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20 November 2009
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Petition
A petition has been
launched to request that the Cyprus Government and the Electricity Authority
of Cyprus implement this method of low-cost renewable electricity generation
and landfill reduction. All interested parties are requested to sign
this petition here.
Introduction
The page on the visit to Tridel SA, in Lausanne, Switzerland, shows how
household waste can be turned into money, producing energy, reducing
greenhouse gas emissions, reducing pollution and reducing the need for
landfills. The purpose of this essay is to briefly examine whether the
lessons learnt in Switzerland may be applied to Cyprus and with what
modifications.
For the purposes of this essay, I shall call a waste value-enhancement
power station, operating on similar lines to the Swiss Tridel, simply as a
Waste Power Station or WPS.
Waste quantity
According to
EIOnet, the last official EU figures for Cyprus were for 2003, at
518 000 tonnes, rising annually by about 18 000 tonnes/year, from
households, services and commerces. Logically, this means the current
quantity produced is about 590 000 tonnes. A revised figure is 571 000
tonnes for 2006 as reported in an
unconfirmed newspaper article that, however, substantiates the trend.
This is over four times the quantity treated by Tridel and could reasonably
be expected to generate at least 80 MW, probably 100 MW, of electrical power
by the time one adds organic industrial and building waste. This is almost
10 per cent of the peak electricity demand and all this from a fuel costing
almost nothing, other than the price of collection and delivery. The
quantity would be further increased if fly dumping were more strictly
controlled and garden rubbish were also accepted.
This quantity of waste is equivalent to about 150,000 tonnes of fuel oil.
This is the equivalent cargo of a large range tanker which would be too big
to go through the Suez Canal! Burning this quantity of heavy fuel oil would
release half-a-million tonnes of fossil carbon dioxide, so opting for this
type of renewable energy would favour Cyprus' chance of meeting its Kyoto
Protocol and European Union obligations.
Let's put this another way: if an average car has a fuel consumption of
10 l/100 km, this would be equivalent to every car, SUV, pickup and light
van in Cyprus doing over 9 000 km less each year, in terms of fossil carbon
dioxide emissions.
On the basis that compacted household garbage weighs 481 kg/m3,
(figure obtained from the Internet), the volume of 590 000 tonnes would be
over 1.2 million m3 of waste currently landfilled each year. If
its value were enhanced by using it well, over 1 million m3 would
no longer need to be landfilled. Furthermore, the remainder would be
essentially cinders which would not emit methane nor attract vermin, such as
rats. I estimate the methane emissions of landfilling 590 000 tonnes of
waste would be at least 35 000 tonnes/year, probably a lot more. This would
be equivalent to about 875 000 tonnes of carbon dioxide, as the Global
Warming Potential of methane in Cyprus would average about 25 with the low
free hydroxyl radical concentration in summer. To this should be added
another 50 000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emitted directly from landfills,
totalling an equivalent of 925 000 tonnes. To obtain the overall benefit,
incinerating the waste will cause emissions of carbon dioxide, some of which
will be captured by the scrubbing process and subsequently converted to
solid waste by the addition of limewater. As a first estimation, the overall
advantage of incineration in a PWS, compared to landfilling, would be
approximately equivalent to 450 000 tonnes of equivalent carbon dioxide.
If we add the savings of greenhouse gas emissions from landfills to that
of not having to import 150 000 tonnes of fuel oil to generate the same
amount of electricity, this would be almost equivalent to taking all the
Cypriot cars off the road altogether, some estimated 950 000 tonnes of
equivalent carbon dioxide.
Waste quality
Cyprus, in the EU, along with Malta, is in an unenviable position. It is
required to recycle paper, cartons and other organic wastes yet its size
does not justify such recycling within the country and exporting such
low-value waste is not economically viable. It would therefore make sense to
recycle it by converting it into energy which can be sold, rather than
exporting it in containers at a loss. The economically viable recycling,
such as aluminium (especially drinks cans in the Cans for Kids campaign) and
PET bottles can continue to be exported, but all other plastics can be put
in with the household waste, because they can be a valuable fuel.
This would solve the dilemma of most of Cyprus' waste, by generating
electricity from it.
