Accessibility and Access Keys [0]
Ottawa has begun generating power from the garbage collected from city households.
The Plasco plant on Trail Road had its first full demonstration yesterday, taking a load of municipal garbage and converting it into electricity that was then sold to Hydro Ottawa.
Prior to yesterday, the plant had only processed waste that had been selected to test its capabilities, as opposed to the unsorted waste that is thrown out from municipal households.
Plasco Energy CEO Rod Bryden said the demonstration was a success.
After investing millions in the plasma gasification plant, the site can now produce highly promising post-processing yields from incoming waste, Mr. Bryden said in an interview.
“Clearly, this technology works and will become a standard for the processing of waste,” he said.
For every metric tonne of municipal waste that is brought to the Plasco plant, about 1,400 kWh of power is produced—enough to supply an average home in Ottawa with power for almost two months.
From that same tonne of household waste, approximately 150 kilograms of a clean, inert, aggregate material is created that can be used as a substitute for sand in concrete production.
“That aggregate is absolutely pure,” Mr. Bryden said. “If you put it in your kid’s sandbox and they put it in their mouth, they sure wouldn’t like it…but it’s completely inert.”
The process also produces small amounts of sulfur, which can be resold, and chlorine, which is harvested as salt.
Only a single kilogram of non-reusable waste is created from each incoming tonne, he said, which results mostly from materials which are not supposed to be deposited in household refuse—such as lightbulbs or batteries.
“If you don’t collect (the non-reusable waste) properly, of course it leaches down into the water or escapes into the atmosphere,” he said. “It is captured and that is the only thing that has to go to a landfill site.”
This waste is taken to a hazardous materials landfill in Sarnia.
Mr. Bryden said the city would require additional plants to treat all its municipal waste this way: At present, the Plasco plant can process about 100 tonnes of municipal waste per day, while the city produces about 10 times that amount.
“This is a demonstration plant,” he said, referring to the Trail Road facility. “Our commercial plants are built by replicating this plant.”
If Ottawa chose to extend its agreement, the company would simply build larger versions of the existing plant, Mr. Bryden said.