Trash-burning power plant in Fairfield fires debate

A New York company's proposal to bring 200 badly needed "green jobs" to Baltimore by building a "renewable-energy" plant in the Fairfield area is drawing heat from — of all people — environmentalists.

That's because the 120-megawatt power plant planned by Energy Answers International of Albany would burn shredded municipal waste, tire chips, auto parts and demolition debris for fuel. Company officials argue the nearly $1 billion project will generate electricity and steam from waste that otherwise would fill up landfills. And it would be one of the cleanest facilities of its type in the nation, they say, with state-of-the-art pollution controls.

But activists argue the facility is still a glorified trash incinerator that would discourage recycling and spew hazardous pollutants into the nearby Brooklyn and Curtis Bay neighborhoods, which are already afflicted with some of the least healthy air in the state because of all the industry in the area. At least one environmental group has threatened to sue if the project gets a green light.

Is this what Curtis Bay is going to be known for?" Dr. Gwen DuBois, a member of the Chesapeake Physicians for Social Responsibility, asked at a public hearing on the project in late May. "We want good union jobs, but this is not green."

The project, to be financed in part by up to $300 million in federal stimulus funds, has won the backing of union leaders eager for the hundreds of jobs the company says the facility will create. It's also been endorsed by usually industry-wary community groups, wooed by the developer's promise of scholarships and up to $100,000 a year for improvements in neighborhoods long suffering from neglect and joblessness.

The proposed plant is being reviewed by the state Public Service Commission, which must approve any facility that would generate power to the electric grid. The commission has held a pair of hearings on the project and plans another one June 28 to review the facility's air-quality impacts.

"This is a very positive economic and environmental project," Patrick Mahoney, Energy Answers president, said at the hearing in Curtis Bay. He argued it would keep thousands of tons of waste out of landfills, reduce climate-warming greenhouse gases, help the state generate more of its power from renewable sources and produce environmentally friendly jobs.

 
 
By Timothy B. Wheeler, The Baltimore Sun

Bio-Bug: Car run on human waste is launched

A car that runs on methane gas produced by human waste has been launched and its makers claim drivers cannot tell the difference.

The Bio-Bug has been converted by a team of British engineers to be powered by biogas, which is produced from human waste at sewage works across the country.

They believe the car is a viable alternative to electric vehicles.

Excrement flushed down the lavatories of just 70 homes is enough to power the car for 10,000 miles - the equivalent of one average motoring year. This conversion technology has been used in the past but the Bio-Bug is Britain's first car to run on methane gas without its performance being reduced. It can power a conventional two litre VW Beetle convertible to 114mph. Mohammed Saddiq, of sustainable energy firm GENeco, which developed the prototype, claimed that drivers "won't know the difference". He said: "Previously the gas hasn't been clean enough to fuel motor vehicles without it affecting performance. "However, through using the latest technology our Bio-Bug drives like any conventional car and what's more it uses sustainable fuel."If you were to drive the car you wouldn't know it was powered by biogas as it performs just like any conventional car. It is probably the most sustainable car around."

The Bio-Bug is a conventional 2 litre VW Beetle convertible, which has been modified to run on both conventional fuel and compressed methane gas. The car is started using unleaded petrol but automatically switches to methane when the engine is "up to temperature". If the methane tank runs out the Bio-Bug reverts back to petrol. Around 18 million cubic metres of biogas is produced from human waste every year at Wessex Water's sewage treatment works in Avonmouth, Bristol.

The gas is generated through anaerobic digestion - where bugs which are starved of oxygen break down biodegradable material to produce methane. However, before the gas can be used to power vehicles it must undergo "biogas upgrading" where carbon dioxide is removed to improve performance.

The Bio-Bug does 5.3 miles per cubic metre of biogas, which means that just one sewage works could power 95,400,000 miles per year saving 19,000 tonnes of CO2. Lord Rupert Redesdale, chairman of The Anaerobic Digestion and Biogas Association, believes that the Bio-Bug could prove to be the future of green motoring. He said: "This is a very exciting and forward-thinking project demonstrating the myriad benefits of anaerobic digestion. "Biomethane cars could be just as important as electric cars, and the water regulator Ofwat should promote the generation of as much biogas as possible through sewage works in the fight against climate change."

GENeco, which is a sustainable energy company owned by Wessex Water, plans to convert its fleet of vehicles if the Bio-Bug trial proves to be successful. The Bio-Bug emits three tonnes of carbon dioxide in an average year whilst a conventional vehicle emits 3.5 tonnes. However, the Bio-Bug is carbon neutral because all of its CO2 would have been released into the atmosphere anyway in the form of methane gas.

Conventional vehicles use fossil fuels, a non-renewable, finite source of energy, and the CO2 they emit would not otherwise have been released into the atmosphere.

