Wastecon 2011: Old and New in WTE

Several panelists at a session on waste-to-energy (WTE) at Wastecon 2011, the annual convention of SWANA (the Solid Waste Association of North America), had seen earlier version of waste-to-energy as a growing trend within the industry.

For the most part, the panelists were encouraged that solid waste districts could learn from earlier booms and create systems that are better able to serve their communities well for decades to come.

Paul Stoller of the Boston area’s Stoller Consulting said that a document prepared for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the 1970s remained a good road map for districts and consultants embarking on a WTE project today.

The EPA Resource Recovery Management Model, said Stoller, “provides a comprehensive description of all the activities necessary to complete a project.”

The “comprehensive” part may be intimidating, said Stoller, but it is important. “Many projects have been [derailed] because of shortcuts,” he remarked. The EPA document calls for putting the hardest steps, such as site selection, first, so a project’s feasibility can be determined upfront.

Alan Cohen of the consulting firm HDR, Boston, provided attendees a list of such uncertainties that must be addressed when embarking on a project. Cohen’s list included site selection, as well as having a steady supply of feedstock (waste) at the front end and a home for residuals at the end of the process.

Studying technology, noted Cohen, is a phase that can be endless. New technologies carry a risk of not working as promised when built to a larger scale, which may have been one of the reasons the Durham-York region in Ontario has broken ground a on a mass burn WTE facility—the first new such plant in Canada in 22 years, according to Cohen.

Tom Reardon of Gershman, Brickner & Bratton Inc. (GBB), Fairfax, Va., provided an overview of waste-to-energy projects underway or in the later planning stages in North America. He said GBB’s research had shown that there are more than 500 companies in North America either offering waste and residuals-to-energy technology or project development services.

Reardon noted that about 54 percent of what is considered municipal solid waste (MSW) stream is currently landfilled. If half of this went to WTE facilities, he said, landfill space could be greatly extended while a significant amount of power also would be generated.

Wastecon 2011 was Aug. 23-25 at the Gaylord Opryland Resort in Nashville, Tenn.