Mass waste burner looks like it will get go ahead

“The artist's impression of this farcical mess oif a building says much about the deceptions used by the contractors and the council to force through the plan...

Look again at the trucks in the foreground... If seen in TRUE scale against the huge building immediately behind them, these trucks would be a FRACTION OF THE SIZE shown... That is how big the building will actually be !

So this widely published image is just the visual equivalent of a LIE !!!!! ... typical of the cheap trickery employed at every stage to force this disgusting thing upon the people of Gloucestershire !”

“Misfit901 - as another engineer conversant with the technologies, and economics, each district/city council are responsible for collection - and county only for treatment/disposal. The previous government had promoted a target culture which the council staff had taken as God-send to boast about their recycling rates - regardless of the costs or carbon footprints - regrettably their calibre for carrying out simple material flow modelling and optimisation of costs and carbon footprint, etc, not that high - and integrated waste managing although talked about for over a decade, councils sit in their own deep holes and contemplate their navels. That ia=s a systemic problem - we have rubbish employed in councils - so not much that can be done.

I will just point out one issue you bring - yes if you can make use of the waste heat in addition to generating electricity that improves the overall heat use. However utilising the waste heat have many difficulties, and only feasible/economic where the heat and power are needed for the industrial process - say in a refinery or chemical/other process or manufacture.

In the case of EFW plants first of all you will have to operate the turbines at a slightly higher exhause pressure/temo to get heat at a reasonable temperature for the heating mains. Steam turbines squeeze mas output at the lower pressure/temp stages and electricity is a higher value form of energy than that for space heating.

Secondly, the task of installing and running heat distribution mains and metering around say a housing estate, city, and rural districts become prohibitively expensive and no one is ready to invest in such systems (although all EFW plant are capable of bleeding steam at the higher conditions for this purpose). For example the EFW facilities in Portsmouth and Southampton (Marchwood) are close to housing, and industrial estates and yet it was not possible to justify the additional investments in CHP and district mains.

In Europe where housing culture is different - high rise, and compact block of flats with common supply, etc, the task is much easier as also the laying of mains in post-war where most cities were turned into rubble and had to be built new. One other thing - the balancing of electricity and heat loads - gets difficult and given that the heat use if for limited periods of the year and varies, also as supplementary heating fossil fuels have to be installed to cater for peak situations, the overall costs become difficult to justify. (all his from personal experience of looking at U,K CHP systems). However where housing estates are close by particularly in cities,and under single ownership - CHP has been installed - Nottingham, Slough, etc.

there are a large number of smaller CHP systems using diesel engines or in conjunction with biomass electric and other installations particularly in hospitals, universities, etc - the main problem is integrating generation and distribution within one control.

Sorry got into the technicalities but all such systems need to be tailored to particular installations and circumstances. Finally the main objective here is to deal with the residual waste - as such the economics dependent on comparison with the alternative - landfill or carting off to Rotterdam or Peterborough or Lakeside where there is demand for EFW fuel. All told the GlosCC EFW would be the best of a bad deal and if they applied a little brain power early on would have done so at a much reduced cost - the main savings being from simplified/low cost comingled collection and a recovery facility at the entry to the EFW which could have been tuned to recover materials depending upon market conditions.”

“Well Bonkim my comments have always been against complex and expensive recycling, opposing this particular implementation of incineration has nothing to do with green tendencies but all to do with the ill-defined strategy and methodology. Had this project been designed from the outset to incorporate single-stream collection and bulk sorting at site with only stuff for which there is no market being burnt then I would not have posted. What irritates is Stan the Wad claiming it is the best option when you and I and others all point out the folly of pandering to the hooped-stockings with expensive and selective recycling whilst wassting a lot of good material to the flames. Burning the non-value stuff to generate power is sensible, as for other stuff that might eb recyclable tehn there has to be a moving scale on that as to when it becomes marginally better to burn than spend on recycling.

Engineering journals I get as a chartered engineering perk generally tend to agree best practice where CHP type facilities are implemented tend to be most effective in the holistic versions where everything goes into one waste stream making bulk sorting at the processing plant an economic activity but many of those plants seem to have been deliberately placed on a rail access to ease the bulk transport of waste rather than sat off a busy junction.

