasted glass)which can take the fy ash and sa ely encapsulateit in the glass product. A WaR plant also has anintegrated concrete plant where bottom ash isused as aggregate in a variety o building andconstruction products.

The input and output data or a proposed WaRacility in Peterborough, UK is provided below:

t m pw r (1 / ): Industr ial/Commercial Waste 410,000 t/y Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) 300,000 t/y Sewage Sludge 90,000 t/y Tyres 30,000 t/y Oi l/Thinners (af ter recycl ing) 20,000 t/y Locally-grown Biomass 150,000 t/y

n w r p a o : 126 MW Electric Power NETT (>1.0 TWh) Up to 58,000 m 3 Concrete 145,000 tonnes Aggregates block products 2,500 tonnes Non-ferrous metal ingots 30,000 tonnes Iron & Steel 50,000 tonnes Glass Products

(tiles, ltration, enamel etc) 12,000 tonnes Hydrochloric Acid Up to 4,000 tonnes Pure Sulphur Up to 2 tonnes Pure Mercury

725,000 MWh Renewable Obligation Credits 1,300,000 tonnes Carbon Credits ZERO output to land ll

At the public hearing in January 2006,ollowing ve years o hard work and signi cant

investment by the developer, this highlyinnovative resource recovery plant was re usedits planning application. 15

going to war!


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the danishconnection

Many o the most developed countries in Europerecognised the problems associated with land lllong be ore the UK did, and have been developingalternative processes or dealing with waste orseveral decades. The two main methods o land llreduction are recycling and E W.

In most European countries, it is normal to buildE W plants as part o the communities that theyserve, so the waste rom the community is usedas uel in the E W plant, which then supplieselectricity and heat back to the community. Thisis a very much healthier approach than thattraditionally taken in the UK, where E W plantsare o ten hidden away and separated rom theirnatural communities.

Although most European nations do very muchmore E W than the UK does, the most notableexample o the intelligent use o E W in Europeis Denmark.

Because most o Denmark is airly denselypopulated and Danish people are moreenvironmentally aware, land ll has not beenconsidered an acceptable way o dealing withwaste or many years. The Danes were alsoprobably the rst nation to recognise the resourcepotential o waste, rather than continue to treat itas an un ortunate problem as we have done inthe UK.

Most, i not all, E W acilities in Denmark are builtclose to centres o population, so the waste journeyis small ( ollowing the proximity principle) and,more importantly, so that the energy produced canbe more readily utilised. The electricity produced isused in the local community as is the heat rom thethermal process which is distributed in large-scaledistrict heating (DH) systems.

So important is the utilisation o thermal energyrom E W that the Danes have become world

leaders in designing pipelines to deliver heat to

buildings over unprecedented distances (over 100km) with negligible temperature drop. By doingthis they have also generated an industry in themanu acture o equipment or DH schemes whichis world-class.

There are about 400 individual DH schemes inDenmark, o which 350 are consumer-owned and50 owned by municipalities; the latter, however,cover 60% o the heat supply, so those consumer-owned are much smaller schemes.

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case study: denmark

in most europeancountries, it isnormal to builde w plants as parto the communitiesthat they serve.


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h : b 1979

First DH in Copenhagen in 1930 DH in larger cities during 1950s and 1960s Oil crisis in 1973/74 and end 1970s First heat supply act in 1979

Planning introduced

o d e p :

1970 Security o supply

1980 Reduced import o uel1990 Reduced environmental impact2000 Energy savings CO 2 targets

d :1986 Decentralised CHP became a major energy

policy priority Biomass and waste to be included as fuels

or CHP1988 Ban on installing electric heat installations in

new buildings based upon a desire or moree cient energy utilisation

Extended in 1994 not allowed to installelectric heating installations in existingbuildings with water-based central heatingsystems (protection o public supply areas:DH and gas)

c dh chp :

199094 : Large coal-gas red DH plants tonatural gas CHP

199496 : Remaining coal- red DH to naturalgas CHP, medium gas to natural gas CHP, DHoutside gas area convert to biomass

199698 : Smaller DH and apartment blocks(>3 MW) to convert to natural gas CHP

s :

Copenhagen DH systems to expand DH network(compulsory connection obliged) Subsidies to electricity production on gas,

biomass, waste, wind Fixed electricity 3-tariff systems Purchase obligations for CHP-electricity and

wind power Replaced by a new system in 2005 due to

liberalisation o electricity market 16


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is this a wastedopportunity?

Our EU energy commitments or 2020 becomemore realistic and achievable i more o the UKswaste is used as uel resource in E W plants,which can be designed to produce electricity, heatand/or transport uels.

On the other hand, virtually any orm o recyclingrequires energy input, which merely increases theUKs energy demand and there ore makes the 2020targets, which are based on percentages o thetotal, even more di cult to achieve.

It should also be noted that the requently madeobjection that recycling demands less energy thanmanu acturing rom raw material is generally notvalid, since the originally manu actured productwill almost certainly not have been made in the UKand there ore does not appear in the UKs declaredenergy consumption or GHG emissions gures.

Along with other European countries, the UK hascommitted to climate change mitigation targets

or 2020, although these are largely representedas CO 2 emissions reduction targets, which is onlyone way o mitigating climate change, albeit animportant one.

The very small penetration o energy producedrom renewable resources in the UK (less than 2%),with nuclear currently representing only 5-6% o total energy, means that over 90% o all the UKsenergy supply is provided rom ossil uels.

