PM: Thailand needs waste-to-energy plants

[JDGRUEN]

They have the Cart before the Horse... There is but scant infrastructure to feed the systems for Waste to Energy. This is has been posted before several months ago when they first brought it up... I will see if I can find it,,,

Thailand needs but doesn't not have any sort of a coherent trash/waste collection system. So - how do they bring sufficient fuel to the waste to energy system?

It would take 5-7-10 years - just to get a uniform trash collection put together. And I do not see that happening - when they are looking through the wrong end of the telescope at the problem.

How have you arrived at this 5-7-10 year idea? They need trucks, only trucks, they can be bought and used, the real infrastructure that is missing is the incinerators, the roads are already in place if you hadn't noticed. And many many places in Thailand already have the trucks and the regular collections just nowhere but landfill sights to take it.

There is a lot more to a coherent Solid Waste processing system than just trucks... There is no Province wide system - not to mention a National system... only local efforts - sometimes big but certainly not even close to an organized state of the art system required to support Waste to Heat operations... There has to be a organized - well thought out local collection of trash - with uniform standards - uniform containers and full participation - regularly scheduled ... There has to be separation for recyclables and compaction stations - to make transport of the waste more cost effective.

It would be a large scale effort to even get to the point of bringing Waste to Heat on line -- which I am for... The reason some Western Countries have Waste to Heat systems - is that they have ALL the underlying infrastructure to support it.

There is nothing uniform or standard about Solid Waste collection in Thailand... it currently is one of the more primitively operated government functions in all of Thailand.

Have you seen the post above here? Kind of rubbishes all your claims, doesn't it?

I happen to agree with the post you reference. But it tells nothing about how the Solid Waste stream of fuel is pre-processed... The pile of garbage with the bulldozer sitting on a landfill is just a handy graphic to symbolize using solid waste - and not put it into landfills. The post references Gasification ... this is a fairly complicated process - when done correctly - but a bit touchy - it takes a good engineer to keep the system operating. And gasifiers - the actual burners are sensitive to fuel mixture. if large amounts of glass waste is introduced - it will become molten and clog the system and eventual shutdown. Excess 'dirt' should be kept out of the system as much as possible. Also steel and aluminum cans should be keep to a bare minimum.

This is the reason that what goes into a system must be pre-processed via various kinds of separation - shaking on conveyors -then magnetic removal of steel, hand picking for visible glass and aluminum, plus as much visible and easy to get plastic as possible, then perhaps water flotation for further separation - then drying...

It is not possible to just pickup plastic bags on the side of the road - load them on a truck - then dump them into a top hopper of the gasifier. This is a simplistic concept.

I am aware of the wide spread - mostly individual effort of Thais - trying to make a living - separating recyclable plastic, glass and some cardboard and wood from the seemingly hundreds of thousands of trash piles over Thailand. Good for them -- I even help them by handing them my separated bags of plastic, steel, glass and aluminum.

But all in all - this effort is 'ad hoc' even including individual Thais and Thai businesses that sell their collections to collectors... This is all good - but still 'ad hoc'... Much of the plastics, steel, aluminum items are missed and remain inside the plastic trash bags. Thus the need for intermediate and final separation before burning.

The collection system I described in an earlier post - enhances full collection of waste - including tree / palm limbs, vegetable processing waste and much more. Maximum collection of burnables must be a part of the system. Because even with modern gasifiers and other devices - not everything will burn.

Even if there are many Waste to Energy plants all over Thailand -- which would be GREAT... there still eventually has to be a well thought out and implemented support infrastructure system down to the street / residence / business level ... or the plants will be down for maintenance 1/2 the time...

The Thai Government is in a great position to do this... They could get a committee of engineers and leaders together and devise such a nation wide plan -- and because they can now push through laws ... it all could be done in 3 months time - a plan for the country to follow down the Province - District - Sub District to city - town level. All coupling with feeding Waste to Energy and properly done landfills when and where necessary.

We are both on the same side of this issue ... We both think the Waste to Energy is a good idea ... I just happen to know the infrastructure side that is needed to support Waste to Energy Systems.

Edited December 6, 2014 by JDGRUEN

[JDGRUEN]

There's not a lot of science involved in burning combustibles and boiling water to produce electric power via a turbo alternator.

