# Waste to energy



## begreen (May 15, 2011)

I am wondering how many people here live in communities that have implemented waste to energy systems to deal with solid waste? Our large, county landfill is going to reach capacity in about 4 years and the alternative of shipping it out of county is expensive. In Denmark, the way they deal with trash is significantly different. They recycle aggressively and use waste for fuel. But due in large part to nimbyism and hyper-environmentalists that want no solid waste generated by society, there are very few of these plants here. Is your community one of them or considering this? How has it worked out?


----------



## BrotherBart (May 15, 2011)

Back around 1990 our county was going to build a waste to energy incinerator. Bought the land and then before they could float the bond issue the Supreme Court ruled that â€œflow controlâ€ ordinances (mandating that solid waste be delivered to a particular landfill) were unconstitutional so the economic geography of waste management expanded quickly. Private companies saw an opportunity to open new landfills that met Federal pollution control mandates and were less expensive to operate than the smaller county facilities.

We have a central government owned and managed landfill but the site that would have housed the incinerator was used as a transfer station instead and then was sold to a company as the site for a natural gas power plant.

Three adjoining counties have waste to energy incinerators. We trade some trash to them for yard waste for our mulch operation.


----------



## fishingpol (May 15, 2011)

Here is a link to the plant in my city.  I was much younger at the time the plant was built but I recall that there would be a cheaper dumping fee per ton for the city permitting the plant to be built.  The ash is put into a landfill on-site that I believe is rubber lined.  The hill has grown over the years.

Our city has greatly improved its' recycling program over the past few years.  I just can't understand why recycling was not started aggressively 20 years ago.  We as Americans need to get aggressive to find solutions or implement programs to reduce  waste instead of creating more.  Not that I'm for government telling us everything that we have to do, but recycling should be something that needs to be done.     

http://www.covantaenergy.com/en/list-of-facilities/covanta-haverhill/covanta-haverhill-detailed.aspx


----------



## begreen (May 15, 2011)

It seems crazy with the centralizing of mega-landfills, managed privately, that we are not turning them into regional power centers.

We're fortunate in recycling to have one of the earliest and largest urban recycling programs in Seattle. They started doing this in the early 1980's by making it convenient and raised the trash bills as persuasion to recycle. They have continued to expand and improve the program and it works.


----------



## BrotherBart (May 15, 2011)

I was a NIMBY big time after that incinerator plan fell apart. Because they projected that without it they would need a new landfill site and that the best choice was across the road from my new house.

They finally decided that the old landfill two and a half miles away could be doubled in size more economically.


----------



## fishingpol (May 15, 2011)

It seems like many of the green movements start on the left coast and eventually work their way eastward.  

They are still trying to put up the "Cape Wind Project" out here.  Kudos on the long-running recycling program.    Recycling is money to cities and towns, residents just have to get there butts in gear and get on board.  I just wish some of the green movements would take hold out here.

Some local communities that have a "pay as you throw" system have full recycling bins at the curb and one or two "paid" bags ready for pickup.  I'm for it, except I am already paying taxes for trash pick-up, so I don't want to pay another fee for bags.


----------



## begreen (May 15, 2011)

We're not all golden. Bottling companies have successfully lobbied for years against in store collection of bottles and cans in grocery stores. The fear they spread is that it would be unsanitary. Nonsense, but true. And so we have no return fee attached to the bottle or can. And without incentives, many folks just toss em.


----------



## fishingpol (May 15, 2011)

We have the MA. bottle bill.  Five cents tax on bottles, can be returned at just about anywhere.  The local stores have redemption machines that look like a Coke machine.  Feed the cans or bottles in the respective machine, the bar code is scanned and the bottle is crushed and cans are shredded.  A voucher is then printed for redemption at the courtesy desk.  These units are at the front of the stores as soon as you walk in.  The shredded bottles go into a plastic bag within the machine.  I see more contamination in the meat cooler chest when the foam chicken liver containers drip on the meat packages below.   :sick:   "Don't take the chicken if the package is a stickin'".

