@django @Signalian I am a machinist (learning for 2 years, changed from Hotel night manager to engineering ) in such a factory, I don't know why Pakistan has not that, you could produce easily the energy for one City with one of such an installation!
watch this!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLO3XWu0WTI
Hon Sir,
Having worked in a senior position in petroleum refining, lube manufacturing & large oil terminals where waste being a potential fire hazard, good housekeeping is extremely important; I was required to attend a couple of short courses on exhaust gases treatment, liquid and solid waste disposal.
For the info of the members, I am brief describing waste disposal. I am however eager to learn more and would appreciate your comments in reply to my query mentioned at the end of this post.
‘Waste’ is generally classified into two main categories that being hazardous & non- hazardous waste. Hazardous waste is itself divided into four subcategories based upon ignitability, corrosively, reactivity and toxicity & radioactivity. However hazardous waste disposal is a separate topic and for this post, we will ignore it.
Non-hazardous waste is any type of industrial/ household waste cannot be added to a sewage line. These could be the of garbage arising from the household and /or animal and industrial activities that are discarded as unwanted and useless.
Standard non-hazardous ‘Solid Waste’ disposal methods are:
Landfill: This is simple, cheap, and effective. However, it requires a lot of potential landfill sites. In crowded cities, where even the land within 100 km from the city center is expensive, finding suitable landfill sites can be a problem.
Composting: All the refuse that is biodegradable needs to be separated, composted and used as a soil conditioner. It is quite popular in most developed countries and individual householders/waste generators such as restaurant & greengrocers are asked to separate organic waste from recyclable & general waste.
Organic waste can be ploughed into the field directly but this is not very environment-friendly and hence seldom used.
Recycling: Composting & Recycling are the most environmentally friendly methods. However, these are only viable when segregation is done at source. Nearly all the paper/paper products, plastics, metals & wood can be recycled and reused. For example, in the UK all plastic extruding plants such as bottle, polythene bags manufacturers must use at least 30% of the recycled polythene.
Incineration: Open burning is not very environment-friendly. Nevertheless, it is still commonly used by farmers and many developing countries primarily because it substantially reduces the quantity of solid waste requiring disposal. Incineration also requires that the unburnable & the materials that give out toxic fumes are separated. For example, construction leftovers such as broken bricks, marble chips & debris, slag, used batteries & burnt-out fluorescent tubes would not burn.
I only attended one seminar on RDF ( Refused derived fuel) and SRF ( Solid recovered fuel) made from solid waste which included all burnable waste such paper, cardboard, plastics, old garments/textile trimmings etc. as well as organic waste.
RDF is generally made from the municipal (household/city generated waste), has a lower calorific value and normally used in the heat & power plants.
SRF is made from commercial waste and has a higher caloric value than RDF, hence can be used mixed with coal & petroleum coke in the Cement kilns as well as in the power plants.
However, because of the manual labor involved and low caloric value and more rigorous treatment of the flue gasses, Waste to Energy plants are quite expensive to build and operate.
From the internet, I have found that the new Ethiopian Reppe WTE power plant costs $118-million and would produce 185GWh power per year. This means it is only a 23.13 MW plant at 8000 working hour per year which translates into capital outlay of $5.1-million per MW capacity. Whereas the recent Thar coal power operation cost $789-milion for the mine and $1.13-billion for a 600 MW plant or $1.9-million per MW for the plant itself and $3.2-million per MW including the cost of mine. This explains why a WTE plant is not yet installed in Pakistan.
Waste to Energy is however encouraged in developed countries through heavy subsidies because it is environmentally friendly.
You are presently actively involved in the Waste to Energy conversion whereas most of my information is nearly a decade old and the technology has moved on quite a bit since. I would greatly appreciate if you could advise me on the capital requirement per MW of the ‘Name Plate’ capacity and the production cost per KWh without the gov’t subsidy of the WTE power plant that you are working in.