Why burn it when it might better to bury it!

When it comes to using plant waste to mitigate climate change, most people think of turning it into ethanol or biodiesel for use as a fuel. But a new study suggests we may have more to gain by converting plant material into biochar, a type of charcoal, and burying it in farmers' fields.

Biochar is produced by heating plant waste in an oxygen-free environment, a process known as pyrolysis. This also yields syngas – a mix of carbon monoxide and hydrogen – plus a small amount of oil. Both can be burned as fuels.

Typically, up to 60 per cent of the plant's carbon ends up as biochar. When buried, this can lock the carbon away for thousands of years if necessary. The pyrolysis itself releases no carbon dioxide into the air.

Burning issue


The new study was the work of James Amonette at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, and colleagues. It centres on a computer model they developed to compare the carbon emissions that would be saved by converting the world's available supplies of plant waste into either biofuel or biochar.

The model showed that converting all the world's available plant waste into biofuels would cut carbon emissions by 10 per cent from today's levels. Turning it into biochar could cut emissions by up to 12 per cent – or 1.8 gigatonnes of the 15.4 gigatonnes emitted each year (Nature Communications, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1053).

Carbon storage


However, the relative benefits of biochar and biofuel will vary from region to region. "It depends on the fertility of the soil in the region where you are producing the biochar, and whether you are offsetting coal or some other form of energy," Amonette says.

In regions with highly fertile soil and a high proportion of coal in their energy-generation mix, such as the American Midwest, Amonette says it may be better to convert all the available plant waste into biofuel. "But in South America, Africa, south-eastern parts of the US and most of the rest of the world on average, you're better off going with char."

Burying biochar also increases soil fertility. The Biochar Fund, based in Heverlee, Belgium, is carrying out trials of biochar with rural communities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and southern Cameroon to improve the fertility of soil in these regions.

Midway through the second growing seasons in Cameroon with biochar in the soil, average maize yields have increased from 1.7 tonnes per hectare to 2.5 tonnes per hectare. "In many cases, we saw a spectacular boost in both biomass and grain yield because of the addition of biochar; these extremes are generally found on the poorest soils," says Laurens Rademakers, Biochar Fund's managing director.

Biochar increases the pH of acidic soil, and helps it to retain nutrients such as ammonium, calcium, magnesium, potassium and phosphorus. Some biochars are also highly porous, allowing them to trap moisture and improve the water retention of soils in dry regions, says Amonette.

by Helen Knight

Waste Management CEO Seeks Technology to Turn Trash into a Commodity

Although Waste Management’s power plant on the Hudson River burns all unrecyclable trash to power a 60-megawatt generator that produces electricity, chief executive David Steiner is on a quest to find the right technology that will turn garbage into a commodity such as ethanol, diesel, gasoline, natural gas or chemicals, reports Forbes.

Steiner told Forbes he wants to own the conversion technology, and in support of his goal has made four investments in startups and joint ventures over the past year that range from developing a technology to speed up the composting process to using heat and chemicals to turn trash into ethanol.

As an example, Waste Management invested in Harvest Power, which aims to cut composting time in half from three to four months to six to eight weeks. The company sells the compost to plant growers.

Harvest chief executive Paul Sellew told Forbes that 98 percent of the food waste goes into landfills. The company is also developing an anaerobic digester and small gasifier that will turn woody waste into a natural gas.

In March, S4 Energy Solutions, a joint venture formed by Waste Management and InEnTec, announced it will build a plasma gasification facility at Waste Management’s Columbia Ridge Landfill in Arlington, Ore., that will convert municipal solid waste into clean fuels and renewable energy.

The $15.5 million joint venture between The Linde Group and Waste Management to build a plant to convert landfill gas into biogas started production last year, and is powering 300 of Waste Management’s nearly 500 natural gas-powered waste and recycling collection trucks.

While one financial analyst says Waste Management’s venture capital bids are impacting its bottom line, Steiner told Forbes that investing in companies like Harvest Power positions the company as a ‘green’ company and attracts investors with the potential for higher growth.

According to Forbes, in 2009, the company earned $994 million on $11.8 billion in revenue, while investments in these energy projects average about $8 million.

Elsewhere, the Red Energy Group in Cape Coral, Florida, says it has a process that will turn trash into synthetic fuel, reports Wink News.

Red Energy Group says its technology is based on processes used in Europe, which will condense the trash into odor-free pellets, then convert it to fuel, without pollution, according to the newspaper. The company’s engineers says it can save the city money and reduce its waste while providing alternative fuel at a discounted price to the city.

The company wants to build a facility in the northeast Cape that would have the capacity to turn one ton of garbage into 1,100 gallons of diesel fuel, and save the city $400,000 annually in fuel costs, reports ABC-7.com.

