There are data book where the calorific value of waste of different type are listed. To get the cost etc you need to deput a professional consultancy co to prepare a detail project report. It can't be described here since there are lot of inputs required for costing part as well as technical.

Lots of Luck as in your address you are in California...AirQualMgmtDist. Check with them if any AQMD has actually approved a MSW W2E Plant. Then contact them directly and they will probably give you a truck load of info or their business card for doing design-build or BOT.

Forest wastes = lumber mill dust = mostly gone, but OregonUniv. Eugene has a W2E plant probably the best in country if still operating.

Now not all PostConsumer wastes are the same. - How much recycling determines BTU value of materials - Hi Recycling=Low BTU = no plastic and dry paper.

Water content is a very expensive part also - wet garbage = heat to evaporate water, heat recycling is required just to dry the stuff out = loss of electricity generating heat but a lot of steam if you have a use for it.

So your MWH/Ton depends on your MSW. 10-12K Btu/dry ton for brown coal

Ash/cinder handling is also important -

Typical -cheap gas turbine costs are $1M/MW++transformer yard, air emission controls, backup gas, etc. and W2E are more mechnaical operations and gandling costs.

Gut feeling is you don't have enough tonnage and Btus to make W2E plant worthwhile (need at least 500MW installed).

Tom Williams

In India, there are plants upto 8 MW operating on MSW. First one was setup almost 10 years back. Initially they were making only pallets and selling them for firing in boiler. Later they added their own steam turbine based power plant. To the best of my knowledge the plant is still operational.

Consumption/kWh depends on the composition of MSW ( whether it requires additional drying etc. ) & calorific value of forest wood available.

Ashok Toshniwal, Bangalore - India

Hi Bobcat,

I'm in Europe so I recommend you to have a look on the website of CEWEP (Confederation of European Waste to Energy Plants) http://www.cewep.com

There you have free information and documentation about this type of plants as well as links to USA and International related associations which may be helpful too.

Good luck

Hello:

Have you thought about the new plasma burners. They generate electricity to sustain their own production, and have very little waste by products. Exhaust gases can be captured also . Popular Science did a big story last year. Video: Waste to Energy -- an Overview.

Regards:

This company is headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

They use a plasma gasification process to generate energy from garbage.

They have built a test plant in Spain and one in Ottawa.

http://www.plascoenergygroup.com/

UFG

Thanks to all so far. We are in the South Coast Air Quality Management District, propbably the toughest in the country. They are not exactly thrilled about a W2E plant but they are also frustrated that we are currently trucking all of our MSW over 50 miles to the nearest landfill. So they will give that offset some consideration.

From what I can gather the new plasma systems are too large for our application but I'll keep looking.

Anymore comments/suggestions will be appreciated.

Bobkat,

My company, Trident Environmental Services & Technologies, is always interested in addressing issues having to do with large quantities of organic "left-overs." On any particular day, we have at least 20,000 tons of high quality humus...(soil food), available for remediation of depleted soil and feeding of plant roots. We also use product made from huge quantities of organic residues (wastes) for remediation of contaminated soil.

My opinion concerning use of masses of organic matter is to use it first to return energy value to soil, then proceed to produce energy in other ways. The BTU value of your local waste stream needs to be evaluated. That task is fairly simple, unless the stuff is very diverse.

It remains important for the mass to be well evaluated, studied for contaminants and for multiple potential, and for the community which produces the by-product to understand the wide variety of positive possibilities regarding the organic mass which comes from the diverse activities of community dynamics.

Waste to energy can mean:

waste to electrical power and...

waste to energetic soil for producing food, flowers, etc.

Respectfully, John Wear, Trident Environmental Services & Technologies

Yep.

Your regulatory compliance costs will greatly exceed your projects energy production value. I recommend you move your community to India where burning garbage is both technically feasible and economically viable.

(I'ld love to sign my name to this one, but, I don't dare....)

Burning Garbage is technically possible anywhere on earth. Feasibility & economic viability are other issues. If it is economically viable & still same is not being put to use, then to me, it is a case of missed opportunities.

Ashok Toshniwal, Bangalore - India

It may not be environment friendly.

