Whatchama Column
By Jeb Bladine
Riverbend Landfill annoyed me this week — actually, “infuriated” better describes my initial feelings about a major inconvenience due to rules that nobody knows. But I calmed down long enough to do some research on solid waste disposal in northwest Oregon.
It turns out, there actually is method behind the madness that had me snarling at Riverbend manager George Duvendack.
First, the madness part: Our family cleaned out old contents of a mobile home in Beaverton last weekend, returning with a trailer full of mixed “dry waste.” Its final destination, I thought, would be Riverbend Landfill on Monday morning.
“Where is all this from?” the check-in lady asked. I answered honestly, thinking it was just a normal survey to track the flow of solid waste.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “you’ll have to take it back to a Portland-area facility.”
I was dumbstruck. I heard her explain that Riverbend cannot accept dry waste materials generated in the tri-county Metro area. But all I could think of was those hundreds of truckloads of household garbage that Metro-area haulers bring to Riverbend, with all manner of dry waste mixed in.
After the madness subsided, I decided to research the method. I learned about EDWRP, the Enhanced Dry Waste Recovery Program run by Metro in Multnomah, Clackamas and Washington counties. Here’s a thumbnail version:
Dry waste primarily is construction/demolition debris, but it also includes furniture and all throwaway items not mixed with putrescible wastes. Under rules in effect since mid-2009, all dry waste generated in the Metro area must be delivered to Metro-authorized material recovery centers for sorting out everything that can be recycled.
Riverbend, by agreement with Metro, will not bend that rule, as I learned the hard way. That same rigid policy begins March 1 at the Newberg Transfer Site when that operation officially becomes owned by Waste Management, Inc., Riverbend’s parent company.
I’m speculating that many Washington County residents take dry wastes to Newberg. After all, its dumping fees, like those at Riverbend, are far lower than costs at Metro landfills and recovery facilities. So, lots of people are going to experience that feeling of angry disbelief I had Monday morning at Riverbend.
Some will lie about the source of their trash; others will accept the legitimate effort to reduce what we put into landfills. Here in Yamhill County, until EDWRP comes our way, we’ll just keep taking our dry wastes to low-cost Riverbend.
Jeb Bladine is editor and publisher of the News-Register.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Waste makes Haste:
In Canada, Waste Management (NYSE:WM) announced a strategic investment in Enerkem, as part of Enerkem’s new $51.5 million financing round, which included Rho Ventures, Braemar Energy Ventures and BDR Capital and Cycle Capital among new investors.
Enerkem uses a proprietary thermo-chemical technology (green gasification and catalytic conversion) to convert heterogeneous materials into ethanol. R&D is underway to produce Synthetic gasoline (syngas), Synthetic diesel, and Dimethyl Ether (DME). Among its research partners are University of Sherbrooke, LeHigh University, Mississippi State University and Alberta Energy Research Institute.
The new funds raised will be used to support Enerkem’s growth plan, including initiating the construction of its second waste-to-biofuels plant in partnership with the City of Edmonton and Alberta Innovates. Production of methanol and second generation ethanol will begin at its Edmonton municipal solid waste-to-biofuels production facility by 2011. The plant will produce 10 Mgy of ethanol. Enerkem signed a 25 year agreement with the City of Edmonton for the supply of 100,000 tonnes of sorted municipal solid waste to be used as feedstock. The Edmonton biofuels plant will be situated at the City’s leading Edmonton Waste Managed Center (EWMC).
More on Waste Management
The investment by Waste Management represents its third in the waste-to-energy space, after investments last year in S4 Technologies — a joint venture of WM and InEnTec, proving plasma gasification of waste into energy streams — and an investment in waste-to-energy developer Terrabon.
Terrabon ranked #47 out of more than 1400 eligible companies in the 2009-10 “50 Hottest Companies in Bioenergy” rankings released by Biofuels Digest in December. Depending on chemical pathway chosen, Terrabon can produce mixed primary alcohols (a mix of ethanol, propanol, butanol, pentanol, hexanol and heptanol), mixed secondary alcohols (a mix of isopropanol, 2-butanol, 3-pentanol, 2-pentanol, etc), green gasoline, green diesel and green jet fuel. Terrabon, which is operating a 5-ton per day semi works plant using sweet sorghum as feedstocxk, has joint venture arrangements with Valero and Waste Management, and licensing arrangements for larger facilities (300 to 500-ton per day) using agricultural and forest residue, food scraps and non-food energy crops as feedstock.
WMlogoLast May, Waste Management Inc. and InEnTec announced a joint venture, called S4 Energy Solutions, that will produce renewable fuel, power and industrial products as well as to generate electricity, using plasma gasification. In plasma gasification, biomass is fed into a closed chamber and superheated to temperatures of up to 20,000 degrees fahrenheit. The intense heat transforms biomass into syngas, which is then reformulated using into ethanol and green diesel, hydrogen, methanol or methane.
