ORBIT Conference 2012: Global assessment for organic resources and waste management

 

This is a contibution by Anne Trémier, a colleague I met during the Summer School on Biological and Thermal Treatment of Municipal Solid Waste, in Napoli, Italy, 2-6 May 2011 (see http://www.iat.unina.it/summerschool/home.html). Anne is a researcher at IRSTEA (see http://www.irstea.fr/en/home-page ) and one of the organizers of the upcoming ORBIT 2012 Conference which is dedicated to "Global assessment for organic resources and waste management: Assessment of technologies for optimal organics management processes and enlightened environmental policies". 

I am sure it will be one more succesful ORBIT conference and I will be there to join ORBIT's efforts. Here is what Anne wrote:

"During the last years, a big strength has been put on organic resources recovery in order to achieve our aspiration towards a "Recycling Society" and climate stabilisation. Energy, nutrients and organic matter needs have thus driven sustainable management of resources and wastes and promoted new technological developments. In this context, biological processing of organic wastes and the use of natural resources to recover nutrients as phosphorus, to produce soil improvers and to supply energy is of great interest. 

However rules on the management of organic resources waste are fragmented and the current legislation in Europe might be not sufficient to achieve the stated objectives of its effective management. Moreover there is an open question on the tools that can be used to assess the efficiency of organic resources and waste management systems and lead to the adequate processes selection. Especially the increasing use of Life Cycle Assessment tools has to be carefully addressed with a special focus on the considered indicators and the local applicability of the results.

Following the ORBIT conferences tradition, ORBIT2012 will deal with all aspects of organic resources and waste management with a special focus on the assessment of technologies with environmental, social and economical point of view. A large place will be given to climate change, waste management assessment and decision tools. Traditional themes as energy recovery (Biofuels, biogas, hydrogen production), biological treatments (composting and anaerobic digestion) and also mechanical biological treatment still remain central issues that have to be discussed in order to improve technologies and product quality, especially for land application. 

More local management systems such as home and community composting will also be discussed as they may represent solutions that have to be considered in an integrated organic waste management plan. Special emphasis will also be laid on EU policies and strategies for sustainable organic waste management. The conference will present high quality and innovative research in all the aforementioned topics and will include oral presentations (about 180), poster presentations (about 50) and a specific workshop: “From Waste to Product – Sustainable Management of Organic Resources in Europe » .

We will be pleased to welcome you to the next ORBIT in June 12^th – 15^th 2012 in Rennes, France ( www.orbit2012.fr )". 

Jet fuels derived from waste resources: a new alternative!

This is an interview with my colleague and good friend Jeff Cooper, ISWA's president. I know Jeff for many years and I always like his scientific approach to resources and waste management as well as his broad understanding of the different waste management aspects.

His involvement in a project where waste resources are going to be trasnformed to jet fuel really triggered me  and I thought that interviewing him about that project would make us certainly wiser. So here comes his interview, I hope you will enjoy it as I did.

 Jeff, I think you are the only one I know involved in airplane biofuel production utilizing waste resources. It sounds exciting and I would like you to give us an idea about it. Let us know about the project you already work on.

Antonis, you are right, in that there very few people from the waste sector dealing with the issue of the development of jet fuel from residual waste sources, ie after the most immediately recyclable items in the municipal, and the C&I waste streams have been extracted.

In 2009 after two years of preliminary discussions the USA-based company Solena Group/Solena Fuels offered to join forces with British Airways (BA) in order to evaluate the possibility of developing a plant to produce liquid bio-jet fuels for BA from a range of feedstock sources ( www.solenagroup.com ).

The plant to be developed in Tilbury, Essex is a 500-560,000 tpa biomass processing facility – ideally using high carbon materials - in order to convert them into liquid bio-jet fuel. This would allow BA to substitute a small proportion of its fossil fuels used for its aircraft with a renewable and more sustainable energy source.

The plant proposed would use a combination of new technology, a plasma arc gasification unit and an old established chemical processing system, the Fischer-Tropsch process.  The syngas (synthetic gas), or Bio-SynGas in this case, generated by the plasma arc would be converted to a liquid fuel.  A further advantage of this bio-jet fuel is that it has better combustion properties and lower pollution potential than its fossil fuel alternative when it is used in jet engines.