Potential sites
If one or more WPS were to be installed on the island, the question is
where? It must be borne in mind that a WPS is non-polluting and could be
installed in any industrial zone. In order to keep transport of waste to a
minimum, it should be reasonably close to the catchment areas, which would
be about proportional to the population, in terms of waste tonnage.
The population of the Republic is about 779 000 (2006 statistics)
divided, by District, into 43 000 for Famagusta (Ammochostos, yellow),
75 000 for Paphos (Pafos, orange), 130 000 for Larnaca (Larnaka, lilac),
224 000 for Limassol (Lemesos, rose) and 307 000 for Nicosia (Lefkosia,
green).
The bigger the WPS, the lower the capital cost per MW of energy. A single
station at, say, somewhere in the Alambra region, in the centre of gravity
of the population distribution, would therefore seem a logical choice.
However, a WPS produces useful heat, as well as electricity, and it seems
doubtful whether this heat could be logically exploited in this region. I
therefore suggest it would make sense to build two identical 50 MW
electricity WPSs rather than one. This would have the advantages that
planning costs would be lowered, a technical breakdown of one would still
leave half the capacity of waste enhancement operational and that spare
parts would be interchangeable, as well as reducing the amount of road
transport and its concomitant pollution. In the event that the Turkish
Military Occupied area were to be reunited with the Republic, a third
station could be built at a suitable site.
Assuming two were to be built, where would the ideal sites be? I suggest
near Latsia for one and Vasilikos for the other. The first would be ideal
for Nicosia District and the second for the other districts, minimising
transport and the associated pollution. The design of a modern WPS allows a
distribution of heat and electricity to be balanced. At full electrical
output, the heat is low and vice versa. It is therefore possible to
manage the balance, provided that we have a use for the heat. At Vasilikos,
there would be two ideal possibilities for heat use, which I estimate to be
adjustable between about 50 MW and 150 MW for a 50 MW alternator. The first
is to use it for the proposed land-based regasification plant that will need
large quantities of thermal energy. The second is to use the excess heat to
distil sea water, to help mitigate the water crisis on the island. There are
even other potential uses. The Latsia plant is less evident as to how the
heat can be used. Hot water for the General Hospital would be an easy
solution, as would heat for the Pittas factory, the brewery and other
industries along the B1 road. The heat would be distributed by pressurised
water at 200°C in insulated pipes in a closed circuit, feeding heat
exchangers where needed. Even individual habitations could be centrally
heated in winter from this source.
There is one advantage to be considered for both proposed sites: the
existing proximity of high tension lines would obviate the need for
expensive connection charges.
Rubbish collection
Household garbage could be collected, as usual, in compacting waste
collection vehicles (WCV, similar to the one shown in the Tridel page).
However, the quantity collected by a single WCV would be too small to
justify transport over long distances. It would make sense to have special
leak-proof 12 m containers into which compacted rubbish can be transferred
at a site in each town and large village or cluster of smaller villages.
These containers, holding typically five or six times the volume of a single
collection vehicle, could be transported by articulated trucks to the
nearest WPS, thus reducing the amount of heavy road traffic and pollution on
the motorways. Organic industrial waste which could be assimilated to a 60
litre rubbish bag could be treated similarly. Larger waste, such as planks
of wood from building demolition sites, would need to be treated specially,
at extra cost.
The cost of implementation
WPS plants are not cheap. As a first estimation, the cost breakdown, in
millions of euros, of implementing two identical 50 MW electricity plants
would be:
| Planning, outside mandates, legal fees |
20 |
| Buildings, including offices and industrial contruction |
250 |
| Electrical and mechanical installations |
300 |
| External infrastructure, containers |
20 |
| 10% unforeseens |
60 |
|
Total € million
|
650 |
These figures are estimated by extrapolation of the
costs of the Tridel SA plant in Lausanne, Switzerland, which totalled
the equivalent of €219 million for a 20 MW electric plant, including the
construction of a 4 km rail tunnel under Lausanne and a 1 km services
tunnel, both of which would be unnecessary in Cyprus. In view of the
environmental benefits, it would seem probable that a large part of this
sum may be obtainable from EU subsidies. The remainder may come from a
variety of sources: Government grants, EAC reserves, private investors,
banks, the Church etc.