Sugar mills do it all the time using the waste fibre during harvesting season the world over.

Not hard to use similar boilers based on multiple fuel inputs.....they are basically an incinerator anyway.

There are many, many designs around for easy to build fermenters to produce methane and then electricity from pig crap. Sure, not a broad scale option but very doable for the village based micro power generation. And stops the stink from the pig 'farms'.

The sugar refiners are using a uniform fuel... not a mixed bag of garbage, trash and whatever. Good for the sugar refiners but lucky for them that injection of waste fiber into an incinerator is a straight forward concept.

There is not necessarily a need for mixed fuel.

In khon kaen they have successfully turned plastic waste into fuel, the powerplant which burns this fuel is due to be built next year.

I didn't say 'need' a mixture ... I was talking about what is in the general mix of solid waste fuel stream that comes from collection versus a uniform fuel such as sugar cane biomass ...

The uniform fuel for the sugar refiners -- biomass from the sugar cane plants - makes everything about the process 10 times easier than a Waste to Heat system that can actually burn mixed fuel with plastics efficiently. Such a system has to be state of the art - operated totally by the specifications - fuel mixture as required for efficient combustion, etc. It takes a good engineer to keep these things going without excessive downtime.

[kieran2698]

There's not a lot of science involved in burning combustibles and boiling water to produce electric power via a turbo alternator.

Sugar mills do it all the time using the waste fibre during harvesting season the world over.

Not hard to use similar boilers based on multiple fuel inputs.....they are basically an incinerator anyway.

There are many, many designs around for easy to build fermenters to produce methane and then electricity from pig crap. Sure, not a broad scale option but very doable for the village based micro power generation. And stops the stink from the pig 'farms'.

The sugar refiners are using a uniform fuel... not a mixed bag of garbage, trash and whatever. Good for the sugar refiners but lucky for them that injection of waste fiber into an incinerator is a straight forward concept.

There is not necessarily a need for mixed fuel.

In khon kaen they have successfully turned plastic waste into fuel, the powerplant which burns this fuel is due to be built next year.

I didn't say 'need' a mixture ... I was talking about what is in the general mix of solid waste fuel stream that comes from collection versus a uniform fuel such as sugar cane biomass ...

The uniform fuel for the sugar refiners -- biomass from the sugar cane plants - makes everything about the process 10 times easier than a Waste to Heat system that can actually burn mixed fuel with plastics efficiently. Such a system has to be state of the art - operated totally by the specifications - fuel mixture as required for efficient combustion, etc. It takes a good engineer to keep these things going without excessive downtime.

What I meant is there is not necessarily a need for a system that can handle mixed waste. As we have both noted there is an effective recycling system.

These waste to power plants already do exist in Thailand anyway, this is just a call to increase them to all areas. If its working in some areas I don't see why it won't in more.

[JDGRUEN]

@ Post #33

An earlier post says that there has been problems - significant ones with some of these plants.

[JDGRUEN]

Speaking of gasifiers ... here is a small one called a MIDGE ... and Inverted Gasifer that I made some years back by converting a large potpourri burner. The MIDGE draws the smoke down through the burning fuel, then to the bottom - then up an concentric stove pipe -- which has created a space between it and the outer wall of the burner... Anyway - the gasses produced by the initial incomplete burning process re-enter the top of the burn area through small round holes drilled into the side of the burner pot .. it creates a gas jet burner looking effect as the returning smoke ignites -- notice the 'jets'

Just Google MIDGE gasifier...

Edited December 6, 2014 by JDGRUEN

[Cake Monster]

Thankyou for the correction Kieran, I just vaguely remembered something about 3 years or so ago about taksin being linked to the coal mining shares purchase.

it all had something to do with the ouster of Rothschild as the major shareholder, and all got very messy.

[zzaa09]

Bottom line: Who benefits financially?

[Thian]

On 12/5/2014 at 9:17 AM, kieran2698 said:

Germany produces 50% of their power from solar in the summer. But then, Germany does have a solar panel factory. Thailand doesn't and would be buying from China who use coal power to make the panels, in this way the carbon off set will not be reached within the panels lifetime. Unfortunately solar panels use a great deal of energy to produce and unless this is also green energy then they are completely pointless.

I read that in Holland they use woodchips from Canada to burn the ovens for trash...that's green energy...????