The plasma arc system has been proposed for several years as a potential alternative energy recovery option for waste processing.  Until recently with lack of support and limited success its development and use has not been regarded as viable.  As with other alternative systems, such as several microwave, sterilisation and autoclave-based plants developed in the UK and overseas, there has been huge scepticism, especially regarding the energy balance of the whole process. 

The main question for the plasma arc process was, could the total input of energy to reach the high temperatures required by a plasma arc, around 4,000-5,000oC, be generated internally by processing waste, let alone generate a surplus of energy?  If a surplus were to be generated could it be used as heat, electricity or, in the case of the Solena/BA project, manufacture a liquid bio-jet fuel? 

The advantage of plasma technology over more conventional gasification technologies is that 20-50% more of the carbon-based waste materials are broken down to ensure gasification of even the most intransigent carbon components. The gasification process releases a range of gaseous products but mainly carbon monoxide and hydrogen.

The Fischer-Tropsch process on the other hand is a long-standing technology originally developed by two German scientists in the 1920s.  Subsequently this process was used by the Germans during WWII to convert some of their coal resources to liquid fuels. The technology was further developed by SASOL, the South African energy company, which ensured that South Africa could utilise its vast soft coal resources for conversion to liquid fuels to withstand international oil embargoes in the 1970s and 1980s.   Even now the SASOL plant is in full production and produces jet fuel that is used by aircraft at Johannesburg airport.

In 2009 Solena started construction of their first commercial scale bio-fuel plant for liquid bio-fuel at Gilroy, California.  This plant is similar in size but the technology is different to the plant being proposed for the UK.  No plasma technology is involved and the fuel generated will be utilised by road vehicles.

The advantage of the Solena plasma arc process is that it uses a metallic catalyst in order to spread the heat impact of the plasma arcs used in the gasification units to a greater processing area and thus convert more of the carbon based wastes to gases.  Solena claims that only 5% of the energy content of the waste is required to gasify the waste in its latest processing system, thus leaving the energy surplus for a wide range of processes.  The types of feedstock which can be processed can include a wide range of wastes left after initial recycling of municipal, commercial and industrial waste streams, such as contaminated paper and plastics, multi-layered and other plastics which cannot be recycled, tyre chips, food waste, crop and forestry residues. 

The proposed Solena plasma arc system provides several productive outputs from the process: heat, electricity as well as the syngas, which can then be utilised to produce a liquid bio-fuel source.  The 500,000 tpa plant can provide sufficient energy to process waste into renewable liquid bio-fuel energy resources but also yields 20MW of electrical power, in addition to that required to operate the plant, plus surplus heat energy that could be used for industrial process heat or perhaps district heating. 

At full production the process should yield 1170 barrels a day of BioJetFuel and 630 blls day of bio-naphtha, which can also be used as a constituent of liquid fuel or as a chemical source.   Even the small amounts of final residue from the process can be readily utilised as a construction product because the high temperature used in the plasma arc system yields an inert glass-like solid material, which also has the advantage of locking in within the vitrified matrix any non-organic contaminants in the waste. 

For BA this project provides a substantial opportunity to reduce its carbon footprint.  Fuel usage generates 99% of its carbon footprint, a total of 17,583.853 tonnes CO2eq in 2008 from all BA’s operations, and therefore its main environmental impact. Unless BA were to address the future sources of its fuel consumption then anything else would be largely irrelevant. 

What is the concept behind it? I mean why British Airways is interested to invest in such a project and from the other side, why such a project is important for the waste management industry?

For BA (British Airways) – now part of the International Airlines Group (AIG) they needed to show positive support for to the IATA commitment to have 50% of renewable fuel sources for the airline sector by 2050.  At Board level therefore BA has therefore guaranteed to ensure that they will purchase the fuel for a lengthy period into the future for a minimum price.  This is something that the US military have not done despite President Obama’s commitment to the same target for their fuels but within a shorter timescale of 2015, “we’ve always worked on annual contracts and will continue to do so”.