Since ossil uels are the biggest single contributorto climate change, it ollows that increasingenergy demand o whatever orm will be largelysupplied rom ossil uels and will there oreexacerbate, and not mitigate, climate change.E W, on the other hand, and particularly the highbiowaste raction, is utilising a renewable resourceas uel and is, there ore, making a signi cantcontribution to climate change mitigation.

w g ?

As mentioned in this report, we have a growingpile o waste which needs dealing with. It is,there ore, a clear connection or most people to seethe energy production and waste disposal issuesas one which can help solve both problems.

One key reason or this is that De ra hastraditionally been responsible or waste issues,whereas BERR was responsible or energy. Withthe recent Cabinet reshu fe (October 2008), anew Department or Energy and Climate Change(DECC) has been established, merging the energyparts o BERR with the climate change parts o De ra. As explained elsewhere in this report,waste should be regarded as a uel rather thansomething which needs to be treated. I thisphilosophy were agreed, waste would also move

rom being solely a De ra consideration to beingmuch more o a DECC responsibility. Until thiskey change is adopted, the waste/energy issueswill always all into the cracks between the twoGovernment departments. 17

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can we do whatwe promised?

so what needsto be done?

waste should beregarded as a

uel rather thansomething whichneeds to be treated.


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In its most common orm, the plant described asE W will use the combustion process. There iscurrently in the UK no commercial incentive tobuild anything other than plants that produceelectricity. In common with virtually any otherthermal power station in the UK ( ossil- red ornuclear), the enormous amount o thermal energy(heat) produced by the process is simply wasted tothe atmosphere. It is simple technology to capturemuch o this wasted heat and use it or spaceheating in a district or community heatingscheme, as is commonly done in most otherEuropean countries. Traditionally, the primaryobjective in building such a plant in the UK isto achieve lowest cost and until this prevailingattitude changes (and a market or heat is created),there is unlikely to be any market inducement toalter this situation.

However, in recent years the UK Governmentscommitment to eliminating uel poverty hasproven to be widely unsuccess ul. Today, withenergy costs continuing to rise (nearly 100%increase in costs in the last 12 months), uelpoverty is now on the increase. It is there oreastounding that so many near-continuous sourceso heat energy are releasing this heat into the

atmosphere. A long-term commitment to makeuse o this energy by developing community heatnetworks could o er a viable and direct solutionto the uel-poverty issue, alongside much neededand highly cost-e ective measures to improve theinsulation and thermal e ciency o our existinghousing stock.

Such heat networks are not an immediate or cheapoption and will require a long-term programme toimplement a network to match that o many otherEuropean nations. However, this community/regional programme would provide a sustainableeconomic bene t to construction and engineeringcompanies, could be initially targeted at high

uel-poverty areas and resolve many local wastedisposal issues throughout the UK.

The UK will never solve its waste issues solely byrecycling there is quite simply too much waste todeal with and too many waste streams that do notbene t rom recycling.

Added to this are the continuing outdated andwrong ul impressions that E W systems are simplyincinerators that pollute the surrounding areas.

Today, we have the technologies and optionsavailable to segregate the waste streams whichshould be recycled, e.g. metals, rom waste thatcan be used as a valuable and secure energysource. In addition, our addiction to land lls hasprovided many areas where E W plants couldpotentially be constructed.

A long-term reassessment and public educationprogramme on the merits o recycling is requiredto allow E W plants to be created to both generateenergy or local communities and remove largeamounts o waste being produced by the samecommunities. Looking urther ahead, ull-scaleWaste-as-Resource plants would deal with thevast majority o what we currently still think o as waste.

Its time to put the myths and alsehoods aside andtake a resh look at what we do with our rubbish.Lets not waste any more time, lets not waste anymore energy, and lets not waste the opportunity.The time or Energy- rom-Waste is now!

a wasted solutionto uel poverty?

recycle the mythso recycling


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20re erences

1 www.de ra.gov.uk/environment/statistics/waste/download/xls/wsr_data_2006.xls

2 www.recyclezone.org.uk/iz_waste acts.aspx.3 Recycled is actually de ned in these statistics as

sent or recycling.4 European Council Di rective:

1999/31/EC o 26 April 1999 on the land ll o waste.5 Statutory Instrument 2002 No. 1559, The Land ll

(England and Wales) Regulations 2002.6 Scottish Statutory Instrument 2003 No. 235,

The Land ll (Scotland) Regulations 2003.7 Carbon lters do not lter out carbon (e.g. to

mitigate climate change impacts), rather carbon is thematerial the lters are made o that is used to trapother harm ul chemicals.

8 Directive 2000/76/EC o the European Parliament ando the Council o 4 December 2000 on the incinerationo waste.

9 Statutory Instrument 2002 No. 2980, The WasteIncineration (England and Wales) Regulations 2002.

10 Implementation o European Council Directive2000/76/EC on the Incineration o Waste, August2002.

11 Enviros Consulting Ltd and University o Birminghamor De ra, Review o Environmental and Health

E ects o Waste Management: Municipal Solid Wasteand Similar Wastes, March 2004, page 256.

12 De ra, Review o Englands Waste Strategy: AConsultation Document, February 2006, page 61.

13 Pro essor Andrew Porteous, Pro t rom Waste,Institution o Mechanical Engineers, London28 October 2004.

14 The latest strategy, Waste Strategy or England2007 does not mention the proximity principle.

15 City Councillor, Peterborough City Council,11 January 2006.

16 Jan Clement, Team Leader Energy Production,COWI, CHP In Denmark presentation, SEPAWorkshop, Edinburgh, 1 September 2006

17 We also suggest that the transport emissions/ uele ciency parts o the Department or Transportshould also come under DECC infuence, so thatwe have a truly joined-up approach to energy and

climate change policy.


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energy from waste report

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