The time scale
The experience of building the Tridel site can be
extrapolated. In this case, the final decision to construct the plant
was made in September 2001. The planification took over a year and the
ground was broken in February 2003. The technical installations were
started in December 2004 and all the building work was finished by
September 2005 and the technical installations were finished in December
of the same year. It was put into full service in April 2006, just over
4½ years from the decision to go ahead with the project. If the same
contractors were used, I see no reason why two larger stations could not
be put into service within 5 years from the decision to go ahead, in
late 2013, say, on condition there were no political prevarication.
The cost of exploitation
Swiss experience has determined that the overall cost of
exploiting Tridel is about €113/tonne of waste. Without the need to
amortise two costly tunnels, with lower salaries and with the economy of
scale of the larger installations and some of the major maintenance
personnel shared between them, it would not be unrealistic to consider a
figure of under €100/tonne for overall costs. The Swiss charge a minimum
of €131/tonne for household waste to replace the landfill charges. This
could be reduced to €110/tonne. The electricity produced, at 80 per cent
overall capacity would be about 700 GWh/year. If sold at €0.04/kWh, this
would generate a further income of €28 million or nearly €48/tonne. The
excess heat sold could generate as much again. Even pessimistically,
this would appear to be a very profitable concern, even if the charges
for taking the waste in charge were to be reduced, based on available
figures.
Start-up
It would be expected that the Municipalities may not be
fully prepared for the changeover at the time of the new plants being
put into service and it may be that full supply of waste would not reach
the WPSs, over the first few months. This would not be catastrophic
because any shortfall in fuel/waste could be easily made up by digging
into existing landfills and converting them into energy.
Conclusion
Cyprus needs more generation capacity. Two strategically
placed WPS could provide nearly a 10 per cent increase in generating
capacity. This could be implemented, using known and existing technology
and known partners, within a short five-year timeframe, with diligence
and goodwill.
Cyprus is obliged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to
meet Kyoto and EU obligations. WPS technology uses renewable energy from
waste and could avoid using as much fossil fuel and reduce landfill
emissions equivalent to the total emissions from cars.
Cyprus is short of available land for landfills which
must now conform to strict EU Directives. WPS technology can reduce this
need by 90%.
Cyprus is periodically critically short of water. WPS
technology allows for the metered exploitation of heat, which could be
used for the low-cost distillation of sea water (at Vasilikos) or for
central industrial and medical heating (at Latsia).
It would therefore seem that WPS is an almost
immediately exploitable means to provide at least partial answers for
four of this island's problems, by using an abundant and renewable
source of energy already available. At the same time, by enhancing the
value of Cyprus' waste, we can eliminate the unprofitable export of
paper and mixed plastics for recycling in other countries (PET bottles
excluded), by recycling them into energy.
Update
Although not related to Cyprus, an article,
War on Waste, in Engineering and
Technology Magazine, Vol3. Issue 22, November 2008, has
dealt with the same issue in the UK. It stated:
... in 2001, of the 28.2 million tonnes of municipal wate produced, 79 per cent was landfilled,
12 per cent recycled and 8 per cent was incinerated with
energy recovery through 15 or so plants. There are now
22 facilities including plant due to come on stream
later this year, handling a little under five million
tonnes of waste.
...
Given the problems that wind farms face, the less than
glamorous route of generating power from burning waste
has much to offer.
It would seem that the UK has been
listening to common sense. In the essay on
Renewable
Electricity, a recent study has been cited, with
figures showing that wind farms are less productive and
more problematic than was originally thought, even in
Northern Europe, where wind conditions are infinitely
more favourable than here. I am more-than-ever convinced
that Energy from Waste must be the way to go forward in
Cyprus.
Proviso
This essay is offered in good faith as an introductory
qualitative appreciation of what I sincerely believe to be the case. It
has not been profoundly researched. My figures have been taken from
reliable data kindly supplied by Tridel SA and also publicly available
information on the Internet. It is necessary for more detailed studies
to be made to obtain a more accurate quantitative appreciation of the
situation as applied to Cyprus.
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