Many countries overseas, for the first time, are beginning to explore the use of waste-to-energy plants as part of their integrated solid waste management plans. They are doing this for a number of reasons, which include geopolitical and economic pressures, as well as environmental. Overseas markets are actively seeking out, and wanting to apply the advancements made by U.S. waste-to-energy companies in the last three decades. U.S. companies have made U.S. waste-to-energy plants the least costly and most efficient plants in the world. U.S. waste-to-energy companies may be poised for new business opportunity for their systems in overseas markets. However, there are many obstacles to overcome in marketing technology and waste disposal services overseas. Where are those markets of opportunity? There are three criteria which can be used to screen for potential waste-to-energy markets: 1. Living standards; 2. Limitation on land use; and, 3. Rule of law. What are the cultural, geographic and competitive obstacles in marketing overseas? Can obstacles such as language, development costs, time zone differences, institutional experience with privatization, local and foreign competitive advantages be managed or medicated? An understanding of how a global economy impacts the marketing of U.S. waste-to-energy services is essential to formulating an overseas marketing plan.

In order to maximize the beneficial use of waste materials within its jurisdiction, the Western Placer Waste Management Authority (Authority) is exploring the economic, technical, and regulatory feasibility of recovering energy from waste residues delivered to its waste management facility. The purpose of the Study is to support the results of the Authority’s analysis of the emissions associated with converting municipal solid waste (MSW) residuals currently being landfilled into energy as compared to current waste disposal practices.

For the waste disposal of urban areas and major cities at the North American market place rather large scale energy from waste (EfW) plants are needed. This implies a mechanical input of approx. 40 Mg/h [39.36 tn l./h] and thermal input by waste per unit of 110 MW [375.3 MBTU/h] and more. There are basic design criteria that feature large scale EfW plants: - Layout of boiler with horizontal or vertical orientation of convective part. - Top or bottom suspension of boiler. - Flexible design of stoker regarding large throughput figures and heating values of waste with water or air cooled grate bars. - Design and geometry of combustion furnace in order to optimize the flow pattern. - Optimization of boiler steel structure: integrated steel structure for boiler and boiler house enclosure. - Optimization of corrosion protection and maintainability of large scale boilers: cladding versus refractory lining. - Maintenance aspects of the boiler. The paper gives information on the pros and cons regarding the design features with special focus on optimized solutions for large scale EfW plants. For the core component of the combustion system — the grate — Fisia Babcock Environment (FBE) is using forward moving grates as well as roller grates. The moving grate in STEINMÜLLER design, which is used in the great majority of all our plants, has specific characteristics for providing uniform combustion and optimal burnout. The automatic combustion rate control system is the key component in the combustion process in order to receive good burn out quality in slag and flue gas as well as constant steam production and oxygen content of flue gas. This paper includes a detailed report on a modern control system with focus on a simple and efficient control structure. Besides these measures regarding the combustion process, this paper also reports about the respective aspects and concepts for the flue gas cleaning systems. In this field the FBE CIRCUSORB ® process was presented in previous papers and is now compared with a multistage wet flue gas cleaning system. The latter is relevant in case of very low emission requirements.

ecomaine manages solid waste for its member communities through an integrated strategy that includes a single sort recycling center, a waste-to-energy (WTE) power plant and a 250 acre landfill for residual ash. The public organization has over 40 member communities in Maine which equates to over 24% of the State’s population. Established as a non-profit in the 1970’s with a mission to address trash disposal for future generations, a comprehensive waste system has emerged. The method of balefilling municipal solid waste (MSW) was replaced by a state-of-the-art WTE facility in 1988 and the multiple-sort recycling system was upgraded to a single-sort advanced system in 2007. Roughly 170,000 tons of MSW are processed through the WTE facility each year. This results in an average of 83,000–105,000 megawatt-hours of electricity generated annually. Since 2005, recycling tonnage has increased 71% from 21,000 to 36,000 tons. The State of Maine established a “Solid Waste Management Hierarchy” in 2007 cascading in disposal preference from Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Compost, Waste-to-Energy to Landfilling MSW. ecomaine is researching the feasibility of implementing an organics recovery system that would include food waste to further advance the Solid Waste Hierarchy and State’s recycling goal of 50%. ecomaine continues to manage its resources through innovation that highlight the resiliency of an integrated waste management system. For example, ecomaine has adapted to periods of waste shortages through strategies of caching MSW during times of higher waste generation and storing that waste until it is needed. ecomaine selects cover material for temporary use that is combustible so that it can efficiently be processed through the WTE facility. When fuel is scarce, the cached material is returned to the WTE as a fuel input. Another example, of matching a waste to a beneficial reuse is ecomaine ’s ash metals mining project for the recovery of both ferrous metals and valuable non-ferrous material from screened ash. ecomaine strives to sustainably treat residual waste streams after enhanced resource recovery, re-use and recycling efforts and embrace an integrated waste management system. While challenges face many waste disposal operations such as changing regulations, ecomaine communities believe an integrated system with a good design and forward-looking plant management allow for a robust and effective service, as the ecomaine example shows.

