Trashy Green Stuff

[Star]

Sweden Turns Garbage Into Energy - Science News​

At 96 percent, Sweden has one of the highest rates of recycling. So when the country began generating heat and energy from its trash, it should have come as no surprise they would eventually run out of garbage.​

“We have more capacity than the production of waste in Sweden and that is usable for incineration,” Catarina Ostlund, Senior Advisor for the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency told Public Radio International.​

This situation has caused the Scandinavian country to begin importing 800,000 tons of trash from its neighbors and charging them for it, allowing the Swedes to truly claim that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.​

In addition to being a revenue stream, Sweden’s waste-to-energy program generates about 20 percent of the country’s district heating that functions by pumping heated water into pipes that run through residential and commercial buildings. The program also generates electricity for a quarter-million Swedish homes.​

✄snip>​

 

[whitehall]

Processing stuff we usually throw away is a good idea. Instead of burying it in a landfill we should develop ways to salvage compost and separate valuable metal and recycle plastic. Maybe using prison inmates to separate garbage would be an idea. It could be voluntary or mandatory.

 

[flacaltenn]

So Star... Explain to me why burning TRASH for energy is clean and green.. But burning coal couldn't possibly be...

You might also check on how happy the Brits are now that their green "biomass conversion" plants have turned into garbage incinerators..

How about you find me ONE REPUTABLE Brit Enviromental org that still likes this idea now that they are in their neighborhoods??

 

[flacaltenn]

Hey Star --- Here's a clue that your gonna have a VERY tough time finding some enviro orgs to bless this "not so green" idea..

Sierra Club Water Sentinels's Blog | WIN: Biomass Plant Stopped in Missouri

WIN: Biomass Plant Stopped in Missouri
Posted by: Scott Dye on March 21, 2011 at 7:46PM PST
ALL HAIL Missouri Sentinels Tom and Angel Kruzen for conducting a textbook organizing campaign to defeat a proposed biomass power plant in the Ozarks. Their fight brought together strange bedfellows—enviros, a rural pro-development city council, foresters, the oak barrel industry, the pallet industry and the charcoal industry. All agreed on one thing, that woody-biomass incineration to produce energy—the burning of woody “waste” debris and pulp from forestry—is not a sustainable option for the Show Me State.

Biomass Incineration | Energy Justice Network

"Green" biomass (like energy crops) is often a foot in the door for more toxic waste streams. Plants that start off burning "clean wood chips" can easily turn to burning more contaminated fuels (which may be cheaper or even free), or get paid to take really dirty wastes like trash or tires. Economic pressures encourage use of these dirtier fuels.

But PLEASE -- go find me an environmental group that LOVES this idea now that they've been used to help cities and industries make money on trash disposal...

EDITED ====>>> Daveman posted this http://www.usmessageboard.com/environment/247440-plasma-gasification-raises-hopes-of-clean-energy-from-garbage.html#post6001159 a while back.

It is a cleaner way to get energy out of trash. But it is NOTHING Like the plants in this OP or Britain that have become the scourge of the very environuts who helped create them..

 

[alan1]

Sweden Turns Garbage Into Energy - Science News​

At 96 percent, Sweden has one of the highest rates of recycling. So when the country began generating heat and energy from its trash, it should have come as no surprise they would eventually run out of garbage.​

“We have more capacity than the production of waste in Sweden and that is usable for incineration,” Catarina Ostlund, Senior Advisor for the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency told Public Radio International.​

This situation has caused the Scandinavian country to begin importing 800,000 tons of trash from its neighbors and charging them for it, allowing the Swedes to truly claim that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.​

In addition to being a revenue stream, Sweden’s waste-to-energy program generates about 20 percent of the country’s district heating that functions by pumping heated water into pipes that run through residential and commercial buildings. The program also generates electricity for a quarter-million Swedish homes.​

✄snip>​

The US could do that also, Anything Into Oil | Alternative Energy | DISCOVER Magazine
but the government prefers to "invest" in losing propositions like solyndra.
Oh wait, oil is evil, that explains it.

 

[Grandma]

I don't have the link, but a couple of engineers developed a closed-system incinerator that pulls the heat out of burning trash without putting waste in the air. The waste is reduced to an ash that is neutral, unlike like coal slurry, because it's made from garbage, not coal. The ash can be used for landfill or gardens.

There is a catch - the amount of trash needed to power a city exceeds the amount of garbage a city would produce. It would be more a case of each state having several of these incinerators and running the power straight into the grid.

 

[westwall]

Wheelabrator (sp) Technologies has been a pioneer of this technology for decades. Nothing new but certainly a good idea.

 

[flacaltenn]

I don't have the link, but a couple of engineers developed a closed-system incinerator that pulls the heat out of burning trash without putting waste in the air. The waste is reduced to an ash that is neutral, unlike like coal slurry, because it's made from garbage, not coal. The ash can be used for landfill or gardens.

There is a catch - the amount of trash needed to power a city exceeds the amount of garbage a city would produce. It would be more a case of each state having several of these incinerators and running the power straight into the grid.

Grandma: I put a link to a system like that in my above at:

http://www.usmessageboard.com/environment/258489-trashy-green-stuff.html#post6250539

Originally posted as a thread by Daveman.. Yeah -- this is much GREENER and wiser than calling a garbage incinerator green biomass conversion...

 

[Katzndogz]

They generate the electricity by BURNING the trash. That's in burning as in setting on fire. It isn't alchemy, it's substituting trash in the furnaces for coal or oil.

 

[flacaltenn]

They generate the electricity by BURNING the trash. That's in burning as in setting on fire. It isn't alchemy, it's substituting trash in the furnaces for coal or oil.

There's actually 3 diff technology variations.. Biomass IS burning and was originally sold as clean and green because they were supposed to use grasses, wood waste, etc. (that's a lie in itself). You are right.. No diff from a coal plant. In fact -- the greenies are pissed that coal plants are getting GREEN SUBSIDIES by tossing in the odd tree or so..

But there's also these HIGH ENERGY trash destructors that Granny was talking about that produce near zero NET energy, but actually reduce toxic waste and exhaust. You do this to get rid of trash volume -- not as a serious energy source.

And then there's "refining" in which folks take carbon rich garbage (like waste from meat plants, fats, food waste) and actually produce useful oil. Many folks have done this. None of which I'm aware of has ever made a decent profit..