It is funny that we have the bottle bill and I believe more bottles are recycled and tossed than redeemed.  Although on recycling days, pick-up trucks drive around with guys filling the back with nickel botles.  Recycling waste haulers really don't like this with the loss of revenue in the aluminum and glass. 




http://www.mass.gov/dep/recycle/reduce/bbillcon.htm


----------



## midwestcoast (May 15, 2011)

Never have lived near  a waste incinerator. As far as I've read they are at the point now where they can actually get reasonably low emissions so long as appropriate standards are enforced (as opposed to the nightmare emissions of earlier incinerators).
 IMO we should use them after implementing better diversion programs.  Chicago's recycling program for instance, is getting better these days, but was basically a complete joke up to just a couple years ago (blue bags in a combined waste stream... very low real recycling rates) & I bet there are many smaller cities out there not doing much better.  
The mostly rural municipality in Ontario where I'm from has had green-bin pick-up (for compost) for about 10 years now, but no-one is even talking about it around here yet.
I pay the same monthly bill for garbage pick-up for my 1/2 bag as any neighbour who made say 6 bags/week would. Of course it used to be covered by our property taxes, but that's a whole nother story......
Doubling the diversion rate for household trash isn't difficult at all:  Kitchen Waste pick-up, recycling pick-up more frequent than garbage, sell bag tags for more than X number of bags per person per week.  Well implemented these steps alone could get us to 2/3rds diversion rate and have done so in many places.  Waste to energy looks like a pretty good solution for the higher-hanging fruit.


----------



## SolarAndWood (May 15, 2011)

This is ours:

http://ocrra.org/trash_wte.asp

I don't know much about it.  I drive by it to and from work every day.  It never smells.

We also do a food waste program:

http://ocrra.org/yardwaste_food.asp


----------



## woodchip (May 15, 2011)

New Zealand has also invested a lot of waste to energy plants around the country. 

We have been slow to catch on here, as nimby types are horrified at "burning" waste and have put out horror stories in the past.

Modern operations have very efficient systems which clean the emissions very thoroughly.

I like the idea as you get power from waste, and it is a lot quicker and easier to get rid of waste than fiddle about trying to bury it in holes in the ground. 

And think of the bonus, you are getting power, something you cannot guarantee from a wind farm on a windless day, or a solar energy plant in the middle of winter during a long cold night


----------



## fishingpol (May 15, 2011)

Solar, 
  I like the website for waste food.  We have reduced our trash to the curb by composting.  It does make a difference.


----------



## SolarAndWood (May 15, 2011)

The end product is nice as well.  I put somewhere between 15 and 20 yards of it on our upper garden terrace this year.


----------



## BrotherBart (May 15, 2011)

Our waste food goes into the woods. I have never had the slightest desire to know what eats it.


----------



## fishingpol (May 15, 2011)

15 - 20 yards, Jiminy Crickets.  I thought I was doing good with a few wheelbarrows full for the whole year.


----------



## SolarAndWood (May 15, 2011)

Here is the thread if you are interested:

https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/73486/

I started with glacial till 5 years ago.  The county program has been a nice way to build up the beds without breaking the bank.


----------



## begreen (May 15, 2011)

We have our waste down to 12 garbage cans a year. It would be lower, but there is no recycling program for the virgin vinyl bags that compost comes in yet. This used to really bug me when we had the pellet stove. Turns out the nearest place was about 90 miles south!


----------



## Jack22 (May 16, 2011)

I have a trash burning plant in my town. It is owned by a company called Covanta. I believe my township pays to drop their trash there and then the plant makes money by producing electric. I used to work at a power plant that burns methane. It was an active landfill with a methane gas collection system under it. We would pull the gas from the landfill, burn it in a boiler to produce steam and then power a 10 MW steam turbine generator. A small operation but I found it to be very interesting.


----------



## BrotherBart (May 16, 2011)

Gotta more trash bags than that. But after the two warehouses collapsed under the snow load last year I recycled a little over a hundred and twenty thousand dollars worth of new telcom and computer cable inventory through a recycler for $2,800. I hope that buys me a place in green heaven.


----------



## jimbom (May 16, 2011)

Thirty years ago in Japan, we put different recycle categories out each day of the week it seemed.  You didn't leave them in front of your house.  They were placed at the corner with the neighbors.  Different corners for some days.  

This is a three minute video.  34 seconds in, you will see a list of the categories and the days scheduled for each category.  It is every bit as complicated as it looks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybvTjjbHiVE

God help you if you put dry cloth rags out on the day leather was on the list.  Or wet garbage when it was sneakers and flip-flops day.  They were very nice about it, but insisted things be proper.