Hi all,

It seems a bit cynic to recommend to move the community to India. This is an engineering forum (at least I always thought so).

MSW is a complex issue and not all countries and regions are in the same position. Our job is to try to solve the technical problems in the best possible way and it is dependent of specific constraints .

According to EPA, in the USA there are 89 MSW incineration plants. Here in Spain we have 10, I know some of them and actually I'm conducting a technical audit on the operational/ structural status of one of them. I can affirm that it is economically feasible and it complies with all environmental regulations (in fact, the stack monitoring system is on-line connected with the region authorities).

I can tell you that the original project included a previous sorting/recycling plant that according to the politicians would recover 80% and the 20% refused was intended for incineration.

Unfortunately, the facts not always follow our desires and the figures were just the opposite, 80% refused and 20% recycled. Politicians solution: Demolishing the sorting plant and incinerate the 100% MSW.

From a "green" point of view I think some resources were wasted unnecessarily (our taxes)

Of course, recycling is a better option but the percentage of recycling is dependent on the socio-cultural situation and I prefer to let the dogmatic issues to the Pope, not to engineers.

May God save us from all types of fanaticism.

There are quite a few MSW based plants in India as well, I donot know the exact no. Lots of city municipal corporations had shown interest in this and few have gone ahead, Usually the plant is putup by a private developer who also gets manure as a byproduct. Govt. of India, through the technology development board had funded the initial projects.

Thanks and regards

Ashok Toshniwal, Bangalore - India

Bobkat Just saw your post. We just returned from the World Future Energy Summit in Adu Dhabi, where we launched our patented Waste-to-Energy technology to the world leaders in Renewable Energy. Our Systems are modular, so they can handle a smaller amount of waste that you describe, without building a $150 million+ plant. Send me your mailing address and I'll FedEx you a 17 page Overview of a typical System, how it works, as well as the 3 benefits of our systems. We do not incinerate.

I'll look forward to hearing back from you. Doug Guyer

Carbon Diversion Solutions 610 993 0500 x217

Mr. Guyer, Thank You.

Please send info to:

Bob Ludecke

116 Palomino Dr. (U.S. Mail P.O. box 2920)

Big Bear City, CA 92314

Bob L.

Sounds like a good system for municipalities and large factories with a waste stream. I would recommend you set up a simple web site with a link to an Adobe Acrobat file. You could show all your info.

Tell us more please?

Here's a link from a search of the phone http://www.idronline.com/ a marketing company.

I couldn't find anything on Carbon Diversion Solutions

google search

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient-menuext&ie=UTF-8&q=Carbon+Diversion+Solutions

Folks

Our site will be up in 10 days. If you'd like to review our Hard Copy Overview,

I'd be happy to FedEx you a copy. Just send me your contact information, Co name, phone # and address. IDR is the Agency of Record for Carbon Diversion Solutions....a new company but it is based on 24 years of research in this space. (Agency = Partnership Marketing Agency)

Thank you Doug Guyer

Hi Doug,

No slam intended, just posting my findings.

Please post a link when your site is up.

Everyone should be careful about posting your information on the public part of the forum.

use the personal message system.

May we contact you through IDR?

understand. No sweat.

Yes, you can contact me through IDR.

It seems no one has directed you to the international company with over 30 years of operational experiences in waste to energy so let me give the links to Siemens and the Siemens gasifier. If you are serious in helping yoru community with developing energy from waste, you can also direct taking the discharge of the gasifier and converting it into electric power to, at the very least, run your community government, thus reducing a big drain on your tax dollar by putting the gases through the Siemen combine cycle SOFC/Gas Turbine Hybrid. This is the principle behind the Sustainability project that will be submitted to the City of Houston, Texas and other large metropolitan districts in the HARP-SEProject found on http://www.chtank.org/. Although much remains to be done on this website, it is, at least, a beginning. It is time for converting our words into action. We have been talking for 40 years, now it time for action.

Thanks for all of the help so far everyone. Now I just need to convince all of the stakeholders that this is a technology that will work for us and it is worth the investment.

There a lot of journals that you can get for free, print or online. Also. research what Waste Management Corporation has done. I think they are the leaders in the USA. They might even take over the whole thing for you, if you decide not to do it yourself.