Displaying items by tag: Solid Recovered Fuel

Indonesia: Entsorga has dispatched two Spider bridge cranes and two Pelican feeding and dosing systems for the construction of two new solid recovered fuel (SRF) storage, feeding and dosing systems at Indocement Tunggal Prakarsa’s 11.9Mt/yr Citeureup cement plant in Bogor Regency. The systems will have a total capacity of 50t/hr. An advanced supervision system will monitor and control their 24-hour operation. The Italy-based supplier says that both lines are highly automated and will reduce both CO₂ emissions and fuel consumption.

CEO Francesco Galanzino “The systems will help the cement plant to maintain its 2030 sustainability commitments, in line with the policies of HeidelbergCement who is a real first mover in the path toward sustainability. Such project it is a very important step in a Country where environmental policies are in their early stage.”

France: Germany-based ThyssenKrupp has won a contract for the installation of a new 4000t/day clinker line at Ciments Calcia’s Airvault cement plant in Poitou-Charentes. The supplier expects the new line to double the plant’s clinker capacity while also reducing its CO2 emissions. It is intended to replace the two existing lines at the site.

ThyssenKrupp will supply a 1200t/hr double-shaft hammer crusher, a longitudinal blending bed, a 370t/hr Quadropol QMR² 45/23 type vertical roller mill and a 10,000t tangential blending silo to process raw materials for the line. A single-string, five-stage Dopol type cyclone preheater with integral calciner will be supplied that is suitable to use with alternative fuels, with the possibility of conversion to oxyfuel in future. ThyssenKrupp plans to preassemble the preheater, reducing anticipated construction time ‘by several months.’ The plant also includes a Polytrack clinker cooler, a solid recovered fuel (SRF) preparation line and dedusting systems. Commissioning is scheduled for mid-2024.

No value for the project has been disclosed by Ciments Calcia or ThyssenKrupp. However, Ciments Calcia previously announced a proposed investment of Euro300m in January 2021.

The UK waste fuels industry is facing potential challenge from changing Dutch environmental legislation. As part of its new National Climate Agreement the government in the Netherlands is considering imposing a tariff of Euro32/t on imported refuse-derived fuel (RDF) from the start of January 2020. It also wants to add a CO2 tax of Euro30/t on industrial emitters from the start of 2021.

This is bad news for the UK’s waste export market because 1.28Mt or 44% of exported waste fuels from the UK in 2018 went to the Netherlands. The majority of this was RDF. That was more than the next two biggest destinations, Sweden and Germany, combined. Andy Hill of Cynosure Partners summed up the UK situation in the June 2019 issue of Global Cement Magazine when he said, “The UK generates more far more waste than it has landfill, recycling and alternative fuel capacity combined. Quite simply, that’s why the UK exports and has become a leading force in Europe in terms of RDF and solid recovered fuel (SRF) exports.”

Graph 1: International Waste Shipments exported from England, 2011 – 2018. Source: UK Environment Agency.

Graph 2: Destinations of English waste fuels exports in 2018. Source: UK Environment Agency.

Waste management companies and their representative associations on both sides of the North Sea are not taking this terribly well. Robert Corijn, chair of the RDF Industry Group, a European waste organisation, summed up his members response by pointing out both the environmental cost of the new legislation and the risk to jobs in the UK. “RDF export forms a vital and flexible part of the UK’s waste management system, supporting over 6800 additional jobs in the UK, and saving over 0.7Mt/yr CO₂e emissions.” Robert Loos of the Dutch Waste Management Association made a similar response questioning what exactly the Dutch government was attempting to achieve.