----------



## mayhem (May 16, 2011)

Locally the town I live in has been successfully running a waste to energy plant since 1979.

http://www.gbbinc.com/projects/pittsfield.shtml

They burn trash and make steam which is sold to the nearby Crane Papermill (where all the paper for your money is made).


----------



## dougstove (May 16, 2011)

My region does green (compostable + landfill) vs. blue (recyclable) garbage.  The trucks are divided into 2 compartments.  There is a sorting station where magnets, sifters and people separate different streams.
We get about 85% compliance with the voluntary initial domestic sorting, which is simple.
I lived next to a waste-to-energy plant in Sweden that generated local steam for a neighbourhood of about 10,000 people.  It worked, but it meant that the paper goods were not recycled, because they needed them to keep the burn going well.

A problem with bag tags etc. is they can provoke random dumping of garbage in ditches etc.
I think deposits and self-sorting is a better way to go.

My house 'green' compostable/landfill stream is now 1 small bag per week, because we compost kitchen scraps ourselves.
But our 'blue' recyclable stream is big, largely because the milk companies lobbied against having their containers have a deposit.
So milk containers go to the landfill but identical wax cardboard juice containers are recyclable.  Disgusting.


----------



## peakbagger (May 16, 2011)

The early waste to energy plants in the US were pretty dirty and a lot of them are still running so they have given the technology a bad reputation and many states and regions have outlawed them. The technology and the regulations have imporved substantially but there is still a "Not in my backyard" mentality in many areas. There are new govenment air standards that are mandatory for both existing and new plants that will make the plants burn really clean. One downside is that the cost to build the plants are very high compared to other generation tecnologies, generally the electric power has to be subsidized to make it competitive with new natrual gas generation. The increased amount of recycling has also impacted the plants economics as many of the high btu value components of the fuel are caught before they are burned.


----------



## Dune (May 16, 2011)

midwestcoast said:
			
		

> Never have lived near  a waste incinerator. As far as I've read they are at the point now where they can actually get reasonably low emissions so long as appropriate standards are enforced (as opposed to the nightmare emissions of earlier incinerators).
> IMO we should use them after implementing better diversion programs.  Chicago's recycling program for instance, is getting better these days, but was basically a complete joke up to just a couple years ago (blue bags in a combined waste stream... very low real recycling rates) & I bet there are many smaller cities out there not doing much better.
> The mostly rural municipality in Ontario where I'm from has had green-bin pick-up (for compost) for about 10 years now, but no-one is even talking about it around here yet.
> I pay the same monthly bill for garbage pick-up for my 1/2 bag as any neighbour who made say 6 bags/week would. Of course it used to be covered by our property taxes, but that's a whole nother story......
> Doubling the diversion rate for household trash isn't difficult at all:  Kitchen Waste pick-up, recycling pick-up more frequent than garbage, sell bag tags for more than X number of bags per person per week.  Well implemented these steps alone could get us to 2/3rds diversion rate and have done so in many places.  Waste to energy looks like a pretty good solution for the higher-hanging fruit.



Yes you did. The regional incinerator is in Rochester (just over the bridge past Wareham) and serves all of Cape Cod except Bourne. Most of the trash from the Cape goes to Rochester by train, from centalized public transfer stations. I can't remember the exact electrical capacity, but it is in mega-watts.


----------



## dougstove (May 16, 2011)

I think an honest industrial ecology analyses is needed, case-by-case, since in some regions the energy value of scrap paper is probably higher than the true recycled value of the scrap paper.
If the wood cellulose takes a detour through paper on its way to energy, it works out to:
biomass ->paper -> energy;  instead of biomass -> energy.

I also strongly suspect that neighbourhood or institutional heat plants would be a better way to salvage the energy content of waste, as opposed to steam turbines for electricity.  But neighbourhood heat plants need up-front planning to work and would be expensive to retro-fit to existing neighbourhoods.


----------



## begreen (May 16, 2011)

I'd prefer more localized incineration, but getting one of these permitted is probably a multi-year, difficult affair. The disadvantages of large, remote, centralized plants are long haul transport, power distant from the urban needs, more vulnerable to force majeure disruption.


----------



## midwestcoast (May 16, 2011)

midwestcoast said:
			
		

> Never have lived near  a waste incinerator....