The technology selected by the Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation for its new waste-conversion facility marks an unprecedented step forward in sustainable waste management. Developed by Green Conversion Systems (GCS) in Rye, New York, the proposed facility utilizes commercially-proven waste-treatment technologies which combine the proven benefits of a conventional materials-recycling facility (MRF) with technologies developed for the newest generation of waste-to-energy (WTE) facilities operating in Europe. As a result, the proposed plant will convert essentially all of the waste into electrical power and recyclable byproducts. In the plant design developed by GCS, “black-bin” (post-curbside recycling) waste collected by the City of Los Angeles is treated in a two-step process: • An advanced materials-recovery facility recovers almost 30 percent of the waste for recycling. • The remaining waste is processed in an advanced WTE facility which produces electrical power and a range of commercial byproducts. • More than 99 percent of the waste treated will be diverted from landfilling. When the plant becomes operational, it will provide waste disposal at reasonable costs and several hundred direct and indirect jobs for the surrounding community.

The City and County of Honolulu on the Island of Oahu in the Hawaiian chain has been taking steps to reduce the need for landfilling and to continue to be self-sufficient for waste disposal. For an island, having the capacity to process all of its waste is crucial and producing power helps reduce reliance on imported fossil fuels. The City and County relies upon its waste-to-energy facility to manage the waste stream. The existing H-POWER Waste-to-Energy (WTE) Facility, which has been in operation for about twenty years, is a 2,000 ton-per-day (tpd) refuse derived fuel (RDF) two-unit plant with a single condensing steam turbine generator. Recent actions to enhance and expand the H-POWER Facility have been undertaken to ensure the needs to the island will be met for the foreseeable future. Enhancements and an expansion of the existing H-POWER Facility have begun and are well into construction. The enhancements will improve environmental performance and reliability and the expansion will add nearly fifty percent to the facility capacity. When complete, the expanded facility will have a number of unique features that will improve its ability to manage more types of municipal solid waste. The facility expansion will utilize mass burn technology in a single 900 tpd combustion unit with an associated turbine generator. The expansion unit will feature fabric filters for particulate control and state-of-the-art Covanta Very Low NO x (VLN™) technology intended to reduce NO x emissions well below that achieved with conventional selective non-catalytic reduction (SNCR) used at many other WTE plants in the USA. Independent of the expansion, the existing facility has been retrofitted with new fabric filters and induced-draft fans, which offer greater particulate and heavy metal control and improve control of other emissions. The existing facility is also getting much-needed improvements to boost reliability for many years to come. When the expansion comes on line, the facility will reliably generate about 7 percent of the island’s electrical power as opposed to 5 percent from the current 2,000 tpd of waste processed. This paper explores progress to date on the revitalization of the H-POWER Facility and its expansion.

American Samoa is an unincorporated territory of the U.S. roughly 2,300 air miles southwest of Honolulu and about 2,700 miles north of Australia. The largest and most populated island in American Samoa is Tutuila, which is located the territory’s historic capitol of Pago Pago. The territory is home to the world’s largest tuna cannery. Population growth has been dramatic and the island’s energy costs have increased substantially in recent years. The American Samoa Power Authority (ASPA) is responsible for solid waste collection and disposal in the territory with landfilling being the primary mode of waste disposal. However, limited available land on the main island due to volcanic topography limits the long-term use of landfilling as the island’s sole waste management tool. The relative isolated location of American Samoa and the instability of world oil markets have prompted ASPA to look at more environmentally and economically sustainable means of solid waste management. As an outgrowth of its research, ASPA submitted and received a technical assistance grant from the U.s. Department of the Interior to conduct an extensive waste composition study and EfW feasibility study to examine the advantages and disadvantages of efW for American Samoa. The results of these studies have been completed by SCS on behalf of ASPA, which is currently taking steps to permit and procure a 2.0 megawatt, modular efW facility that will go online in 2012 as part of a public private partnership. The lessons learned by SCs and ASPA during the course of the investigations are illustrative of the types of long-term, waste management and energy decision-making that many small communities will have to undertake to attain viable and sustainable alternatives.

