Waste incinerators: good or bad? - Political Forum

Slartibartfas · 04-23-2007, 11:12 AM

This is a not totally uncontroversial issue when it comes to environmental policies. Is waste incineration the solution or just the root for even more problems than one had before?

Are there any waste incinerators in your neighborhood, or even groups lobbying against it as health endangering technology of the past? Or do you know the opposite where environmental groups demand more incinerator capabilities? Both would be theoretically possible.

The US started like Europe and Japan in the late 70's to build incinerators, but due to several reasons it stopped and in the last years even started to shut down one facility after another without replacing them, while in Europe and Japan the number of them is still increasing.

I have a incinerator plant in my neighborhood, it seems there exist no protest, and that even though green ruled districts are directly next to the plant. It seems even Greenpeace can live with it in general, and just opposes some minor practices that are not directly connected with the incineration as such but more with further deposition of solid emissions that remain.

The plant I am speaking of is the one in Wien/Spittelau (picture above). Its transforming waste to heat and electricity. Its one out of three waste incinerators in Vienna who are the major contributor to the Viennese distributed heating network that heats at least 1/3 of all homes in Vienna as also the public buildings like hospitals, schools etc. Whereas the distributed heating technology is superior even to personal gas heatings in terms of emissions and efficiency.

Join the debate if you like, and show me your opinion.

FRYandBENDER · 04-23-2007, 11:24 AM

Over here they are looking at using the methane gas produced by landfills as an energy source. As far as incinerators, well I don't really know enough about them.

Slartibartfas · 04-23-2007, 11:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FRYandBENDER

Over here they are looking at using the methane gas produced by landfills as an energy source. As far as incinerators, well I don't really know enough about them.

Well, the deal with incinerators, or better call them waste to energy plants as thats the correct term, the following:

You put large amounts of not recyclable trash into it, and reduce the mass to 1/10 of its original dimensions. In exchange you get heat or/and electricity with an energy output efficiency of 71% (at least thats what the Spittelau plant does). The burning is especially valuable for medical trash where every biological risk is eliminated due to the high temperatures. The remaining solid emissions like ashes etc are deposited at landfills or far below surface.

The downside is are the gas emissions. Especially dioxins and furans are in the critic. Those are highly cancerogen organic molecules. But also the emission of HCl, NO2, CO are problematic.
Modern plants put great effort into cleaning the exhaust gasses, with fluid gas washers and in up to date plants (like in Spittelau) you find also special filters for reducing the dioxine concentration substantially.

Still a certain level remains, the emissions are made public on the net and in front of the incineration plant.

MVA-Spittelau - Emissionswerte

I dont know enough about it, but I sincerely hope those legal emission limits really mean its not dangerous. Usually emissions are far below the legal limits. But the fact that even Greenpeace, does say the plant is doing fine and has nothing against it, makes me quite confident, that its not all that bad.

WRT the thing with using methan from landfills. Thats actually a good idea. The only risk is that its not pure methan gas, but a mixture of methan with very toxic molecules or stuff that becomes toxic when being burned. In fact than we would have similar problems like in an incinerator. Even though in smaller dimensions I guess. (An incinerator burns the whole trash at once)

FRYandBENDER · 04-23-2007, 12:29 PM

From what I can tell, they don't actually burn the trash. They let the trash decompose and then burn the methane that is produced. I'm not sure if there would be any undesirable chemicals mixed in with the methane, but I'm sure that if there are, it will be highly regulated. I think that so far they are still exploring the possibility of using this method for energy. The incinerator idea seems like a good idea though.

Slartibartfas · 04-23-2007, 12:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FRYandBENDER

From what I can tell, they don't actually burn the trash. They let the trash decompose and then burn the methane that is produced. I'm not sure if there would be any undesirable chemicals mixed in with the methane, but I'm sure that if there are, it will be highly regulated. I think that so far they are still exploring the possibility of using this method for energy.

Yes of course, the point is I dont think there will be pure Methane emitted. In this hell cocktail of a landfill you will have a weird mixture of everything and nothing at the same time. But the concentrations of those toxic gases might be perhaps lower than it is in the incinerators.
AS far as I can see it however, the capacity for those Methane burning plants is limited. Or do landfills emit such huge dimensions of methane gas?

Quote:

The incinerator idea seems like a good idea though.

Its not just an idea, I would call it a very well established technology, that is in some countries the main means of trash deposition. For example in Japan its the dominant way of depositing trash. And also in Europe it makes up a very significant share.

Its a bit like High speed trains. Its nothing exotic, but a totally normal well established technology used to a great extend in the developed countries all over the world.

FRYandBENDER · 04-23-2007, 12:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Slartibartfas

Yes of course, the point is I dont think there will be pure Methane emitted. In this hell cocktail of a landfill you will have a weird mixture of everything and nothing at the same time. But the concentrations of those toxic gases might be perhaps lower than it is in the incinerators.
AS far as I can see it however, the capacity for those Methane burning plants is limited. Or do landfills emit such huge dimensions of methane gas?

You wouldn't believe it. There is a landfill in Florida, right on the state line that I frequently have to drive past. There is so much methane coming from the mountain of trash that they have pipes that come out the top. When you drive by at night you can see it very well, but they have lit the gas, so there is a huge flame jetting out of the pipe. As far as I can tell the flame never goes out. And even with the flame burning all of the gas, you can still smell the methane when you drive by.

Quote:

Its not just an idea, I would call it a very well established technology, that is in some countries the main means of trash deposition. For example in Japan its the dominant way of depositing trash. And also in Europe it makes up a very significant share.

Well I meant idea as in, it would be a good idea for us to start using incinerators. Especially if they can be used to produce energy. It would probably look a lot better than having huge piles of trash and dirt piled up outside the city.

