PLANT SIZE

Plant Size

The vexing question for everybody is the challenge of making a Waste to Energy Plant both a commercially viable activity and a service to the community.

New Centre Energy tackle this by having a Plant size that allows sufficient MSW to be processed through to Electricity at economically sensible amounts; without being so big that they become a burden in the community there serve.

Too big and the operations become wieldy and cumbersome. Too small and they become uneconomic. Size therefore matters!

The ability to site the Plant closer to the community that it serves (because there are No Harmful Emissions) also means that other community costs are reduced; such as road wear, congestion (transporting the MSW) and reduced transmission losses (supplying the Electricity back to a community). It also allows jobs to be created in the community where the Plant exists.

It is a fact that the collection and disposal of MSW has a cost but there are also inherent emission issues in it collection. If you emit more harmful gasses collecting the waste and taking it to the Plant than the Plant itself there needs to be a different solution. The smaller footprint Waste to Energy Plant facilitates reduction in collection system emissions.

It is also perhaps worth noting that these distributed Waste to Energy Plants are not only more community based, in that people can see where their waste is going and therefore where some of their power is coming from, they are far less vulnerable in terms of security. They become a distributed community asset!

Finally the ability to regularly collect unsegregated waste from the community reduces the production of bad odours, the negative community effects of stored waste and reduces the propensity for illegal dumping and fly tipping.

It helps promote the understanding that

“Their Waste is; Their power”.

After all they have already paid for the waste they produce!

Typically Plants process around 550 Metric Tonne of MSW per day and can supply around 30 Mega Watts of Power/hour. Of course a plant can be smaller at 50 MT/D or larger up to 850 MT/D could be constructed, but when the MSW tonnage gets very big, the answer for a community might be a twin Plant or 2 separate Plants. These options need to be studied so that the community is best served.