For the waste management industry worldwide this project demonstrates that there is a further option within the portfolio of products that we can be producing in the future – we already have various EfW options but this is a product stream which has little other alternative except in specialist short/medium haul applications.    

Speaking about the technologies, I wonder if we are speaking for proven and commercial technologies? I would also like to know what types of waste are suitable and if such a technological approach could provide solutions in a city scale?

 The plasma arc system has been proposed for several years as a potential alternative energy recovery option for waste processing.  Until recently, with lack of support and limited success its development and use has not been regarded as viable.  As with other alternative systems, such as several microwave, sterilisation and autoclave-based plants developed in the UK and overseas, there has been huge scepticism, especially regarding the energy balance of the whole process. 

The main question for the plasma arc process was, could the total input of energy to reach the high temperatures required by a plasma arc, around 4,000-5,000oC, be generated internally by processing waste, let alone generate a surplus of energy?  If a surplus were to be generated could it be used as heat, electricity or, in the case of the Solena/BA project, manufacture a liquid bio-jet fuel? 

The advantage of plasma technology over more conventional gasification technologies is that 20-50% more of the carbon-based waste materials are broken down to ensure gasification of even the most intransigent carbon components. The gasification process releases a range of gaseous products but mainly carbon monoxide and hydrogen.

The Fischer-Tropsch process on the other hand is a long-standing technology originally developed by two German scientists in the 1920s.  Subsequently this process was used by the Germans during WWII to convert some of their coal resources to liquid fuels. The technology was further developed by SASOL, the South African energy company, which ensured that South Africa could utilise its vast soft coal resources for conversion to liquid fuels to withstand international oil embargoes in the 1970s and 1980s.   Even now the SASOL plant is in full production and produces jet fuel that is used by aircraft at Johannesburg airport.

According your knowledge, when it will be the date when such a solution will become really available? And give us an idea for its costs, related to other options.

This is a difficult question but we envisage the GreenSky project, as the British project is now called, being fully operational in 2015. 

As for the costs again it is difficult because each country will have its own constraints and incentives.  In the UK we have a landfill tax that is currently £56 per tonne but from April this year will be £64 per tonne so the provision of even well processed residual waste should cost the plant nothing – a gate fee would be negotiated against a quality specification from the suppliers as they will be saving huge amounts of money through diverting waste from landfill.  Nevertheless, if there are suitably large quantities of residual waste available the opportunity to establish a bio-jet fuel facility becomes increasingly attractive.    

 Last but not least, I would like to have your personal opinion regarding the future of waste to energy technologies. Can we hope to pyrolysis and gasification or their commercial application is too far? Biofuel production is an alternative or a supplementary solution? And how about H2 production from waste?

My personal opinion I’ve expressed in answer to Q1&2 but I’ve been looking at the whole range of new technologies over the past few years of my 30-year career in waste management.  I am a resource scientist by training and the shift to increasing resource cost extraction of both renewable and non-renewable resources occurred about 12-14 years ago compared to a reducing trend before that, as I’d always proposed when dealing with the issues of resource economics in the 1970s as an academic.  Before that time technological and other developments could provide resources at increasingly lower resource (and possibly environmental) cost.  Now we need more resources into order to extract resources and therefore we are in a spiral of decline which makes the financial crisis look like a party.  However, the two are inextricably linked – but perhaps that is outside the scope of this feature.

As for H2 production and use, this would be possible and indeed is often suggested for a variety of applications, particularly: for storage of the energy, use in fuel cells and within the road transport sector.  I would support these opportunities being exploited but we are looking for a specific liquid fuel substitute for the current kerosene jet fuel used for the past 60 years. However we provide it in the future, the conventional mechanism of distillation from fossil oil extracted from under the earth will decline in the future.    

Are we heading towards a Carbon Bubble?

It seems that there is a growing doubt regarding the efficiency and the results that will be achieved through the Carbon market.

Even worst, recent findings document that there is a potential for a Carbon Bubble which will have tremendous negative effects to carbon trading and subsequently to the efforts for Climate Change abatement.