Steve Burton, one of the directors of UK-fuels producer Andusia, went further by saying that the Dutch had proposed the move on environmental grounds because it has an incineration capacity of 8Mt/yr but produces only 6Mt/yr of waste. “So they think that by setting a tax it will significantly curtail how much gets incinerated in the Netherlands and thus produce less CO₂. All very sensible if you consider CO₂ in isolation in your own country. However, the Dutch Government aren’t looking at the bigger picture…” He then went on to point out that the RDF would then either get burnt elsewhere or landfilled resulting in no overall CO₂ emissions reduction. His further assessment, which you can read here, goes on to speculate amongst other things that Dutch Energy for Waste (EFW) plants could end up having to cut their gate fees by more than the import tariff in order to keep running. The state-owned EFW plants would then made a loss for the tax payers until the market stabilised. It should be noted that the data from the Environment Agency indicates that Andusia exported just under 38,000t of RDF to the Netherlands in 2018.

The more prickly issues of using waste fuels may prove tricky for Dutch legislators. Corijn’s distinction above of using CO₂e for the savings from RDF usage is important in this argument since burning RDF and alternative fuels, either for generating energy or making cement, still releases CO₂. In the European Union (EU) it’s the biomass fraction of RDF that’s important for the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) and the like because biomass emissions are counted as carbon-neutral. Remove this effect and the benefit of waste fuels are more to do with the waste hierarchy and reusing materials rather than leaving them to rot and release methane, a gas with a more potent global warming effect than CO₂. Despite this, at face value, importing rubbish and then burning it to release yet more unwanted CO₂ may seem nonsensical to the parliamentarians. Perhaps the other thing they should consider is that waste-derived fuels are manufactured products to set specifications. On-going arguments around the world about the developed world ‘exporting its rubbish’ frequently ignore this point.

Since the new Dutch National Climate Agreement is currently at the proposal stage it has a long way to go before it becomes law. First it has to be turned into legislation and then this has to be approved by the Dutch Parliament. As indicated so far the waste management industry will continue to fight its corner with vigour.

Last week’s Global CemFuels Conference in Barcelona raised a considerable amount of information about the state of the alternative fuels market for the cement industry and recent technical advances. One particular facet that stuck out were reports from cement and waste producers, from their perspective, about Morocco’s decision to ban imports of waste from Italy in mid-2016. The debacle raises prickly questions about how decisive attempts to reduce carbon emissions can be.

Public outcry broke out in Morocco in July 2016 over imports of refuse derived fuel (RDF) imported from Italy for use at a cement plant in the country. At the time a ship carrying 2500t of RDF was stopped at the Jorf Lasfar port. Local media and activists presented the shipment in terms of a dangerous waste, ‘too toxic’ for a European country, which was being dumped on a developing one. Public outcry followed and despite attempts to calm the situation the government soon banned imports of ‘waste’.

What wasn’t much reported at the time was that RDF usage rates in Europe have been rising in recent years and that the product is viewed as a commodity. As Michele Graffigna from HeidelbergCement explained at the conference in his presentation, its subsidiary Italcementi runs seven cement plants in Italy but only two of them have the permits to use alternative fuels like RDF. Italy also has amongst the lowest rates of alternative fuels usage in Europe, in part due to issues with legislation. This is changing slowly but the company has an export strategy for waste fuels from the country at the moment. Italy’s largest cement producer wants to use waste fuels in Italy but it can’t fully, so it is exporting them so it (and others) is exporting them to countries where it can.

In the Waste Hierarchy, using waste as energy fits in the ‘other recovery’ section near the bottom of the inverted pyramid, but it is still preferable to disposal. Waste fuels may be smelly, unsightly and have other concerns but they are a better environmental option than burning fossil fuels. HeidelbergCement engaged locally with media and local authorities to try and convey this. It also arranged visits to RDF production sites in Italy and German cement plant that use RDF to present its message. Looking to the future, HeidelbergCement now plans to focus on local waste production in Morocco with projects for a tyre shredder at a cement plant and an RDF production site at a Marrakesh landfill site in the pipeline. Graffigna didn’t say so directly, but the decision to focus on local waste supplies clearly dispenses with historical and cultural baggage of moving ‘dirty’ products between countries.

In another talk, at the conference Andy Hill of Suez then mentioned the Morocco situation from his company’s angle. His point was that moving waste fuels around can carry risks and that a waste management company, like Suez, knows how to handle them. It is worth pointing out here that Suez UK has supplied solid recovered fuel (SRF) to the country so it has a commercial interest here. He also suggested that despatching a bulk vessel of waste to a sensitive market did not help the situation and that it heightened negative publicity.