Equity firm invests in Action Environmental Services

Aug. 19 -- Summer Street Capital Partners LLC, a private equity firm, is making an investment in Action Environmental Services, a solid waste management company serving New York City. Summer Street Capital, based in Buffalo, N.Y., said its investment supports the recent acquisition of certain New York City assets from Republic Services Inc.

"After working and investing together in a successful environmental services company in the early 2000s, we are thrilled to have the opportunity to invest again in support of the talented team at Action," said Brian D´Amico, Summer Street managing partner.
Summer Street joined Ironwood Capital as private equity partners to finance the Republic Services deal.

"The addition of these assets, including two transfer stations, positions Action to serve our customers more effectively in the highly competitive and demanding New York City market," Action CEO Ron Bergamini said.



Contact Waste & Recycling News senior reporter Jim Johnson at 937-964-1289 or jpjohnson@crain.com

Ocean Garbage Patch Still a Mystery

A vast patch of garbage spanning a swath of the Atlantic Ocean has long puzzled scientists who wondered where the plastic bits came from and why there's not more of it.

Now an exhaustive study, resulting in more than 64,000 bits of plastic collected from the Atlantic Ocean over two decades, has allowed scientists to "go through the garbage" and get to the bottom of some of the mysteries.

Scientists have been particularly mystified over why the concentration of plastic in the Atlantic has not increased during the past 22 years, despite both plastic productionand plastic trash increasing during that time period. Still, they have their suspicions.

"I think it's certain that the plastic is breaking down into pieces smaller than what we capture in the net," said Kara Lavender Law, an oceanographer with the Sea Education Association at Woods Hole, Mass.

As bacteria and other organisms built up on the plastic, the added weight may have dragged the debris down tolower ocean depths, according to Lavender Law and her colleagues in a study detailed in the Aug. 19 issue of the journal Science.

Sizing up the trash

Ships towing long nets found the plastic pieces floating across hundreds of miles of the North Atlantic during the past 22 years. The nets only snag objects bigger than a third of millimeter, which can include plankton, seaweed and even tarballs from oil.

The sheer scale of the affected area could rival that of the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch," although Lavender Law cautioned that both regions remain poorly defined. For instance, the exact eastern boundary of the Atlantic region remains undiscovered.

"It's entirely possible that it reaches almost all the way across the Atlantic," Lavender Law told LiveScience.

The affected region in the western North Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Ocean stretches east to west between Cuba and Virginia, where a combination of wind-forced ocean circulation and the so-called Coriolis Effect of the Earth's rotation keep the plastic circling almost endlessly.

What lies on the surface

The term "garbage patch" does not necessarily mean a visible island of trash floating on the waves, researchers said. Only 62 percent of net tows by ships have contained detectable amounts of plastic.

"What we're collecting are really small fragments of plastic from larger consumer items," Lavender Law explained. "If you're on the deck of a ship, you normally can't even see the plastic pieces."

Each half-hour net tow typically turned up just 20 plastic pieces equivalent to about 0.3 grams in all. By comparison, a U.S. nickel weighs 5 grams.

The vast majority of plastic pieces caught in the net turned out smaller than 10 millimeters, Lavendar Law said. She pointed to a companion study published in this week's issue of the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin that includes all the details on the plastic pieces.

But the unusual discovery of a five-gallon bucket harbored a special surprise – trigger fish, which normally live around ocean reefs. That suggested the fish had found both shelter and perhaps food from the accumulated plastic scum on the bucket.

The more common tiny pieces of plastic can also harbor colonies of bacteria that may not typically belong at the ocean's surface.

"We need to ask if microbes are able to use the plastic as food and degrade it, or if the plastic is acting as substrates for [microbial] communities living on them," Lavender Law said.

How trash travels

The origins of all the plastic remain largely unknown, because researchers currently cannot trace it back to the original location or even the original product that a plastic piece came from.

But ocean circulation studies that use satellite-tracked buoys have found that floating plastic can travel from Washington, D.C., or Miami, Fla., to the Atlantic garbage patch within just 40 days.

The amount of plastic reaching the oceans should have grown in recent decades, according to available data. The amount of buoyant plastics in U.S. Municipal Solid Waste increased by 24 percent between 1993 and 2008, and totaled 14.5 million tons in 2008.

That goes back to the case of the missing trash that should have boosted plastic concentrations in the Atlantic Ocean. Future ship surveys may find more of the plastic lurking in the lower ocean depths, or uncover more about how microbes break down the plastic.

"Understanding the size spectrum and the fate of the plastic is a very important direction to go," Lavender Law noted.

