Turning Waste to Energy
Waste-to-energy (WTE) plants exist due to our need to eliminate solid waste landfills.
Traditional landfills are not only detrimental to the environment, but they're ugly - no one wants one in their town or city. The engineers who originally came up with this method to generate electricity had the right idea: getting rid of waste and turning it into something productive: steam and energy.
Modern energy production from waste is much more efficient than the old-school waste incineration plants from the past. Historically, we simply didn't have access to the technology required to turn waste into energy without releasing fossil fuels like carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and coal byproducts into the atmosphere.
Thanks to the advancements in waste incineration technology, the waste-to-energy plants of today cause much fewer greenhouse gas emissions than before. The process involves burning waste to produce steam in a boiler at very high temperatures, turning municipal solid waste (or MSW) into ash.
In this article, we'll explore how WTE plants work, why the world needs more of them, and the benefits when compared to traditional methods of waste management and energy generation.
How do Waste-to-Energy Plants Work?
The whole waste-to-energy production process is relatively simple. WTE plants produce energy by burning municipal waste (mainly plastics, paper, wood products, and yard waste) in a large combustion chamber. This chamber features a boiler that creates steam from the combustion process.
A generator then uses that steam for creating electricity. In a way, WTE facilities produce renewable energy as population growth, and rising consumption levels practically guarantee that municipal solid waste will never run out.
A waste-to-energy plant generally uses a 7-step process to convert municipal solid waste into usable electric power. It is as follows:
- Large volumes if waste feedstock are dumped from garbage trucks into the main WTE plant 'pit'.
- A mechanical claw grabs the waste and releases it into the combustion chamber.
- The waste (household waste, biomass, etc.) gets incinerated, releasing heat in the process.
- The heat brings the water inside the boiler to a boil, producing steam.
- The steam is released in a high-pressure manner, turning the turbine generator blades to produce electric power.
- At this point, an efficient air pollution removal system filters various pollutants and heavy metals from the air before releasing the air through a smokestack.
- The remaining ash is removed from the air pollution control system and the boiler.
With more and more countries looking for solutions to dispose of waste without continuously filling and expanding landfills, WTE plants offer a possible solution. Local municipalities, in particular, need ways to become more self-sustainable, and we need to stop creating additional pollution by shipping our waste elsewhere.
Why we Need Waste-to-Energy Plants and Recyclable Energy Production
Here in the United States, we generally maintain an "out of sight, out of mind" attitude about our waste. We have shipped it to other countries or states or established landfills in low-income areas where people who can't afford to move must also live with the smell and sight of the city's trash.
While we could claim ignorance in the past, we now know that landfills are a dirty, polluting way of dealing with the garbage we leave behind us. Not only that, but the increase in the global population has led to an increased need for a place to dispose of garbage.
In the massive quantities that landfills contain, municipal solid waste (MSW) completely ruins the land around it. MSW endangers local wildlife, spreads diseases by releasing landfill gas (a byproduct of organic biomass decay in landfills), leaches into the ground and water ways, and smells terrible.
The increase in the global population has led to an increased need for a place to dispose of an increasing amount of garbage. While the sheer fact that we produce this much waste is troubling, we do need someplace to dispose of it. To reduce our dependence on landfills, we have started using this waste to produce renewable energy.
A single waste-to-energy plant can reduce waste volumes by more than 85%. To give you a perspective on this, WTE plants can reduce the volume of waste from 5,000 tons to just 750 tons (as an example). This is an incredibly efficient way to handle waste, and it's the same technology we need to reduce the impact on the environment.
The Benefits of Waste-to-Energy Energy Generation
Expanding WTE waste management and encouraging more cities and countries to use this methodology have many benefits. Utilizing waste in energy plants solves the problem of waste management while simultaneously creating a valuable energy resource. Utilizing these waste streams help keep us from digging up new raw materials to produce the same amount of energy.
- Reduction of landfill waste - The intense heat of incinerators burns more than 85% of the MSW and uses it as fuel for producing electric energy. This reduces the amount of waste that ends in landfills.
- Creation of vast amounts of energy - A single ton of waste can create enough energy to power someone's home for close to a month (between 550 and 700kWh). Imagine what a million tons of it can do?
- Recycling and recovering metals - This waste management technology reuses excess waste by recycling any metal that stays after incineration.
- Sustainability and pollution control - Modern waste-to-energy plants employ strict air pollution control systems that prevent flue gases from being released into the atmosphere. The bottom ash that stays after combustion is also professionally removed, so it doesn't clog up the filters.
Thanks to their non-existent use of fossil fuels, waste-to-energy plants' electricity generated is some of the greenest out of all the electric energy-producing facilities. It's also cheaper to produce because these plants don't need to buy the trash and biomass to create energy. For local municipalities that invest in WTE plants, garbage trucks can deliver waste directly to their door.
In combination with solar farms, wind farms, vehicles that run on electric energy, and hydroponic farms, waste-to-energy plants can help make a positive impact on the environment.
Waste-to-Energy versus Landfills - Which has Fewer Environmental Impacts?
The Earth has a finite amount of land, and as such, if we kept creating new and expanding existing landfills indefinitely, we would eventually run out of space. Not literally, but there'd be a landfill every few kilometers.
In theory, this problem is easy to fix. If we combine recycling and waste-to-energy production, we'll be able to eliminate most of the waste that would end up in junkyards. Garbage can be transformed into a valuable resource and is stopped from ending up in nature, where it could cause an ecological disaster.
In reality, however, it isn't quite as simple. To be truly effective, waste management companies need to implement better systems to sort waste into usable waste streams. That's because not all waste can be disposed of in the same way.
Indeed, landfills don't generate as much carbon dioxide emissions as WTE plants. However, the methane they release is much more potent and dangerous for the environment. Over the course of 20 years, methane emissions can have an atmospheric and environmental impact of more than 84 times stronger than that of carbon dioxide.
While waste-to-energy plants have a significant carbon footprint, they offset methane emissions from landfills. While WTE plants are leveraging more innovative technology to reduce air pollution, their incinerators release substantial amounts of CO2.
Looking at these facts, it's clear that a single WTE energy facility produces emissions that have a lesser effect on the environment (especially if those facilities are themselves powered with renewable energy!) - offsetting emissions from landfills and substituting an existing energy source with virgin materials. Waste treatment of this type can power millions of homes, leading many European countries are pushing toward more electricity generation through WTE facilities.
The Bottom Line
In the past, incinerating waste wasn't done efficiently and caused a huge amount of greenhouse gases to be released into the air. Today, waste-to-energy plants are more advanced and use innovative technology and design to reduce issues with air pollution while creating energy from rubbish and reducing our need for landfills.
Trach incinerators used to have a large carbon footprint. Today, WTE plants are more energy-efficient. There is a deliberate effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by advancing the energy recovery process.
However, we need to be mindful that we aren't using WTE as an easy way out when it comes to recyclables. As a society, we need to continue to improve our efforts to reduce, reuse and recycle before we throw things in the trash - even if it's going to be incinerated, rather than sitting in a landfill. It's important to remember that fossil fuels were most likely still used to create whatever product we want to be rid of.
Using coal and natural gas as fuel has become less frequent, but we've still not done enough to slow down the effects of climate change. Nonetheless, the development of these energy-recovery facilities has gotten to a point where they're an exceptional choice for energy generation.
The world is slowly embracing WTE plants as a renewable source of energy. So the next time you go to throw the trash, remember that your trash might end up as fuel and a heat source. And don't forget, sort your trash responsibly so that it lands in the right waste stream, for the benefit of all.
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