Burning garbage can generate electricity at a factory 30 years ago.State and region

Bainbridge, Pennsylvania — A thousand tonnes of trash is a rotting mountain that was piled up about two stories in a concrete hole in the countryside of Conoi Township last month. Garbage is considered more than garbage dumped for landfill.

Instead, the waste piled up in the county waste incinerator is used as fuel for 30 years to generate available electricity, save landfill space, and feed on processes that reduce associated greenhouse emissions. ..

This is according to officials from the Lancaster County Solid Waste Management Department, which is celebrating the factory’s 30th anniversary.

So far, 10.7 million tonnes of garbage have been burned at the facility, officials said.

“This is the best way to handle this place and time on a large scale,” said Ob Zorbaugh, CEO of the authorities, citing the garbage-related needs of more than 500,000 residents of the county. I did.

That’s true, even though the burning process isn’t pollution-free, Zorbaugh argues.

“I don’t want to pretend that the facility has no emissions. There are emissions,” he said before weighing them against alternatives.

“As you know, most communities in the United States have only landfills,” said Zorbaugh. “Do you just want to landfill everything, or do you want to do something different with the technology available?”

Authorities also have landfills — a 96-acre Frey Farm site in the countryside of Manor Township, which began operations in 1989. But without waste, the county would have needed two more landfills of the same size. -Energy program, official spokeswoman Katie Sandow said.

This process saves space by turning the debris (the type of debris produced primarily for curb collection) into ash, reducing its amount by 90% before it is sent to the landfill.

Over the facility’s 30 years, this is equivalent to a waste reduction of 17.8 million cubic yards, which is sufficient to fill the Pennsylvania State University Beaver Stadium 12 times, Sandow said.

Authorities shared these numbers before showing off the process last month, and the facility was littered on the floor from behind a full tractor trailer before being pushed into a pit with 9,000 tonnes of debris. Stacked up that led the way to.

On the ceiling, a crane operator uses a giant claw-like grapple to scoop debris from the mountains, drop it on a chute, and feed it to the site’s three boilers.

The heat heats the water-filled tubing that surrounds the boiler, produces pressurized steam, and drives the turbine to generate electricity.

This process runs continuously and produces 36 megawatts of power at specific times. The facility itself consumes 6 of those megawatts, the remaining 30 being sold to the local power grid. This is enough to power more than 20,000 homes.

Energy-related revenues from facility production reached approximately $ 9 million in 2020, Sandow said.

Waste metal products can be recovered from the ashes and sold to the recycling market without burning out in the process, Zorbo said. He showed off a pile of recycled metal during the tour, pointing out dumbbells, rug nuts, tin cans, gear, and mattress springs.

“We can extract and recycle thousands of tonnes of metal each year,” he said, saying that those materials would have been landfilled without a burning process.

The metal recovered at the facility makes an average of about $ 700,000 a year, according to Sandow.

Environmental impact, trade-offs

However, for all of these reported benefits, Sandow acknowledged that operating a 24/7 waste power plant has environmental drawbacks. Air pollution.

On average, these nitrogen oxides emit about 530 metric tons in total, and carbon dioxide equivalent emissions total about 161,198 metric tons, according to Sando.

She compared the facility to the Bruner Island power plant near York County, citing data from the US Environmental Protection Agency. The power plant generated 2,158,706 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions in 2019. This is about 13 times that of a waste power plant.

According to the EPA, the average passenger car emits about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually.

Critics have long expressed concern about the potential release of other toxic pollutants, such as dioxins and toxic compounds that can adversely affect human health.

According to LNP’s Lancaster Online archive, these concerns existed locally before the $ 115 million facility was officially launched in June 1991.

“Let’s not let our children and our children inherit bad air, polluted water,” wrote a letter writer against burning in the pre-opening site. It was.

Stephen Mall, chairman of the Conoi Township Supervisory Board, recalled the opposite. He was on board when the facility site between River Road and the Susquehanna River near Bainbridge was first announced as a candidate site.

“They just wanted to figure out something that could stop it,” Mohr said, “out of control” as police were asked to attend at least one relevant township meeting. Added.

It’s an ideal location for the mall, away from most development areas on country roads that can handle hundreds of garbage trucks that unload the facility.

Thousands of tons of odorous debris are rarely detected outside the building’s premises, he said.

“It responded to the pitch,” he said. “There is nothing negative.”

Currently, there are no active local opposition groups for waste power plants, Sandow said.

Mr. Mohr said the host fee per ton that the authorities pay to set up in the town is a huge benefit to Konoi. He said his monthly income ranged from about $ 60,000 to $ 70,000, which allowed the town to abolish local taxes.

“Now, everyone who opposes it wants to help spend money,” he said with a laugh.

Nevertheless, there is a potential pollution problem, according to the EPA, which mentions many relevant regulations, standards, and regulations implemented to combat harmful emissions in the 1970s and 1990s.

Emissions monitored in real time

When he led a tour of the facility last month, Zorbo moved to the back of the factory, controlling pollutants and pointing to a collection of structures and stacks designed to ensure compliance with federally mandated standards. He said he did.

Readings from these control systems are sent live to state regulators, and interruptions or breaches in the process have consequences, Sandow said.

“Some of the misconceptions about modern waste power plants come back to this public memory of the old incinerators of the 1960s and 1970s, which had a negative impact on the environment,” she said. “It’s not exactly what we’re doing here.”

Sandoe also promoted this process as an environmental benefit, noting that burning garbage for electricity eliminates the amount of food waste left to rot in traditional landfills. Decomposing waste releases methane gas, an important cause of climate change.

Authorities were unable to provide methane-specific figures, but reports that each ton of waste processed at a waste power plant offsets one ton of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions.

Zorbaugh said he hopes the authorities will continue to be innovative, especially when it comes to new opportunities for recycling and reuse, especially in the waste stream.

“But until that happens, we need to do something with this waste,” Zorbaugh said, speculating that the conversion of waste to energy would continue to be a viable option.

In fact, the facility was designed with the future in mind, with extra space being built to enable population growth.

“Thirty years later, we still have the ability,” Zorbo said.