Here are some of the latest developments, as they are described in the Carbon Tracker report available at the relevant web-site. 

The Carbon Tracker initiative is a new way of looking at the carbon emissions problem. It is focused on the fossil fuel reserves held by publically listed companies and the way they are valued and assessed by markets. Currently financial markets have an unlimited capacity to treat fossil fuel reserves as assets. As governments move to control carbon emissions, this market failure is creating systemic risks for institutional investors, notably the threat of fossil fuel assets becoming stranded as the shift to a low-carbon economy accelerates.

According a research made by the Potsdam Institute, in order to reduce the chance of exceeding 2°C warming to 20%, the global carbon budget for 2000-2050 is 886 GtCO2. Minus emissions from the first decade of this century, this leaves a budget of 565 GtCO2 for the remaining 40 years to 2050.

But the total carbon potential of the Earth’s known fossil fuel reserves comes to 2795 GtCO2. 65% of this is from coal, with oil providing 22% and gas 13%.

This means that governments and global markets are currently treating as assets, reserves equivalent to nearly 5 times the carbon budget for the next 40 years. The investment consequences of using only 20% of these reserves have not yet been assessed!

The fossil fuel reserves held by the top 100 listed coal companies and the top 100 listed oil and gas companies represent potential emissions of 745 GtCO2. This exceeds the remaining carbon budget of 565 GtCO2 by 180 GtCO2.This means that using just the listed proportion of reserves in the next 40 years is enough to take us beyond 2°C of global warming. On top of this further resources are held by state entities.

 Given only 20% of the total reserves can be used to stay below 2°C, if this is applied uniformly, then only 149 of the 745 GtCO2 held by listed companies can be used unabated. Investors are thus left exposed to the risk of unburnable carbon. If the 2°C target is rigorously applied, then up to 80% of declared reserves owned by the world’s largest listed coal, oil and gas companies and their investors would be subject to impairment as these assets become stranded.

The top 100 coal and top 100 oil & gas companies have a combined value of $7.42 trillion as at February 2011. The countries with the largest greenhouse gas potential in reserves on their stock exchanges are Russia, (253 Gt CO2), the United States, (156.5 Gt CO2) and the United Kingdom, (105.5 Gt CO2). The stock exchanges of London, Sao Paulo, Moscow, Australia and Toronto all have an estimated 20-30% of their market capitalization connected to fossil fuels.

The UK has less than 0.2% of the world’s coal, oil and gas reserves, and accounts for around 1.8% of global consumption of fossil fuels. Yet the CO2 potential of the reserves listed in London alone account for 18.7% of the remaining global carbon budget. The financial carbon footprint of the UK is therefore 100 times its own reserves.

London currently has 105.5 GtCO2 of fossil fuel reserves listed on its exchange which is ten times the UK’s carbon budget for 2011 to 2050, of around 10 GtCO2. Just one of the largest companies listed in London, such as Shell, BP or Xstrata, has enough reserves to use up the UK’s carbon budget to 2050. With approximately one third of the total value of the FTSE 100 being represented by resource and mining companies, London’s role as a global financial centre is at stake if these assets become unburnable en route to a low carbon economy.

The Carbon Tracker report mentions that “In the past decade investors have suffered considerable value destruction following the mispricing exhibited in the dot.com boom and the more recent credit crunch. The carbon bubble could be equally serious for institutional investors – including pension beneficiaries - and the value lost would be permanent”.

The authors believe (and I also share the same opinion) that today’s financial architecture is not fit for purpose to manage the transition to a low-carbon economy and serious reforms are required to key aspects of financial regulation and practice firstly to acknowledge the carbon risks inherent in fossil fuel assets and then take action to reduce these risks on the timeline needed to avoid catastrophic climate change.

They also add that “The regulatory regimes covering the capital markets need realigning to provide transparency for investors on the assumptions behind valuing unburnable carbon. With the global economy following the fortunes of the financial sector, it is essential to create capital markets which are robust enough to deliver an economy which can prevent dangerous climate change. Unless a more long-term approach is required by regulators, the shift in investment required to deliver a low carbon future will not occur.”