Much of that future research rests upon undergraduate students, who used tweezers to pick out the plastic from the goo pulled up by the plankton nets. More than 7,000 students took part in that painstaking work during the Sea Education Association's SEA Semester annual voyages, which last for a total of three months each year.

"I always want to make sure I give full credit to the undergrads," Lavender Law said. "Undergrads with or without science backgrounds can make real contributions."

By Jeremy Hsu, LiveScience Senior Writer

Projects across USA turn landfill gas into energy

More communities are turning trash into power.

Nationwide, the number of landfill gas projects, which convert methane gas emitted from decomposing garbage into power, jumped from 399 in 2005 to 519 last year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

"There's certainly an increasing interest in doing these projects," says Rachel Goldstein, leader of EPA's Landfill Methane Outreach Program, which provides technical help to develop them. She says they are popular because they control energy costs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

As garbage decomposes, it creates gas that is half methane, which has 20 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide, according to the EPA. Instead of letting the gas escape into the air, these projects collect the gas and treat it so it can be used for electricity or upgraded to pipeline-grade gas. The projects power homes, buildings and vehicles.

President Obama, who is promoting wind, solar and nuclear power as ways to generate clean energy, has made Recovery Act funds available for the projects.
Landfill gas provides constant power and doesn't "require the sun to shine or the wind to blow," says Wes Muir, of Waste Management, a Houston-based company that runs 115 of these projects and plans to have 160 to 170 by 2013.
His company worked on a $15.5 million, partly state-funded project in Livermore, Calif., that in November began producing 13,000 gallons of liquefied natural gas each day. Another project last year, which cost $45 million, is generating enough power that the University of New Hampshire has cut its natural gas usage by 80%, he said.
Other new efforts:
• In Albany, Ga., the Marine Corps Logistics Base is starting work this year on a project to produce 2 megawatts of electricity for on-site use.
• In Anne Arundel County, Md., construction is slated to begin this summer on a landfill gas plant that will cost at least $5 million, $2.1 million of which will be federal stimulus funds.
"The federal grant was a key part of moving this project forward in a difficult economy," county spokesman Dave Abrams says.
• In Glendale, Ariz., a public-private project began producing energy in January. "We're powering 750 homes," says Jennifer Stein, city spokeswoman, adding it has given a "second life" to Glendale's 37-year-old landfill.

These projects are not without obstacles and controversy. Large ones often cost millions of dollars, and environmental groups say they do not produce renewable power because their source — trash — is not renewable.

The Sierra Club opposes government subsidies for them, and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) prefers such incentives be directed at solar, wind and energy-efficiency efforts. "We shouldn't be driving people to think it's OK to landfill stuff," says Nathanael Greene, director of NRDC's renewable energy policy. He says as many items as possible should be recycled so they don't end up in landfills.
Even so, Greene says it's better to do something with the gas. "If you got it," he says, "use it."

The EPA's mantra remains "reduce, reuse, recycle," Goldstein says. "We don't encourage more landfills." She says the country, however, has to deal with the gas from its existing landfills.

New Waste to Energy Contracts Boost Deroit Edison's Renewables Portfolio

Detroit Edison will add to its renewable energy portfolio with the announcement that two contracts totaling 20 MW were approved by the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC).
The 20-year contracts, with WM Renewable Energy LLC and L'Anse Warden Electric Co., call for the energy to be generated from landfill gas and wood waste biomass, respectively, and will generate enough electricity to power 14,000 homes.
Detroit Edison plans to provide 10% of its power from renewable resources by 2015.
Detroit Edison will purchase 17 MW from the L'Anse Warden wood waste biomass facility in Baraga County in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The former coal-burning facility was converted to wood waste and became operational in August 2009. L'Anse Warden's fuel supply comprises a rotating crop of quick-growing willow trees, paper plant by-product, landfill diversion wood, and wood bark and chips.

Detroit Edison also will purchase 3 MW of renewable energy capacity from WM Renewable Energy, a Waste Management subsidiary. The future Eagle Valley Renewable Energy Facility will be in Lake Orion in Michigan's Oakland County. The facility will use landfill gas captured from the adjacent Eagle Valley Landfill. The new facility is expected to start operating by the end of 2011.
Detroit Edison expects the majority of its renewable energy to come from wind resources. The company has acquired easements on more than 75,000 acres of land in Huron County in Michigan's Thumb region for development of large-scale wind farms. The company also has two solar energy pilot programs that could produce about 20 MW of power.
To meet the state's renewable portfolio standard, Detroit Edison expects to add about 1,200 MW of renewable power. The company plans to contract with third-party producers, such as WM Renewable Energy and L'Anse Warden, for half of that capacity, and plans to own renewable energy projects to meet the remainder. In January, Detroit Edison announced an agreement with Heritage Sustainable Energy to purchase the output from the company's wind farm near Cadillac, Mich