Although i only had time for a brief scan of the incinerator T&C it does appear that there was no provision for the enforced sorting from 2020 which will doubtless come back to hammer us with increased cost from the contractor.”

“Misfit901 - you are coming around to my point on the subject. In a nutshell recycling only makes sense against optimised collection and disposal/treatment costs within an integrated waste system.

To achieve that need to model collection and treatment/disposal together - whih has not happened - cart before the horse in GlosCC and local councils - there is still time and installing a material sorting facility up front of a waste to energy plant will allow flexible operation, single bin or bag collection, and strategically placed local skips for bulky materials such as cardboard, plastics, etc. and fine tuning the recovery facility to remove marketable materials and the rest through the EFW - That is what happens at locations in Europe where it has been practiced for years - and recycling/reuse better established.

For food wastes - unless collections cover large close packed areas such as towns and total collected sufficient to justify an anaerobic digester, not worth economically or environmentally. The present system of collection particularly in rural counties not economic, inefficient, and the in-vessel composting is very expensive as it requires additional green waste for the carbon-nitrogen balance needed. In any case large amounts of food wastes are left in the fortnightly collections. Green waste - nonsense - originally started to boost recycling targets - not needed, easier for home or local composting networks.

The above will allow weekly single bin or bagged collections, and least hassle for householders including flat-dwellers and best cost and environmental footprint - you will have to get the Greens to rethink their vehement and misguided opposition to energy from waste.”

“Bonkim, you hit the nail on the head with the PRESENT contracts; everything is fragmented but if you had a consistent approach where ALL reccycalbles went in just one bin which Stroud is reported as doing (apart I believe from not collecting food waste) then ONE vehicle for the recycling is needed, and as reccycling continues regardless then that does not add to transport, carbon etc which will continue for recycling lorries but the reverse if only one vehicle were used.

As it is the incinerator operators will have to separate out recyclable from the input stream by 2020 to conform with the edicts from Brussels not to burn the stuff so it is inescable that recylcing will have to happen and the input to the white elephant burner will drop drastically.

The only way of cutting the collection cost would then be to place the onus for ALL recycling on the incinerator operator and send absolutely all waste to them- but doubtless they would then milk us dry for the change in contract terms so probably not save anything.

Food waste is a nuisance for recycling, it needs a lot of other stuff to compost properly so anything the badgers and foxes like goes out on the garden for me, the rest of the stuff is little amounts of cereals and similar which goes down the toilet.”

“Misfit901 - following your logic - collection costs will far exceed the cost of the waste to energy plant and also increase the carbon footprint. Recycling without counting financial and environmental costs is in the realms of the ignorant. The present food and garden waste collections fall into that category.”

“Now if all the councils got their recycling contracts aligned to take ALL recyclable waste and around 67% of waste in black bags is recyclable then how much would that leave for this white elephant in residual waste? The contractor must sort out reccyclable waste anyway from 2020 under the common market directive banning burning of recyclabe waste which will then make the elephant even more uneconomic than it is now.

Wonder what the active component of the waste champion name is - Stan? only in standing ground regardless; WAD? sounds likely; DING? might be.”

“Over 7000 protested against car parking charges in the Forest of Dean - they were imposed regardless - so what is a countywide 4000 opposition from a population of over 600,000 count to forcing GlosCC from getting on with the energy from waste project. Do they have any other cost effective option? No!”

“But the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has said it will pull funding from some schemes to prevent overcapacity."

Well, it did pull funding from GCC, and we're hearing claims, however well substantiated they may be, that the incinerator won't be needed, so how does that work?

And with all these other incinerators proposed around the area, won't we be forced to create more 'waste' to keep them running?

http://tinyurl.com/amq42hm (South West)”

“But the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has said it will pull funding from some schemes to prevent overcapacity.''

Well, it did pull funding from GCC, and we're hearing claims, however well substantiated they may be, that the incinerator won't be needed, so how does that work?

And with all these other incinerators proposed around the area, won't we be forced to create more 'waste' to keep them running?

http://tinyurl.com/amq42hm”