Gasification comes into its own – elsewhere

October 16, 2013 · 0 Comments

When Shelburne was forced on short notice to close its landfill site approximately 20 years ago just after Murray Halbert succeeded Irene Davis as mayor, town council seemed happy enough to pay tipping fees of $150 a ton to use the Mono landfill site.

Today, inflation notwithstanding, tipping fees in Michigan are something in the order of $58 a ton, and municipalities didn’t jump at a chance to see their solid household waste turned into energy if they paid $100 or so a tonne (long, or metric, ton, about 2,200 pounds).

And, if municipalities weren’t anxious to use Dufferin’s proposed energy from waste (EFW) gasification plant at Dufferin Eco Energy Park (DEEP), investors weren’t about to put up money to build it.

Hence, the DEEP proposal died before it got off the ground – in spite of the fact that Michigan could close its border to waste from Ontario just as it shut the gates to garbage from Toronto. There is no guarantee that Dufferin could enjoy cheap tipping fees beyond its existing 7-year contract with Green for Life.

Nor is there a glimmer of a promise that Dufferin would be able to access either of the EFW plants planned or being built in the Regions of York or Peel. The latest word is that neither region is interested; at least, not for now.

What’s happening elsewhere? At Stockton-on-Tees, UK, one gasification plant is being completed and a second one has been approved. Both of these are using Alter NRG’s Westinghouse plasma arc technology, according to UK publication Letsrecycle.com, and both have a 350,000 tonne capacity. The publication says each could produce enough electricity to power 50,000 homes, and the non-organic slag “could be recycled for use in road building and other construction-based applications.”

The plants are costing around 320-million pounds each, or close to a million pounds Sterling for each 1,000 tonnes. Evidently, there have been no problems securing investors.

In that regard, a 46-year-old Russian billionaire, Roman Abramovich, has better than a 10% stake in another UK gasification project through his Ervington Investments. Other major investors, apart from the UK, include Thailand, Europe, Australia, the United Arab Republic and Israel.

This other development is by Waste2Tricity at Bilsthorpe Business Park. Letsrecycle says, “Nottinghamshire is the potential home, subject to planning permission, of the new, modern and efficient Bilsthorpe Energy Centre (BEC) on land provided by Waste2tricity’s partner Peel Holdings and W2T’s first project , is moving towards completion of its Concept Design Study (CDS) phase.

“W2T is actively investigating other suitable and viable sites in the UK. The establishment of Waste2Tricity International (Thailand) Ltd, April 2013 is now enabling W2T to work in partnership with a number of Thai companies, government departments, waste company operators and land owners to collaboratively develop a pipeline of waste to energy projects.

Waste2tricty was actively involved with the $500 million Air Products Tees Valley Renewable Energy Facility (TV1), a 350,000 ton 50MW program utilising Alter NRG Westinghouse waste to energy project currently being built in Tees Valley and subsequently the announcement of TV2, a duplicate project adjacent to TV1.”

Have Ontario municipalities and Canadian investors been wrong about DEEP, or are those across the pond proceeding in error?

By Wes Keller