Oahu has special needs and requirements when it comes to dealing with solid waste on the island. The City and County of Honolulu has successfully addressed this problem in the past and is working on solutions for the future. Five percent of the island’s electrical power has been generated reliably from the 2000 tons per day of waste processed by their H-POWER Waste-to-Energy Facility. The facility has been processing waste for nearly twenty years and the volume of refuse going to the landfill is reduced by 90 percent. Honolulu is considering the best solutions for the island’s waste for the coming years. Waste-to-energy works in partnership with recycling to reduce the island’s increasing waste volumes. Recycling programs are in place and additional recycling measures are being considered. Landfill space is limited and questions exist regarding the ongoing use of the existing landfill and what will happen when it is closed. In an island setting, some alternatives available to other areas such as long haul to distant landfills are not available to bridge solid waste issues. Therefore practical solutions must be found and implemented in a timely manner. A number of initiatives and plans are in development. Measures are underway to prepare the H-POWER facility for future emission requirements and operation for the next twenty years. Steps have been taken toward expansion of the existing facility. Permitting and negotiations with agencies and utilities are under way. This paper will explore and expand upon these issues showing how they are interrelated to one another.

In December 2007 the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) took place in Bali. It was based on the IPCC report no. 4 presented in Barcelona on November 2007. The messages are briefly: • Warming of the climate system is unequivocal; • Global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions due to human activities have grown since pre-industrial times; • Continued GHG emissions at or above current rates would cause further warming and induce many changes in the global climate system during the 21 st century that would very likely be larger than those observed during the 20 th century; • Key mitigation technologies in the waste sector: Landfill Gas (LFG) methane recovery; waste incineration with energy recovery; composting of organic waste; controlled waste water treatment; recycling and waste minimisation; biocovers and biofilters to optimise methane oxidation. The above by the IPCC proposed mitigation technologies for the waste sector can be categorized regarding specific waste treatment scenarios and their efficiency expressed in kg CO 2 equivalent emitted per ton of waste. • Landfill w/o LFG recovery 1850 kg CO 2 -eq; • Landfill with LFG recovery 250–775 kg CO 2 -eq; • Energy-from-Waste plant −1000..−100 kg CO 2 -eq. With a population of little over 300 million people and a per capita municipal waste generation rate of 760 kg/person.year, the total waste generated in the USA is about 230 million Mg/year (OECD). With the treatment scenarios discussed above, the following can be stated: • If all wastes were landfilled waste disposal would correspond to 425 million tons of CO 2 equivalents. • If all wastes were incinerated in Energy-from-Waste (EfW) plants, the emissions could be reduced by about 500 million tons of CO 2 equivalents (about 9% of today’s US CO 2 output) and make the waste management sector a GHG emissions sink. • The total electricity generated from EfW plants could be as high as 15,000 MW replacing about 50 standard 300 MW power plant units. To an average US 4 person household about 3 t/year of municipal solid wastes can be allocated, corresponding to an annual difference between landfilling without LFG recovery and EfW treatment of about 6.9 Mg CO 2 -eq /year. If this household wanted to achieve the same reduction of CO 2 equivalent emissions by other means than having these wastes burnt in a modern EfW plant, they have the following options: • Remove one automobile from use (EPA: 6.0 Mg CO 2 -eq /year); • Cut household electricity consumption by 80% (EIA: 7.8 Mg CO 2 -eq /year). The European parliament commission has proposed to reduce CO 2 emissions in Europe to 20–30% below 1990 levels. In comparison with Europe, annual GHG emissions (CO 2 -eq/person year) in the U.S. today are on a level about double that of the Europe. In order to achieve a similar reduction in the U.S., significant efforts have to be done on all energy fronts. Energy-from-Waste (EfW) is one of them, which at the same time solves a space and pollution problem and does not leave these issues to future generations.