			
				Dune said:
			
		

> Yes you did. The regional incinerator is in Rochester (just over the bridge past Wareham) and serves all of Cape Cod except Bourne. Most of the trash from the Cape goes to Rochester by train, from centalized public transfer stations. I can't remember the exact electrical capacity, but it is in mega-watts.



er, no I didn't. Ive lived in a few places around southern Ontario, Chicago, now NW Indiana.  We have sand dunes here too, hence the avatar 
I did work for a couple months at the military res near Falmouth, MA on that big Perchlorate problem they have in the groundwater there.


----------



## Dune (May 16, 2011)

midwestcoast said:
			
		

> midwestcoast said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Sorry, I asumed from your sig line that you had lived here.


----------



## TMonter (May 16, 2011)

BeGreen said:
			
		

> I'd prefer more localized incineration, but getting one of these permitted is probably a multi-year, difficult affair. The disadvantages of large, remote, centralized plants are long haul transport, power distant from the urban needs, more vulnerable to force majeure disruption.



Waste incineration doesn't lend itself well to small scales is the largest problem. The amount of equipment needed to run a waste incinerator precludes scaling down in most instances.


----------



## TMonter (May 16, 2011)

dougstove said:
			
		

> I think an honest industrial ecology analyses is needed, case-by-case, since in some regions the energy value of scrap paper is probably higher than the true recycled value of the scrap paper.
> If the wood cellulose takes a detour through paper on its way to energy, it works out to:
> biomass ->paper -> energy;  instead of biomass -> energy.
> 
> I also strongly suspect that neighbourhood or institutional heat plants would be a better way to salvage the energy content of waste, as opposed to steam turbines for electricity.  But neighbourhood heat plants need up-front planning to work and would be expensive to retro-fit to existing neighbourhoods.



Actually most types of paper make fairly poor fuel because of low density and because of binders in the paper. Usually it has to be supplemented with another fuel to get complete combustion and the high temperatures needed to burn off all the VOC's.


----------



## begreen (May 16, 2011)

TMonter said:
			
		

> BeGreen said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Yes, I understand that line of thinking. My thought was to keep it in the county instead of 300+ miles away which is where the plan appears to be moving the landfill in 4 years or so. That would service the metropolitan area quite well and would produce a lot of power. 

On the other hand, Denmark appears to be doing well with smaller power incincerators that not only power the local community, they heat it too.


----------



## CTYank (May 16, 2011)

According to some studies I've seen reported, there's a strong correlation between recycling and energy conservation. And, that we in the US are doing quite poorly in some material categories, resulting in greatly increased energy consumption. (Interesting graphs shown in Nat.Geo. article of a couple years ago.)
Re burning garbage, the Netherlands simply can't afford to do that. Rather, they have national compost facilities, to generate topsoil and partly compensate for loss to the sea. Interesting railcars also for hauling compostables.
Oh well, there are some companies, like in San Fran, that are showing the financial value of aggressive recycling efforts.


----------



## TMonter (May 16, 2011)

BeGreen said:
			
		

> TMonter said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Denmark also has a high population density that doesn't exist in the US except for a very few select areas. Denmark has an average population density somewhere around 330 people/Square mile and the US has a density of 83 people/square mile (Approximately 4x the population density of the US). District heating only works well in very few instances. What works in Europe often time just won't work here due to factors that cannot be controlled.


----------



## dougstove (May 16, 2011)

> "Denmark has an average population density somewhere around 330 people/Square mile and the US has a density of 83 people/square mile (Approximately 4x the population density of the US)."



If you look at the regions where most people  live in the USA (or, even in Canada), the population densities are not far off European levels.
Europe is fairly evenly populated over most of the continent, because most of Europe can support high densities.
Large chunks of North America are still nearly empty because they are dry or frozen (no offence, NWT or Montana).

So district heat plants could be feasible in many (not all) areas, if we wanted them.

This graph shows it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Population_density_with_key.png


----------



## SolarAndWood (May 16, 2011)

BeGreen said:
			
		

> TMonter said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Ours is about 2 miles from downtown and the SU campus well within city limits in a county with 587 people per square mile.  The property is very well landscaped and maintained.  I see it as an asset as opposed to a liability and I drive right along its property line every morning.


----------



## TMonter (May 16, 2011)

dougstove said:
			
		

> > "Denmark has an average population density somewhere around 330 people/Square mile and the US has a density of 83 people/square mile (Approximately 4x the population density of the US)."
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Feasible does not equal cost effective. Lots of things are feasible, they must also be cost effective to be viable.


