Oct 31, 2019 07:06 PM
https://cen.acs.org/business/biobased-ch...age/97/i42
INTRO: Towns in central and northern Maine were seeking a workable alternative to landfills and incinerators when they engaged Fiberight to build a municipal solid-waste-processing unit in the town of Hampden. In 2017, the UK-based firm began constructing a sorting facility intended to pick out and recycle metal, paper, and plastic from 135,000 metric tons (t) per year of waste generated by the towns. The $80 million facility was to be up and running by early 2018. An engineering marvel, it would convert food waste into biogas for injection into the local gas grid, mixed paper into recyclable pulp for egg cartons, and plastic film into fuel briquettes for energy generation. In the process, the plant would reduce greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide compared with landfills and incineration, Fiberight said.
But by March of this year, the facility was still incomplete. Local press reports noted weather-related construction delays, a challenge to the plant’s environmental permits, and difficult markets for recycled materials. Those delays point to the hurdles that municipalities face when dealing with new ways to handle and process waste. Reducing mountains of trash by turning it into fuels and chemicals would solve a lot of problems, but so far that has been difficult to do.
Several firms have tried and failed to develop new trash gasification technologies, including Range Fuels, KiOR, and Air Products and Chemicals. Air Products alone took a $1 billion write-off in 2016 for its attempt to gasify garbage and generate energy. High costs, technical complications, and cheap competing petroleum-derived fuels and chemicals doomed the projects to failure.
Yet relying on landfills is becoming increasingly costly and environmentally questionable. Tipping fees—the price charged to drop off waste at a landfill—can reach $70 per metric ton in Maine and exceed $100 in other areas of the US. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, each person in the US generates nearly 2.3 kg of waste per day. Of the 260 million t of municipal solid waste generated annually in the US, only about 35% is recycled or composted.
A Fiberight spokesperson indicates that the Hampden facility is now close to full operation. According to the firm’s website, the company recently commissioned a food-waste digester that is making biogas to provide heat and power for some of the site’s operations. Fiberight says its goal is to get the recycling rate for the communities it serves to 65%.
Achieving that goal means treating waste as a resource, Fiberight says. It’s a goal shared by several companies developing waste gasification techniques. They claim that gasification can significantly reduce landfill volumes and recover energy from trash to make electricity, fuels, and chemicals. They say gasification is simpler than Fiberight’s multistream approach. It also has a lower carbon footprint than simply burning trash in incinerators, which has both environmental and public perception problems.
Another virtue is that waste gasification, often coupled with a catalytic chemical transformation step, satisfies a growing call to reuse valuable materials in a circular economy in which waste is kept to a minimum. Among the most advanced gasification technologies is one from Enerkem... (MORE)
INTRO: Towns in central and northern Maine were seeking a workable alternative to landfills and incinerators when they engaged Fiberight to build a municipal solid-waste-processing unit in the town of Hampden. In 2017, the UK-based firm began constructing a sorting facility intended to pick out and recycle metal, paper, and plastic from 135,000 metric tons (t) per year of waste generated by the towns. The $80 million facility was to be up and running by early 2018. An engineering marvel, it would convert food waste into biogas for injection into the local gas grid, mixed paper into recyclable pulp for egg cartons, and plastic film into fuel briquettes for energy generation. In the process, the plant would reduce greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide compared with landfills and incineration, Fiberight said.
But by March of this year, the facility was still incomplete. Local press reports noted weather-related construction delays, a challenge to the plant’s environmental permits, and difficult markets for recycled materials. Those delays point to the hurdles that municipalities face when dealing with new ways to handle and process waste. Reducing mountains of trash by turning it into fuels and chemicals would solve a lot of problems, but so far that has been difficult to do.
Several firms have tried and failed to develop new trash gasification technologies, including Range Fuels, KiOR, and Air Products and Chemicals. Air Products alone took a $1 billion write-off in 2016 for its attempt to gasify garbage and generate energy. High costs, technical complications, and cheap competing petroleum-derived fuels and chemicals doomed the projects to failure.
Yet relying on landfills is becoming increasingly costly and environmentally questionable. Tipping fees—the price charged to drop off waste at a landfill—can reach $70 per metric ton in Maine and exceed $100 in other areas of the US. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, each person in the US generates nearly 2.3 kg of waste per day. Of the 260 million t of municipal solid waste generated annually in the US, only about 35% is recycled or composted.
A Fiberight spokesperson indicates that the Hampden facility is now close to full operation. According to the firm’s website, the company recently commissioned a food-waste digester that is making biogas to provide heat and power for some of the site’s operations. Fiberight says its goal is to get the recycling rate for the communities it serves to 65%.
Achieving that goal means treating waste as a resource, Fiberight says. It’s a goal shared by several companies developing waste gasification techniques. They claim that gasification can significantly reduce landfill volumes and recover energy from trash to make electricity, fuels, and chemicals. They say gasification is simpler than Fiberight’s multistream approach. It also has a lower carbon footprint than simply burning trash in incinerators, which has both environmental and public perception problems.
Another virtue is that waste gasification, often coupled with a catalytic chemical transformation step, satisfies a growing call to reuse valuable materials in a circular economy in which waste is kept to a minimum. Among the most advanced gasification technologies is one from Enerkem... (MORE)