The subject of the presentation is Green Power Marketing for Waste To Energy Facilities. Many WTE projects signed long term energy contracts under the rules of PURPA. Several projects signed short term agreements. In other cases, power contacts were sold or assigned by the original purchaser or the project voluntarily agreed to a buy out. In any case, power markets have changed and are continuing to change. One of the most significant changes is the deregulation of the electricity market. WTE projects are no longer required to sell power to a captive utility. While electricity continues to flow through the same transmission lines, those lines may be owned by a different entity than the power purchaser, and will certainly end up as a transaction cleared by the regional power grid. In addition to “energy” and “capacity”, power can be sold as “green” or “renewable” for additional revenues. WTE power can be sold to wholesale purchasers for resale. Some WTE owners are becoming licensed to sell retail power, or arranging to wheel power to the local government which owns the WTE facility. WTE owners and operators depend on energy revenues to offset capital and operating costs. It is critical to understand how power marketing works. Most importantly, it is incumbent on each WTE owner/operator to make sure that Renewable Portfolio Standards established on the State and Federal level include WTE as a defined and eligible source of power. In the absence of Federal legislation, each State may set its own rules and requirements. Furthermore, States can set a renewable energy requirement for its purchases of energy. The panelists will present clear examples of the above from three points of view: Mr. Larry Plitch is an attorney who spent many years with Wheelabrator, and now markets power for Wheelabrator and other WTE owners. Ms. Robin Davidov is the Executive Director of the Northeast Maryland Waste Disposal Authority in Baltimore, Maryland. The Authority developed and financed three WTE facilities in Maryland, and owns two of the facilities. Ms. Davidov has been managing power sales for ten years, and most recently negotiated an electricity sales agreement with Mirant Americas Energy Marketing, L.P. Mr. Chris Pollatos is a Director with Mirant, and will speak about his experience in purchasing power from WTE and other renewable sources as well as wholesale power sales, including the sale of Renewable Energy Credits.

The City of Tampa’s solution to solving their waste disposal problems started almost 30 years ago. A conventional refractory lined incinerator equipped with a wet quench scrubber was constructed and operated by the City, starting in 1965. The old incinerator would often belch black soot and smoke and in 1979 was shutdown for environmental concerns. The City selected Waste Management Energy Systems, then a subsidiary of Waste Management Inc., to design, build, and operate for 20 years, a tried and proven waste combustor linked with a heat recovery boiler, electrostatic precipitator, and a turbine generator. This system was placed into operation in 1985 and the last two units were operated until July 2000 when compliance with the Clean Air Act required their retrofit. In 1996, the City assembled a Project Team consisting of consultants that specialized in various aspects of solid waste disposal including: permitting, design, operations, and construction oversight. After several years of design, procurement, and negotiations, Wheelabrator was selected as the successful vendor to design, construct, and operate the retrofitted facility. Construction began in April 1999 and went into commercial operation in January 2002.

Ireland has been called the Silicon Valley of Europe. Like the Silicon Valley in the U.S. it has a large amount of waste created by the Microchip Industry. Ireland is also an agricultural country. A large amount of bio-waste has been stockpiled in Ireland. This is the result of recent outbreaks/epidemics of animal diseases in the EU. The current growth industry of Ireland is the chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturing industry. Nine of the top ten pharmaceutical companies are manufacturing in Ireland. Wastes from these industries are often toxic and hazardous. They can contain large amounts of combustible organic compounds depending on their source. Since Ireland is an island it has special problems disposing of waste. Waste comes in as products as packaging and it doesn’t go out. The emerging solution is Incineration. Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) can contain many forms of metal and chemistry under normal conditions. When a large amount of the primary industry of a region is chemistry based and agricultural based there is the probability of more than usual amount of toxic residue in the refuse. The ash from incineration contains items such as dioxins & heavy metals that are environmental toxins. Using a Plasma Pyrolysis Vitrification (PPV) process the volume of the resultant ash from incineration can be further reduced by as much as 30 to 1. A PPV process has an added advantage of giving an incineration facility the capability of rendering ash safe for reuse as construction material and as a side benefit reclaiming many valuable elemental components of the ash. The PPV plant can be used to destroy waste directly and economically as long as the gate fees are high. One byproduct of incinerator ash smelting/destruction using a PPV process is CO gas, a combustible fuel resource for power generation. Precious metals may also be reclaimed as an alloy material by-product.

This paper focuses on significant changes in the overall economics of waste-to-energy (WTE) during the last 30 years. The WTE industry in this country has seen several different business cycles occur since 1975, as different market drivers have caused the industry to rise and fall. This paper compares: (1) those economic factors that were in play in 1975, when the first WTE facility in the United States was built, and the industry was in its infancy; (2) the factors at play when the WTE industry was at its height in 1990; and (3) some of the factors that caused the industry’s steep downward trend since 1994, when the last greenfield WTE facility in the United States was built. The paper will identify changes that have occurred with regard to the pricing of electricity and the ability of public sectors to charge non-market-based tipping fees. The paper discusses the drivers of 2006 and focuses on completed economic factors to be considered when comparing WTE with other waste disposal means. The paper discusses the drivers of 2006 and whether the industry is finally poised to begin an upward turn in the cycle. The paper focuses on the impact of the cost of diesel fuel oil on the overall economics of long-haul transfer, and how that is likely to impact the future development of WTE facilities. The paper also presents a case study of a recent analysis that was undertaken for two counties that were evaluating the financial viability of WTE as compared to other disposal options.