The recovery of energy from waste materials is already a well established technology. As the price of oil and other energy resources rise, waste products have become a valuable resource that can no longer be ignored. Many developing countries consider waste a renewable energy resource with incentives in tipping fees and for energy recovery. Energy from waste not only reduces our reliance on fossil fuels such as coal, oil, or gas, it also reduces the amount of land used for landfills. Waste can be economically used to produce heat, electricity and other usable energy forms for industrial and domestic use. It only makes sense to capitalize on this abundant energy resource. EnerWaste's BOSTM and MCSTM units efficiently convert waste heat from the hot combustion gases into re-useable energy using "best-in class" energy recovery technology.
The energy is initially recovered by passing the hot effluent gases from the top of the MCSTM through a boiler to produce steam that can be used for many purposes. There may be opportunities to utilize this steam in a local industrial production process. Many industries, including paper mills, food processors, textile companies, industrial laundries and many others consume large quantities of steam and may be interested in purchasing steam or collaborating in a co-generation project. The steam can also be used to generate large volumes of hot water that can be used for heating.
New energy technologies using Rankine-cycle engines and the like will allow economic energy recovery at much lower waste throughputs. In addition, they operate without water and steam to produce power and chilled gases.
However, the most promising use for waste produced energy may be in the generation of electricity. High pressure steam can be used to drive a turbine in order to generate electrical power. This is an efficient and well proven technique to produce electricity. The "dry" technologies mentioned above use proven expander technology for power generation and chilled gases. The electrical power can then be utilized locally or exported to the electricity grid for distribution. Out control of gas flows and temperature allows our systems to produce very reliable distributed generation compared to other renewable technologies. A by-product of this process is low-grade heat which can be utilized or sold to other energy users.
The amount of energy that can be recovered from waste depends upon the type of waste, the moisture content, and the caloric (BTU) value. For example, a MCSTM plant with 200 tons of typical biomass per day is capable of producing one to two megawatts of electricity or 4 to 8 tons per hour of steam. With pre-treated industrial and bio-waste or oily absorbent waste and tires, which are drier and have a higher caloric value, the value of the recovered energy may be significantly higher.
Turbine generator produces electricity from steam.