Morocco’s decision to ban the import of waste fuels in mid-2016 is an unfortunate speed bump along the highway to a more sustainable cement industry. It raises all sorts of issues about public perceptions of environmental efforts to clean up the cement industry and where they clash with commercially minded attempts to do so by the cement producers. A similar battle is playing out in Ireland between locals in Limerick and Irish Cement, as it tries to start burning tyres and RDF. These are not new issues. Meanwhile in the background the amendment to the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme draws close with a vote set for mid-February 2017. It could have implications for all of this depending on what happens. More on this later in the month.

US: A waste-to-solid-fuel plant has broken ground in West Virginia. Its developers say it is the US' first resource recovery facility that employs mechanical biological treatment (MBT).

The waste-to-solid-fuel plant in Martinsburg, West Virginia, called Entsorga WV, is expected to be operational in early 2017. Entsorga WV is a joint venture between Apple Valley Waste Technologies, Entsorga USA and Chemtex International.

By utilising the HEBioT MBT system, Entsorga WV will recover biomass, plastics and other carbon based materials from the mixed municipal solid waste (MSW) stream and convert them into an alternative fuel. When processing the MSW, Entsorga WV will remove other recyclable commodities such as ferrous and non-ferrous metals. The MSW received will be converted to solid recovered (SRF), which will be used as an alternative or supplement to fossil fuels.

The plant will be able to produce about 50,000t/yr of SRF, which will be delivered to the Essroc Cement Plant and used in conjunction with coal. The companies have entered into a long-term contract for the provision and acceptance of the SRF.

The reduction of waste that will be disposed of in landfills as a result of the Entsorga facility will result in a greenhouse gas emission reduction of 28,000t/yr of carbon dioxide equivalent. There are currently more than 330 MBT plants in operation throughout Europe, processing more than 30Mt/yr of municipal solid waste.

South Korea: A new solid recovered fuel (SRF) production facility is now fully operational in Wonju City, South Korea, thanks to global shredding company UNTHA and local partner PERITUS.

Korean waste management specialist Zion has built the SRF manufacturing plant to make smarter use of its residual materials. Now, with the new system in place, pre-sorted construction and demolition waste and commercial and industrial waste, is being shredded to produce a homogenous 50mm fuel for the cement industry.

The UNTHA XR3000C shredder with cutting concept was chosen following a series of trials at UNTHA's Austrian headquarters. Demonstrations showed that the technology could comfortably achieve throughputs of 60-70t/day, with scope to almost double that moving forward. The XR3000C's flexibility also means Zion can achieve a 40-50mm particle size from the single step shredding of plastic bales, which has further boosted the company's SRF production capabilities.

"South Korea may only be in the infancy of its waste-to-energy journey, yet the nation has formed a very sophisticated and disciplined approach to its waste roadmap relatively quickly. Legislation is in place to drive the production of <50mm SRF and the necessary infrastructure is fast evolving to accommodate this," said UNTHA's Head of Business Unit Waste Peter Streinik. "What we see here with Zion, however, is not just a company striving for compliance. They're prioritising energy efficiency, profitability and innovation too, to realise the wider benefits that come with smarter waste management."

Committed to principles akin to Europe's waste hierarchy, Zion extracts as many materials as possible, including bricks, metal, sands, glass and batteries, for re-use or recycling, prior to them entering the SRF manufacturing stream.

"Our family-run business is incredibly passionate about renewable energy, from solar power to alternative fuel production," said Zion's President Geumju Kim. "Now that our new SRF plant is up and running, with state-of-the-art configurable technology in place, the next step is to investigate relationships with different customers. We can satisfy varied specifications, and look forward to improving South Korea's resource agenda."

Vietnam: Holcim is using shoes as an alternative fuel in Vientam thanks to its new solid recovered fuel (SRF) plant from shredding specialist Untha, according to Equipment World.

