THE lights in your home may be powered by waste soon.

One waste management company intends to dispose of the industrial and commercial garbage it collects, by baking instead of burning it a process that will generate energy.

Part of this energy will be used to power the plant; what remains will be sold to the main power supplier.

Eco Industrial Environmental Engineering will use dry heat to bake its waste in what will be Singapore’s first waste-to-energy plant.

Costing S9 million, the facility is expected to be ready by the end of this year. Said Eco’s managing director, Colonel (Ret) Chua Tiong Guan: "In traditional incineration, you burn your rubbish. In this one, you don’t burn; you cook it."

The plant will run solely on carbon-based waste, which includes food and wood waste.

Wood waste will be passed through a large shredder and turned into small chips, which will then be burnt to ash. Some of the ash will be recycled for other purposes, instead of being dumped in a landfill.

The plant can process 400 tonnes of waste a day.

The way it is run offers a big bonus -~ it can generate electricity without

hot enough, it will release volatile gases and water vapour, which will be harnessed to drive the plant.

But as the plant will need only 30 per cent of the gases, the rest will be used to turn turbines to generate electricity, which will be sold to the main power grid.

The plant will be able to generate 10 megawatts of electricity in an hour.

Said Col Chua: "This is a more environmentally-friendly system for destroying waste materials, compared to traditional incineration technology, where direct burning takes place."

More important1~r, he noted, since there will be no burning involved and the entire system will be closed, there will be zero emissions.

This, he said, means that there is no possibility of dioxins and other secondary pollutants being generated.

The company recovers over 20 types of waste  from industrial waste, to food and wood waste to toxic chemicals. The plant can sort a total of 1,000 tonnes of waste a day.

Eco also started a car-recycling service about two weeks ago and has already recycled over 60 vehicles.

It recovers whatever parts it can, from the transmission to the car seats, and sells them to local and overseas buyers, some from as far away as South Africa.

But car recycling is not the company’s main business. Wood-waste recycling is a key job, and it collects 30 to 40 tonnes of such waste which it cuts and repackages and sells to the furniture industry.

The plant also recycles other junk, like cassette players, copper wires and plastics. which are sold to other plants for remelting.

Eco also intends to set up another plant — to recycle construction waste for use in making concrete.

Said Col Chua: ‘We use whatever we can re-use in the scheme of trying to reduce waste. ‘I’he main thing is whatever people want, we will recycle.

-By Sharmilpal Kaur

Source : The Straits Times, Jun 26, 2001

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