Entsorga-Enteco 2009 – focus on ‘Incineration & Renewable Energies’: Starting out into a new age of energy
The generation of electricity and heat from renewable sources is gaining increasingly in vital importance. Not only on account of climate protection, but also as a substitute for the ever more scarce and more expensive fossil fuels oil and natural gas. The topic of ‘Incineration & Renewable Energies’ will accordingly be specially highlighted at Entsorga-Enteco 2009 – the International Trade Fair for Waste Management and Environmental Technology – from 27 to 30 October 2009 at Cologne’s exhibition centre.
The challenge is colossal – a task which involves reducing CO2 emissions over the next 40 years – worldwide – by some 80 percent in a bid to stabilise the Earth’s climate and to limit the rise in the global average temperature to 2 to 3 degrees Celsius compared with pre-industrial times. All the scenarios, be these from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), from the International Energy Agency (IEA), the European Union (EU) or Greenpeace, are at one with each other - the energy of the future will come from renewable sources. Over the long term, electricity and heat will only continue to be available if both of these are generated from the sun, wind, water and biomass, including landfill and sewage gas. These sources of energy also include energy produced from municipal solid waste. After all, a good 50% of this comes from the biogenic components contained in such waste.
To accomplish this challenge, the 27 member states of the EU have resolved in their climate protection package back in mid-December 2008 to increase the proportion of renewables in the overall secondary energy consumption (electricity, heat, fuels) to 20 percent by the year 2020. It currently accounts for just over 8 percent. At the same time, the energy-political roadmap for Germany up to 2020 envisages drawing 30 percent of the electric power consumption (currently 14 percent) and 14 percent of the heat requirement (current 7.5 percent) from renewable sources.
Even today, the use of renewable energies in Germany makes a significant contribution to reducing CO2 emissions by over 117 million tons per annum. Waste incineration plants also play an important role in this regard. These plants, which now number over 70, produce enough electricity and heat from around 18 million tons of waste to supply a city the size of Berlin, thereby replacing to a corresponding extent such fossil fuels as oil, natural gas and coal and, in so doing, reducing CO2 emissions by just under 10 million tons. After deducting the fossil component in the waste, this still leaves a net reduction effect of over 4 million tons.
Added to this, there are also currently around ten incineration plants with a capacity of some 1.3 million tons, which use substitute fuels generated exclusively from waste to produce energy. Mono plants for a further 3 million plus tons of substitute fuels are in the planning stage. Furthermore, around 2 million tons of substitute fuels are also used in coal-fired power stations and cement factories. In just a few years, the proportion of incineration as a means of waste disposal in Germany increased from 24 percent (2004) according to data from the EU Office of Statistics (Eurostat) to around 35 percent (2007). At the same time, some 64 percent of German municipal solid waste is either recycled or composted, with only 1 percent going to landfill sites. This reflects the implementation of the German Waste Disposal Act, which has dictated since 2005 that no waste is allowed to be disposed of untreated any longer.
However, also on a EU-wide basis, waste incineration is growing in significance. Here, the proportion of waste incinerated has now reached 20 percent (2007), three percent more than two years ago. Recycling and composting now account for just under 39 percent and have almost reached the 42 percent going to landfill. The principal factors responsible for this are the new Waste Framework and Landfill Directives, according to which on the one hand recycling and on the other hand the thermal treatment of municipal solid waste are to be promoted.
The Framework Directive also provides new incentives to encourage incineration plants to become more efficient and, as such, more climate-friendly in their energy yield. This is because from efficiencies of 60 percent (old plants) and 65 percent (new plants) waste incineration is classed as recycling. This means that the waste used for this can be sourced more easily across EU borders. Studies show that the overall efficiency of energy in waste incineration plants can be significantly further optimised. In this regard, the greatest potential lies in the generation and utilisation of heat. At the same time, however, work is also underway on optimising electricity efficiency. In any case, it would be possible in Germany to save around a further 3 million tons in CO2 emissions in this way.
In the development of the amount of energy produced from renewable sources, biomass plays an increasingly more important role. Worldwide, the proportion of renewables used in the provision of primary energy is around 12.7 percent. Biomass accounts for three quarters of this. The largest proportion of this is however wood, which is still used more traditionally for cooking and heating in open fireplaces. In the EU, biomass, biological waste and wood account for just under two thirds of the primary energy consumption from renewable sources. And in Germany, around 50 percent of the secondary energy (electricity, heat) obtained from renewable sources is produced from solid, liquid and gaseous biomass, the biogenic component of the waste, as well as from landfill and sewage gas.
In late-2008, according to data from the Trade Association for Biogas (Freising), around 4,000 biogas plants were in operation in the Federal Republic of Germany, producing an output of around 1,400 megawatts (MW). This is four times more than in the year 2000. These plants are primarily used for producing electricity, but increasingly also heat and biomethane from renewable raw materials (e.g. maize), liquid manure and dung from agriculture in addition to bio-waste for example from the foodstuffs industry and from household waste. This involves fermenting this substrate in digesters, i.e. microbiologically degraded in a moist environment in airtight conditions. By way of an end product, this decomposition process produces a combustible gas mixture (biogas), which is converted into electricity by means of combustion engines (spark-ignition or pilot injection gas engines) that drive a generator. These plants work particularly inexpensively if the heat generated by the engine
cooling systems as well as the exhaust gas can be used. By combining heat and power generation in this way it is possible to increase the overall efficiency (electrical and thermal) to as much as 90 percent. The biogas can (once processed accordingly) also be used directly as a substitute for natural gas and even in fuel cells. Intensive research is currently underway into the further development and optimisation of this process technology.
It is evidently becoming more attractive also in Germany to use wood for heating purposes, such as in log burners, increasingly however also in the central heating systems for family homes, as well as in school and office buildings. The reason for this being not least due to the dramatic rise in the price of oil and natural gas. In Germany, one fifth of households today use firewood from forests, wood briquettes, pellets or woodchips for their heating, according to the Federal Association of Bioenergy (Bonn). Before this is possible, the wood first has to be chopped up and processed in accordance with the requirements of the heating systems, by being pressed into pellets for example. By way of illustration, the German Engineering Federation (VDMA, Frankfurt), conceptual sponsor of Entsorga-Enteco 2009, will be staging a special exhibition during the trade fair with its ‘Practical Days Biomass Processing’. Several times a day, manufacturers will be giving live demonstrations
on the open-air exhibition ground of just what their systems for processing solid biomass are capable of.
At Entsorga-Enteco 2009 – the International Trade Fair for Waste Management and Environmental Technology – from 27 to 30 October 2009 in Cologne, visitors will also have the opportunity to obtain expert advice on the current state of the art in terms of waste incineration and biogas generation. The fair will be complemented by a professional, technical supporting programme.
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