Waste to Energy Tour

Awesome hard hats!

Hi everyone,

Alex, Ryan and I went to a Waste-to-Energy Tour this afternoon. Very interesting! It smelt horrible, but we learned a lot about Denmark's efforts towards a sustainable future. This plant used incineration to dispose of a large percentage of the household wastes (after the separation of recyclable materials of course) and uses the energy to power thousands of homes. They also went through the emission reports, indicating that they are far below the requirements set by their government in regards to dioxin, nitrous oxide, carbon monoxide, etc. They have recently incorporated a mechanism to aid in the cleaning of the fly ash, and are continually looking to better their operations.

They also had a gasification unit on site, which was used mainly for wood chips, with the power being linked to the rest of the operation. This was obviously very interesting for me, as my Master's project is based on the use of a gasification unit for biomass conversion. I had to ask whether they were using the bottom ash in any way, which they are not. They simply "dispose" of it. However, they explained that there are other local plants who have been using their bottom ash as a soil amendment (kudos).

Well that's it for now. We finally were able to book the tour to the wind farm off the coast! Very excited about this!! We are having a dinner party for our delegation tonight. Ryan is cooking :)

Until next time! :)
Gasification Unit

Alex and Ryan enjoying the tour

Garbage pile