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While that plant may have been a disaster, modern waste to energy plants work fine. No major air emissions issues AFAICT, though the slag is quite toxic.

by morsch 3y ago

hedora 3y ago
There are two ways to make that work. You can burn at an ultra high temperature or you can install scrubbers. Both of those reduce boiler efficiency. Note the power output on the one I was referencing was only 90MW, and it serviced a metropolitan area with ~1 million people. That’s 90 watts of base load per person, which is not zero, but it is close. Average energy demand per person in the US is about 3.4kw (including commercial and industrial, etc), so it’s mostly just useful for waste disposal. It’s possible the boilers on it were crappy, but if they were above 50% efficient (which is plausible, given its age), then the upper bound on a modern plant is 180W per person unless people start throwing away a lot more flammable stuff. Thermodynamics say that whatever energy you get from gasification will also be rounding error. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_Un... Cheap graphene might be worth it though.
- morsch 3y ago
  Supplies 1.5% of total energy consumption in Germany (electrical and some heating); 3.7% of electrical power production. From what I can tell, about 20-40% of domestic waste gets burned, including stuff that's ostensibly recycled but in reality gets burned. (I'm not a waste engineer.)
hannob 3y ago
Except very high CO2 emissions, but those are of course harmless </sarcasm>
- morsch 3y ago
  Compared to dioxine? Well yeah. But you're not wrong and I'm all for dealing with waste another way, primarily by drastically reducing it, but as long as we're burning huge amounts of coal, oil and gas, we might as well burn the garbage.

While that plant may have been a disaster, modern waste to energy plants work fine. No major air emissions issues AFAICT, though the slag is quite toxic.

by morsch 3y ago

While that plant may have been a disaster, modern waste to energy plants work fine. No major air emissions issues AFAICT, though the slag is quite toxic.

hedora 3y ago

There are two ways to make that work. You can burn at an ultra high temperature or you can install scrubbers. Both of those reduce boiler efficiency. Note the power output on the one I was referencing was only 90MW, and it serviced a metropolitan area with ~1 million people. That’s 90 watts of base load per person, which is not zero, but it is close. Average energy demand per person in the US is about 3.4kw (including commercial and industrial, etc), so it’s mostly just useful for waste disposal. It’s possible the boilers on it were crappy, but if they were above 50% efficient (which is plausible, given its age), then the upper bound on a modern plant is 180W per person unless people start throwing away a lot more flammable stuff. Thermodynamics say that whatever energy you get from gasification will also be rounding error. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_Un... Cheap graphene might be worth it though.

morsch 3y ago
Supplies 1.5% of total energy consumption in Germany (electrical and some heating); 3.7% of electrical power production. From what I can tell, about 20-40% of domestic waste gets burned, including stuff that's ostensibly recycled but in reality gets burned. (I'm not a waste engineer.)

hannob 3y ago

Except very high CO2 emissions, but those are of course harmless </sarcasm>

morsch 3y ago
Compared to dioxine? Well yeah. But you're not wrong and I'm all for dealing with waste another way, primarily by drastically reducing it, but as long as we're burning huge amounts of coal, oil and gas, we might as well burn the garbage.