A secondary process can convert the base materials into other industrial chemicals. S4 Energy Solutions’ initial focus will be to process medical and other segregated commercial and industrial waste streams. The company’s future commercialization plans may also include the processing of municipal solid waste once the technology has been demonstrated to be economical and scalable for such use. The S4 technology is designed with unique advances in plasma technology that increase the lifespan of high-cost elements such as the refractories.
The S4 project grew out of a collaboration between InEnTec and WMI’s Organic Growth Group, a corporate venture unit. The venture focused on plasma, as opposed to straight gasification, because the higher temperatures of the plasma process produce an ultra-clean syngas that more fully utilizes and destroys potentially dangerous waste, and because ultra-clean syngas is more useful in the commercial activity of producing high-end fuels and chemicals. The plasma approach allows WMI to expand its service offering to its current customer base by making certain types of waste easier to handle. The technology will be based on a distributed generation module – rather than large-scale facilities aggregating waste from multiple clients the venture will focus on smaller markets with modules designed to handle 5 to 125 tons per day. The distributed approach allows WMI to offer an alternative to clients who have to long-haul waste, or whose waste is too toxic to safely transport. Clients are expected initially to use all of the power and fuel for their own use, but S4 said it expects that some clients in the future, especially for those producing large amounts of fuel, will seek to sell the fuels in the open market for added revenue.
Think residue, not waste
With the investments, Waste Management is moving towards meeting three of its sustainability goals: doubling its renewable energy production and tripling the amount of recyclables processed by 2020, and investing in emerging technologies for managing waste.
In December 2009, Enerkem was awarded US$50 million in funding by the U.S. Department of Energy for development of its planned Mississippi plant, a third project. Enerkem will build and operate the 300 ton-per-day biorefinery in Pontotoc, which will produce 20 Mgy of ethanol, as well as green chemicals, from sorted municipal solid waste and wood residues and will reduce the pressure to landfill. Enerkem signed a Memorandum of Intent for the supply of 189,000 tons of unsorted municipal solid waste per year, for use as feedstock, with the Three Rivers Solid Waste Management Authority of Mississippi. Since the announcement of its Mississippi project last March, the company has made substantial progress on the environmental permitting process and has further developed the project with its local partners, the Three Rivers Planning and Development District and the Three Rivers Solid Waste Management Authority. The project is expected to create 130 jobs. The company also intends to double the size of its Mississippi biorefinery plant by adding a second module, bringing the total production capacity to 20 million gallons.
Its 1.3 Mgy commercial-scale demonstration facility in Westbury, Canada, which was completed in 2009, has reached 1,000 hours of operation, and overall the company has completed 3600 hours of piloting and testing since 2003.
The investment in Enerkem complements Waste Management’s comprehensive waste services in the areas of recycling, landfill, waste-to-energy and landfill gas-to-energy.
Daily Biofuels Digest Feb 25, 2010
Enerkem uses a proprietary thermo-chemical technology (green gasification and catalytic conversion) to convert heterogeneous materials into ethanol. R&D is underway to produce Synthetic gasoline (syngas), Synthetic diesel, and Dimethyl Ether (DME). Among its research partners are University of Sherbrooke, LeHigh University, Mississippi State University and Alberta Energy Research Institute.
The new funds raised will be used to support Enerkem’s growth plan, including initiating the construction of its second waste-to-biofuels plant in partnership with the City of Edmonton and Alberta Innovates. Production of methanol and second generation ethanol will begin at its Edmonton municipal solid waste-to-biofuels production facility by 2011. The plant will produce 10 Mgy of ethanol. Enerkem signed a 25 year agreement with the City of Edmonton for the supply of 100,000 tonnes of sorted municipal solid waste to be used as feedstock. The Edmonton biofuels plant will be situated at the City’s leading Edmonton Waste Managed Center (EWMC).
More on Waste Management
The investment by Waste Management represents its third in the waste-to-energy space, after investments last year in S4 Technologies — a joint venture of WM and InEnTec, proving plasma gasification of waste into energy streams — and an investment in waste-to-energy developer Terrabon.
Terrabon ranked #47 out of more than 1400 eligible companies in the 2009-10 “50 Hottest Companies in Bioenergy” rankings released by Biofuels Digest in December. Depending on chemical pathway chosen, Terrabon can produce mixed primary alcohols (a mix of ethanol, propanol, butanol, pentanol, hexanol and heptanol), mixed secondary alcohols (a mix of isopropanol, 2-butanol, 3-pentanol, 2-pentanol, etc), green gasoline, green diesel and green jet fuel. Terrabon, which is operating a 5-ton per day semi works plant using sweet sorghum as feedstocxk, has joint venture arrangements with Valero and Waste Management, and licensing arrangements for larger facilities (300 to 500-ton per day) using agricultural and forest residue, food scraps and non-food energy crops as feedstock.
