Palm Beach County (Florida) Solid Waste Authority built an integrated solid waste management system in the 1980s and 1990s around an 1,800 tpd Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) Waste-to-Energy (WTE) facility. The system included a network of five regional transfer stations, Subtitle D sanitary landfill, recovered materials processing facility, composting facility, metals processing facility and household hazardous waste collection program. The WTE, which became operational in 1989, was built with two 900 tpd RDF combustion units. Space was provided for the addition of a third combustion unit, a second turbine-generator and an extra flue was installed in the facility’s stack. By 2004, the WTE was fifteen years old. It had been running at over 125% availability and well above its nominal capacity for almost a decade. Landfill capacity was being consumed at a rate which would see it filled in less than 20 years. The County had been hit with repeated hurricanes in recent years and the County’s population was continuing to grow making landfill capacity projections far from certain. The Authority began an assessment of its long term capacity options which included renovation of its existing WTE facility, expansion of that facility, development of a new WTE facility, development of a new Subtitle D Landfill and several out-of-county options. This paper will focus on the results of this assessment with emphasis on the current efforts to develop a new Mass Burn WTE facility with a capacity of 3,000 tpd and a commercial operations date of 2015. It will be the largest new WTE built in North America in more than 20 years. The choice of Mass Burn technology, facility and combustion module sizing, air pollution control technology, facility site selection, environmental permitting, public outreach program, project financing and procurement and contracting approach will be discussed.
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18th Annual North American Waste-to-Energy Conference
May 11–13, 2010
Orlando, Florida, USA
Conference Sponsors:
- Solid Waste Processing Division and Environmental Engineering Division
ISBN:
978-0-7918-4393-2
PROCEEDINGS PAPER
Palm Beach County WTE Expansion Model
Thomas M. Henderson,
Thomas M. Henderson
Malcolm Pirnie, Inc., West Palm Beach, FL
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Leah K. Richter
Leah K. Richter
Malcolm Pirnie, Inc., Plantation, FL
Search for other works by this author on:
Thomas M. Henderson
Malcolm Pirnie, Inc., West Palm Beach, FL
Leah K. Richter
Malcolm Pirnie, Inc., Plantation, FL
Paper No:
NAWTEC18-3530, pp. 113-120; 8 pages
Published Online:
November 1, 2010
Citation
Henderson, TM, & Richter, LK. "Palm Beach County WTE Expansion Model." Proceedings of the 18th Annual North American Waste-to-Energy Conference. 18th Annual North American Waste-to-Energy Conference. Orlando, Florida, USA. May 11–13, 2010. pp. 113-120. ASME. https://doi.org/10.1115/NAWTEC18-3530
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