----------



## begreen (May 16, 2011)

I think the issue is more the lack of will to change and adopt new strategies in urban planning. Maybe we are just denser in the head here, victims of our own sprawl.


----------



## woodchip (May 17, 2011)

BeGreen said:
			
		

> I think the issue is more the lack of will to change and adopt new strategies in urban planning. Maybe we are just denser in the head here, victims of our own sprawl.



Neither.......

I reckon it comes down being used to cheap oil over the years.

We were promised endless free power in the 1960's with North Sea oil and gas.

Of course, neither happened in reality, but we did use it like it was endless and free, until it started to run out........

But then, we have our own problems here with generating electricity with biomass, be it waste incinerating or wood fired power stations.

It's far more cost effective if it does not need to be hauled long distances. 

So imagine the scenario where we are sending our local waste woodchips to Sweden, whilst importing woodchips from Scandinavia (which includes Sweden) to power own own local incinerator:

http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/9029879.Woodchip_exports_to_warm_Swedish_homes/

If you want dense, our local planners wrote the book and got the first prize with that one  ;-)


----------



## mainemac (May 17, 2011)

BeGreen

Good luck with this interesting topic
Here in Portland 21 Communities do single stream recycling then trash is burned to generate 
100,000 Megawats of electricty via steam turbine
No mention of heating.

Ecomaine.org


Tom


----------



## Delta-T (May 17, 2011)

If/When we get around to reclaiming the run down sections of our urban areas, hopefully we'll consider zone heating and power generation. The Europeans basically have to rebuild continuously inside the urban centers, because they really can't build outward. Still a lot cheaper to build something new than to rebuild a bunch of stuff in the city in the US of A.


----------



## TMonter (May 17, 2011)

mainemac said:
			
		

> BeGreen
> 
> Good luck with this interesting topic
> Here in Portland 21 Communities do single stream recycling then trash is burned to generate
> ...



I doubt it's a 100k Megawatts. Grand Coulee Dam is only 8000 Megawatts and it could power an entire state. Kilowatts maybe.


----------



## TMonter (May 17, 2011)

Delta-T said:
			
		

> If/When we get around to reclaiming the run down sections of our urban areas, hopefully we'll consider zone heating and power generation. The Europeans basically have to rebuild continuously inside the urban centers, because they really can't build outward. Still a lot cheaper to build something new than to rebuild a bunch of stuff in the city in the US of A.



Which is exactly the problem. Most cities without previous district heating infrastructure cannot afford the costs to go to district heating. Quite simply there is no payback for the costs involved.

For example I did a lot of the engineering on the Seattle Steam biomass project and they mentioned that they can barely afford upkeep on their buried steam lines and could never afford to compete with other heating methods if the infrastructure did not exist. Additionally district heating is not always the most cost effective or energy efficient heating method.


----------



## jimbom (May 17, 2011)

I supervised two steam heating district systems and reconstructed the outside plant on part of one of those.  My calculations on both systems was 2/3 of the heat was lost in the distribution.  This is the heat actually put into the systems.  Does not take into consideration the efficiency of the boilers.  And we had good boilers.  The guys running the plants were experts.  When we opened the boilers up every three years, the water sides were pristine.  We did not return all condensate due to payback considerations.  We ran year round steam trap repair/replacement programs and fixed every leak discovered.  In addition, when we laid up the lines after heating season, we used nitrogen.  All in all, a true environmentalist would do well to examine district heating systems with an open mind, an engineers evaluation, and an accountants approach.   They may not be what they seem in all applications.


----------



## begreen (May 18, 2011)

TMonter said:
			
		

> mainemac said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Still researching. The Danish units are producing 590KWh/ton of trash. There are lots of big plants in the megawatt range from what I have read. It even looks like there is a 16MW unit nearby in Spokane, WA. CT has a couple 67MW plants, FL and NY have  75-77MW plants and Lorton, VA has a big 4 unit plant producing 126MW! But the Portland Me facility appears to be a 14MW plant unless the specs are wrong here:

http://www.wte.org/userfiles/file/ERC_2010_Directory.pdf

http://spokanewastetoenergy.com/WastetoEnergy.htm


----------



## BrotherBart (May 18, 2011)

I just want a backyard unit that can produce six hundred KWH a month and I am off the grid. And the leaves and sticks from five acres of trees as well as the trash would be history.