The new SRF plant will use waste from Vietnam's largest shoe factory once it has been delivered. It was pre-assembled and tested in Austria and is currently being shipped by sea to Holcim in Vietnam. Delivery is expected in September 2015. The SRF plant will convert the waste by using an anti-explosive Atex-specification XR3000 Cutter waste shredder with two 113kW motors, conveyor, over-band magnet, control room and water-powered fire suppression technology. The plant can process 10t of material into the 8mm, high calorific value fuel.

UK: Axion Polymers has invested significantly in new laboratory and testing facilities to ensure consistent quality of its solid recovered fuel (SRF) products and to satisfy the stringent standards of its technical end markets.

It has installed a laboratory-scale furnace at its large-scale processing facility, Shredder Waste Advanced Processing Plant (SWAPP), in Trafford Park, Manchester to enhance accurate measurement and testing of the physical and thermal properties of its Axfuel® SRF 30, an alternative fuel used by the cement industry, among others.

Axion has also recruited a quality control team working within ISO 9001 operating procedures to conduct in-house product testing, including analysis on critical aspects such as SRF calorific value and chemical composition. Samples are sent on a weekly basis to external laboratories for further testing and verification.

Derived from automotive shredder residue, Axfuel SRF 30 is a sub 30mm-sized mixture of textiles, fibre-fluff, plastic, foam and rubber, with a gross calorific value of 18 - 22MJ/Kg and available in large tonnages.

"We have made this important investment because alternative fuels from waste need to be treated as a product, not as a waste. If SRF is to deliver the fuel benefit and meet the technically-demanding specifications of our end markets, it has to be of consistently high quality so customers can buy with confidence," said Axion director Roger Morton. "By operating within strict quality controls, we can ensure our reliable supply of SRF is produced to exceptionally high standards. As this fuel is sourced from end-of-life vehicles, giving it a second life as an alternative high-energy feed is going to be an attractive option for companies who want to demonstrate their environmental credentials."

Portugal: N+P International has announced the signing of a five year contract for the supply of solid recovered fuels (SRF) into a number of cement plants belonging to the Portuguese cement companies Secil and Cimpor. The contract was signed by Gestão Ambiental e Valorização Energética, a subsidiary company of Secil, Cimpor and SGVR, responsible for sourcing and supply of alternative fuels and raw materials into the Portuguese cement industry.

"In the past years we have invested millions to develop UK market, to provide end users of our SRF sustainable supply concept. We have put a lot of effort in optimising quality levels of SRF in the UK market, as well as investing in the development of sustainable logistic chains. Now N+P has several port sites at strategic locations and the possibility to use a large number of sea containers," said Karel Jennissen, chairman of N+P.

By signing the contract N+P has committed to supply over 700,000t of SRF in the next five years. The majority of the SRF is already sourced and contracted by companies in the UK recycling market. A minor part of the volume will be sourced in Italy and France.

UK/Lativa: Recycling and resource management company, SITA UK, has signed a three-year contract to supply 180,000t of solid recovered fuel (SRF) to Cemex in Latvia. The fuel will be produced by processing residual commercial waste in a purpose-built facility at Ridham Docks in Kent. Once processed, the SRF material will be used as a fossil-fuel replacement at a Cemex plant in Broceni, southern Latvia.

"We have invested over Euro7.53m developing a new processing facility to produce and bale SRF at Ridham. This brand new, purpose-built facility was commissioned in August 2012 and we are sending our first shipment to Latvia in September 2012," said Andy Hill, head of organics and alternative fuels, at SITA UK.

SITA UK uses residual commercial waste, which has a higher calorific value and lower moisture content than municipal waste. Its facility in Ridham can process up to 50t/hr. The company has a one year trans-frontier shipment permit to export the SRF to Cemex in Latvia.

Earlier in April 2012, SITA UK and Cemex announced their intention to develop two waste recycling plants to produce alternative fuel for Cemex's Rugby plant in Warwickshire. SITA UK, a subsidiary of Suez Environment, is a recycling and resource management company employing over 6000 staff with a turnover in excess of Euro879m/yr.