Slartibartfas · 04-23-2007, 01:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FRYandBENDER

You wouldn't believe it. There is a landfill in Florida, right on the state line that I frequently have to drive past. There is so much methane coming from the mountain of trash that they have pipes that come out the top. When you drive by at night you can see it very well, but they have lit the gas, so there is a huge flame jetting out of the pipe. As far as I can tell the flame never goes out. And even with the flame burning all of the gas, you can still smell the methane when you drive by.

I do not know how its like with gas creation on our landfills, but I am not exactly sure what they deposit there either. Perhaps its the stuff that comes from the incinerators. That won't decompose anymore.

Aynway, when there is enough methane gas and the emission issue can be handled, and the efficiency is good enough, than it sounds like a good idea.

Quote:

Well I meant idea as in, it would be a good idea for us to start using incinerators. Especially if they can be used to produce energy. It would probably look a lot better than having huge piles of trash and dirt piled up outside the city.

How do landfills look like in the US?
Where I live, they look like low green hills with one side with blanket earth where the landfill is still young. Well, you smell them, but you hardly see trash.

FRYandBENDER · 04-23-2007, 02:30 PM

We cover them up too, but I've had to go to the dump before to throw some big stuff away, and it pretty much looked like this picture. And it smelled horrible.

Fabio A. · 06-24-2008, 10:48 AM

I wouldn't say Greenpeace is so silent about Spittelau's incenerator plant, rather the opposite.

Read this document, for instance.

I'll quote the last part of that document.

Quote:

Description:

In Vienna there are two municipal waste incineration plants.
Their total capacity is around 450 000 t/a. They use “state of the art” filter technology.
The filter ash from air cleaning is highly contaminated with dioxins. The filter ash of the plant “Spittelau” has a dioxin concentration of 2160 ng TEQ /kg on average, which means a yearly output of more than 10 gram TEQ. This filter ash is mixed with cement to reduce dioxin leaching so it can be
legally disposed of in a household landfill in Vienna. The second Viennese incineration plant “Floetzersteig” has a similar air emission control technology, it is most likely to add 8 gram TEQ annually.

As this practice has been going on for many years, there is a
big dioxin bomb ticking on this Vienna landfill.

Action needed:
Long term: Stop waste incineration
hort term: Stop disposal in normal landfill, special treatment of filter ash (e.g. glassification) and store in a storage facility for hazardous waste.

References: Official datasheet of the plant and Greenpeace calculations.

Sorry to bring up an old thread, but I come from Naples and the trash issue here is forcing many of us normal citizens to turn into all kind of garbage treatment experts in order to counter despotic and stupid decisions of our local and national governments.

I'd be glad to open up the discussion again. My stance, in short, is: no to incineration, at all costs, for better alternative exists and for incineration is not an answer to waste disposal and management, because of the laws of this Universe, most important of all the one that states that mass is conserved throughout chemical reactions. That is to say, if I burn one ton of waste, I get no less than one ton of product on the other end (but in reality it's more than one ton, for oxygen is consumed and other chemicals too). Add to this that the chemicals that exit the plant are all more toxic than the ones that entered it, and you get the picture.

Anyway, as said, let's talk about it?

Slartibartfas · 06-24-2008, 11:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fabio A.

I wouldn't say Greenpeace is so silent about Spittelau's incenerator plant, rather the opposite.

Read this document, for instance.

I'll quote the last part of that document.

Hm, that post is already a bit older, I fail to remember on what basis I made that judgment about Greenpeace back then.

I think that report of greenpeace is quite interesting to read as it hosts a lot of information. Its summary is principally saying that Vienna indeed has a well working system. The recycling share is not perfect (ie there is still a certain potential of improvement) but its quite good. The air pollution is smaller than from other industries and the exhaust cleaning seems to be very good.

I principally disagree with their long term suggestion. I mean they are calling for the abolishing of waste incineration. I am not sure what their alternative is, yeah for sure reducing waste, I am all for that, but what to do with the rest of it? Land fills? Thats not a great option if I dare to say.

Spittelau is converting energy from waste into a usable form with 76% efficiency. Thats pretty good, of course its polluting. The report comes up with criticism about the ash and filter cake disposal. The used dioxin disposal method should be over thought indeed, I think the report has a good argumentation here. If Switzerland does it in a more progressive way, its definitely something one would have to look at to improve it.

It would be interesting to see possibilities of further dioxin degradation as well, and if they are viable for that kind of use. Moreover does anyone how long dioxon is hazardous and takes to degrade?

Just one single point that I did not understand. Its in the cost calcualtion. The armortization is calculated on a basis of 15 years. That seems a very short time for such a major facility, and the costs for updating to up to date technology are considered separately. If they would calculate with 30 years for example the disposal cost per ton would be about 1/3 lower than calculated in this report. It would have been interesting to see the reasons why they took 15 years. A comparision to the internal calculation of the plant would be very interesting, even though not possible because those date certainly is not public.

Quote:

Sorry to bring up an old thread, but I come from Naples and the trash issue here is forcing many of us normal citizens to turn into all kind of garbage treatment experts in order to counter despotic and stupid decisions of our local and national governments.

I'd be glad to open up the discussion again. My stance, in short, is: no to incineration, at all costs, for better alternative exists and for incineration is not an answer to waste disposal and management, because of the laws of this Universe, most important of all the one that states that mass is conserved throughout chemical reactions. That is to say, if I burn one ton of waste, I get no less than one ton of product on the other end (but in reality it's more than one ton, for oxygen is consumed and other chemicals too). Add to this that the chemicals that exit the plant are all more toxic than the ones that entered it, and you get the picture.

Anyway, as said, let's talk about it?

Ok, and what are your feasible alternatives? I mean I am no expert on these issues, so I will be glad to hear them.

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