In times past, this used to be called incineration, and the mood of the nation was against it as fear of toxic materials trucked\u00a0in by night, and dioxins produced by day, stalked the land. \u00a0Although it's now called energy from waste [EfW], the nation's mood has hardly improved. \u00a0Even those mildly in favour don't want EfW facilities\u00a0anywhere near them: No Waste In My Back Yard.<\/p>\n
So, putting EfW plants\u00a0on industrial estates makes sense in many ways, especially as the energy generated can be used in the immediate locale. \u00a0The Devon County Council site in Exeter, operated by Viridor, is one such facility. \u00a0When a second site, in Plymouth, opens in 2015, 27% of Devon's residual rubbish (after composting, re<\/em>cycling, up<\/em>cycling, etc) will be diverted from landfill to these plants. \u00a0This will be\u00a0about 8000 tonnes a week. \u00a0Last month, SWLSC held its AGM at the\u00a0Viridor site. \u00a0This included a tour and insights into the educational work at\u00a0the facility.<\/p>\n It's an impressive place with more dials in the control room than in an Apollo spacecraft. \u00a0Now that the landfill tax escalator has reached\u00a0\u00a380\/tonne, the incentive for local authorities to reduce material going to landfill has increased dramatically. \u00a0Once upon a time, there was an real\u00a0incinerator on the site, but this was closed in 1996, and it became a waste transfer station. \u00a0There was strong political support for its reincarnation for\u00a0EfW because of the site history and location. \u00a0It now takes 60k tonnes\/year. \u00a0It cost \u00a345m\u00a0to build: there is a lot of concrete.<\/p>\n The energy extraction (not to be called incineration on pain of having to leave Devon for ever) takes place @\u00a01100 degrees C, giving rise to a 20% ash residue. \u00a0Flue gases spend at least 2 seconds @\u00a0850 degrees C in a post-combustion chamber to ensure that all the nasties (dioxins, etc) get burnt; they are then mixed with activated carbon and lime and passed through Goretex filters before being released into the 60m stack to head off for Somerset and Wiltshire on a typical blowy, south-westerly, sort of day. \u00a0Rather to my surprise, it seems that there is\u00a0sufficient caloric value in the waste without having to have plastics in the mix. \u00a0All told, 4mw of electricity can be generated,\u00a03mw of which are typically exported. \u00a0There is also the potential for 13mw of heat for district heating, if that ever gets off the ground.<\/p>\n I confess that I really wanted to have a go with the big grabber thing which took the dumped waste, churned it up, and them dropped it onto conveyors en route to the furnaces. \u00a0Sadly, I didn't have the qualifications.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In times past, this used to be called incineration, and the mood of the nation was against it as fear of toxic materials trucked\u00a0in by night, and dioxins produced by day, stalked the land. \u00a0Although it's now called energy from...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6187\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}