WMlogoLast May, Waste Management Inc. and InEnTec announced a joint venture, called S4 Energy Solutions, that will produce renewable fuel, power and industrial products as well as to generate electricity, using plasma gasification. In plasma gasification, biomass is fed into a closed chamber and superheated to temperatures of up to 20,000 degrees fahrenheit. The intense heat transforms biomass into syngas, which is then reformulated using into ethanol and green diesel, hydrogen, methanol or methane.
A secondary process can convert the base materials into other industrial chemicals. S4 Energy Solutions’ initial focus will be to process medical and other segregated commercial and industrial waste streams. The company’s future commercialization plans may also include the processing of municipal solid waste once the technology has been demonstrated to be economical and scalable for such use. The S4 technology is designed with unique advances in plasma technology that increase the lifespan of high-cost elements such as the refractories.
The S4 project grew out of a collaboration between InEnTec and WMI’s Organic Growth Group, a corporate venture unit. The venture focused on plasma, as opposed to straight gasification, because the higher temperatures of the plasma process produce an ultra-clean syngas that more fully utilizes and destroys potentially dangerous waste, and because ultra-clean syngas is more useful in the commercial activity of producing high-end fuels and chemicals. The plasma approach allows WMI to expand its service offering to its current customer base by making certain types of waste easier to handle. The technology will be based on a distributed generation module – rather than large-scale facilities aggregating waste from multiple clients the venture will focus on smaller markets with modules designed to handle 5 to 125 tons per day. The distributed approach allows WMI to offer an alternative to clients who have to long-haul waste, or whose waste is too toxic to safely transport. Clients are expected initially to use all of the power and fuel for their own use, but S4 said it expects that some clients in the future, especially for those producing large amounts of fuel, will seek to sell the fuels in the open market for added revenue.
Think residue, not waste
With the investments, Waste Management is moving towards meeting three of its sustainability goals: doubling its renewable energy production and tripling the amount of recyclables processed by 2020, and investing in emerging technologies for managing waste.
In December 2009, Enerkem was awarded US$50 million in funding by the U.S. Department of Energy for development of its planned Mississippi plant, a third project. Enerkem will build and operate the 300 ton-per-day biorefinery in Pontotoc, which will produce 20 Mgy of ethanol, as well as green chemicals, from sorted municipal solid waste and wood residues and will reduce the pressure to landfill. Enerkem signed a Memorandum of Intent for the supply of 189,000 tons of unsorted municipal solid waste per year, for use as feedstock, with the Three Rivers Solid Waste Management Authority of Mississippi. Since the announcement of its Mississippi project last March, the company has made substantial progress on the environmental permitting process and has further developed the project with its local partners, the Three Rivers Planning and Development District and the Three Rivers Solid Waste Management Authority. The project is expected to create 130 jobs. The company also intends to double the size of its Mississippi biorefinery plant by adding a second module, bringing the total production capacity to 20 million gallons.
Its 1.3 Mgy commercial-scale demonstration facility in Westbury, Canada, which was completed in 2009, has reached 1,000 hours of operation, and overall the company has completed 3600 hours of piloting and testing since 2003.
The investment in Enerkem complements Waste Management’s comprehensive waste services in the areas of recycling, landfill, waste-to-energy and landfill gas-to-energy.
Daily Biofuels Digest Feb 25, 2010
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
This could have happened here!
Metro chooses new operator for transfer station which will create new jobs and benefits.
Metro announces new operator for Metro Central solid waste transfer station
Plans call for doubling recycling, robust sustainability efforts, new jobs and benefits
For the first time since it opened in 1990, operations at the Metro Central solid waste transfer station are changing hands. Metro and Recology Oregon Recovery Inc. have signed an estimated $38 million, seven-year contract that will signal considerable changes for the northwest Portland facility that takes in trash and recyclables from commercial waste haulers, businesses and residents.
Following a thorough evaluation by an interagency evaluation team, Metro determined that Recology had the best and most competitive proposal to manage Metro Central. The decision to award the contract to Recology was based primarily on its guarantee to double the rate of materials recycled, the company’s robust sustainability plan which includes reducing its carbon footprint, and improved opportunities for employees at the station - – all without significant increases in operation costs.
Recology initially plans to employ 46 workers, but that number will likely rise to 59 as activities increase. The pay for entry level positions will be higher than current pay levels at the station, and Recology will provide health benefits as well as community service days for employees. The contract with Metro also requires Recology to work with vendors that are either local, third-party certified (such as the Green Seal for environmental standards) or members of the Minority, Women, and Emerging Small Businesses program.