----------



## JustWood (May 18, 2011)

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/11/geoplasma-plasma-waste-to-energy-facility-florida.php

Single stream recycling is going to be the norm in less than 10 years. Waste handling equipment manufacturing is heading that way fast. A few states have zero waste legislation in place right now.


----------



## begreen (May 18, 2011)

I'd much rather see us nuking trash than having to figure out what to do with nuke trash.


----------



## woodchip (May 18, 2011)

BrotherBart said:
			
		

> I just want a backyard unit that can produce six hundred KWH a month and I am off the grid. And the leaves and sticks from five acres of trees as well as the trash would be history.



We would not need many sticks and leaves here, we only use about 80kw per month.........

Although if I was making my own power I'd probably use a bit more  ;-)


----------



## fishingpol (May 18, 2011)

Hmm, looks like solid waste is a "resource" now to the trash plants.  Kind of an oxymoron.


----------



## Medman (Jun 3, 2011)

Our community is hosting the development of a gasifying waste to energy plant at our landfill.  This is new technology and relatively untested, so this plant is a beta site for the company.  The problem here is that the government does not want to subsidize this type of energy, instead focusing on wind and solar pv.  Companies that want to develop waste to energy that is efficient have no financial incentive to continue testing this technology here.  I hope something changes soon, because the process looks promising.
Links:
http://www.sault-canada.com/development/index.aspx?l=0,3,43,53,235

http://www.elementagroup.com/ElementaProcess/CleanEnergyCarbon.html


----------



## Flatbedford (Jun 7, 2011)

There is a modern trash to energy plant about 5 miles from my house. Just about next door to the Nuclear power plant. I have driven, walked and boated near it and have never smelled anything bad. It does draw quite a bit of truck traffic though.
I copied and pasted this from the Westchester County website;

"The Charles Point Resource Recovery Facility, located in Peekskill, was built in response to a federal mandate to close the countyâ€™s Croton Point Landfill and local incinerators. In 1982, 26 municipalities joined in a special assessment district, called the Refuse Disposal District #1, that enabled the WCAIDA to build the Charles Point Facility. The facility began operations in 1984, by providing dependable, environmentally safe disposal of municipal solid waste for Westchester County, while generating clean, renewable electricity.

Designed, constructed and operated by Wheelabrator Westchester, the facility supports county residents by processing up to 2,250 tons per day of municipal solid waste. The Charles Point Facility has a permitted capacity of 710,000 tons per year. It is equipped with a magnetic separation system that extracts ferrous metals from the ash, which is then recycled. The plant has an electrical generating capacity of 60,000 kilowatts; the equivalent of supplying the electrical needs of 88,000 New York homes.

The facility accepts solid waste from all municipalities in the Refuse Disposal District #1, which has grown to include 36 communities, representing approximately 90 percent of the countyâ€™s population. In 2009, the facility processed 700,052 tons of solid waste and recovered 16,887 tons of ferrous metal. 438,236 tons of solid waste was delivered by Refuse Disposal District #1 municipalities, down 5,507 tons from 2008. Private carters and direct haul waste delivered the balance of refuse to the Charles Point Facility."

I don't feel so bad if I don't recycle every single piece of plastic because I figure its good fuel for the power plant.


----------



## Seasoned Oak (Jun 8, 2011)

BeGreen said:
			
		

> I'd much rather see us nuking trash than having to figure out what to do with nuke trash.



I believe the hi-tech way they do trash to energy is NOT to burn it but to cook it in a gassifier and burn the gas not the trash.Similar to a wood gasification burner.
Iv read they can even do tires this way and theres no smoke cuz the tire is not actually burning but being converted to a gas which in turn is then burned. 
They say any organic compound can be used.  
I dont know why this is not more widespread than it is.


----------



## woodchip (Jun 8, 2011)

trump said:
			
		

> BeGreen said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Because certain people (often nimby's) still people insist on using the term incinerator, which gets more people on their side. 

In an ideal world, all towns would have their own trash gasification plant on the outskirts by an industrial estate, keeping lorry movements to a minimum. 

I suspect that it will happen in time, as technology improves and small plants become more efficient. 

Then the next step will hopefully be mini household units and people like me will be out scouring the countryside for rubbish  ;-)


----------



## mainemac (Jun 11, 2011)

Then the next step will hopefully be mini household units and people like me will be out scouring the countryside for rubbish  ;-)[/quote]



Yea like the Flux Capacitor


----------