While residents who have their garbage and recycling picked up at the curb will not see any immediate changes, and Metro expects little to no impact on disposal rates, modifications will be made to improve services at the station to allow Recology to double the current rate of recycling from 17 percent to 34 percent by the end of the first year of operations, and to 40 percent by the end of the contract in 2017. Stepping up the recovery of cardboard, wood and metal will make up much of that increase. Recology also plans to accept new materials at Metro Central, including asphalt roofing and clean drywall.
In the agreement with Metro, Recology has outlined aggressive plans to improve sustainable operations for the transfer station and to cut greenhouse gas emissions to become carbon-neutral by 2015. The plans involve:
· running the station solely on wind power purchased through PGE’s Clean Wind program
· implementing an energy efficiency plan for the facility
· reducing pollution generated by on-site equipment through the use of B5 biodiesel and diesel catalytic converters
· creating better traffic flow and material handling to reduce vehicle idling
· installing a high-pressure system for washing trucks to reduce water usage
· using the least-toxic solvents, oils, and lubricants for equipment maintenance.
Metro requires Recology to monitor and report on the progress of its sustainable practices through the life of the contract by implementing an industry-approved environmental management system at the transfer station.
Recology is one of three companies that submitted proposals to run operations at the regional solid waste transfer stations owned by Metro. Allied Waste Transfer Services of Oregon, LLC, the current operator of both Metro transfer stations, and GreenWaste ZankerAlso submitted proposals.
The agreement with Recology involves only operations at Metro Central. In the past both transfer stations were managed by one company, but Metro determined that since the two transfer stations are different in design and operation that it would be more effective to separate operations. Central’s size and layout offers more opportunities to recover and recycle materials, while the layout of Metro South makes it less flexible, limiting options to expand recovery at the site.
Metro announces new operator for Metro Central solid waste transfer station
Plans call for doubling recycling, robust sustainability efforts, new jobs and benefits
For the first time since it opened in 1990, operations at the Metro Central solid waste transfer station are changing hands. Metro and Recology Oregon Recovery Inc. have signed an estimated $38 million, seven-year contract that will signal considerable changes for the northwest Portland facility that takes in trash and recyclables from commercial waste haulers, businesses and residents.
Following a thorough evaluation by an interagency evaluation team, Metro determined that Recology had the best and most competitive proposal to manage Metro Central. The decision to award the contract to Recology was based primarily on its guarantee to double the rate of materials recycled, the company’s robust sustainability plan which includes reducing its carbon footprint, and improved opportunities for employees at the station - – all without significant increases in operation costs.
Recology initially plans to employ 46 workers, but that number will likely rise to 59 as activities increase. The pay for entry level positions will be higher than current pay levels at the station, and Recology will provide health benefits as well as community service days for employees. The contract with Metro also requires Recology to work with vendors that are either local, third-party certified (such as the Green Seal for environmental standards) or members of the Minority, Women, and Emerging Small Businesses program.
While residents who have their garbage and recycling picked up at the curb will not see any immediate changes, and Metro expects little to no impact on disposal rates, modifications will be made to improve services at the station to allow Recology to double the current rate of recycling from 17 percent to 34 percent by the end of the first year of operations, and to 40 percent by the end of the contract in 2017. Stepping up the recovery of cardboard, wood and metal will make up much of that increase. Recology also plans to accept new materials at Metro Central, including asphalt roofing and clean drywall.
In the agreement with Metro, Recology has outlined aggressive plans to improve sustainable operations for the transfer station and to cut greenhouse gas emissions to become carbon-neutral by 2015. The plans involve:
· running the station solely on wind power purchased through PGE’s Clean Wind program
· implementing an energy efficiency plan for the facility
· reducing pollution generated by on-site equipment through the use of B5 biodiesel and diesel catalytic converters
· creating better traffic flow and material handling to reduce vehicle idling
· installing a high-pressure system for washing trucks to reduce water usage
· using the least-toxic solvents, oils, and lubricants for equipment maintenance.
Metro requires Recology to monitor and report on the progress of its sustainable practices through the life of the contract by implementing an industry-approved environmental management system at the transfer station.
Recology is one of three companies that submitted proposals to run operations at the regional solid waste transfer stations owned by Metro. Allied Waste Transfer Services of Oregon, LLC, the current operator of both Metro transfer stations, and GreenWaste ZankerAlso submitted proposals.
The agreement with Recology involves only operations at Metro Central. In the past both transfer stations were managed by one company, but Metro determined that since the two transfer stations are different in design and operation that it would be more effective to separate operations. Central’s size and layout offers more opportunities to recover and recycle materials, while the layout of Metro South makes it less flexible, limiting options to expand recovery at the site.
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