Local administrations to lead the way
Power generation from waste in Thailand is expected to increase to 150 megawatts by year-end from just 26.6 MW now, spurred by a government campaign to encourage local administrations to develop renewable energy.
Narongsak Kamales, the governor of the Provincial Electricity Authority, said more than 20 municipalities had expressed enthusiasm about the plan, but only nine had taken any steps so far. They include Muang Rayong, Muang Chon Buri and Kamphaeng Saen in Nakhon Pathom province.
Waste-to-energy projects are being operated under the very small power producer (VSPP) programme.
To expand the use of renewable resources to 20% of the country’s power generation needs by 2021 from 8% now, the government is offering the incentive of an adder tariff, a special rate that state utilities pay for power from producers using renewable sources.
The adder tariff being offered for power generation from waste is 3.50 baht beyond the standard rate per kilowatt/hour.
“Ten more power plants will come online this year,” said Mr Narongsak.
The development is aimed at both slowing the growth of landfills nationwide and cutting methane emissions from waste under landfills. The greenhouse gas is 20 times more effective than carbon dioxide in trapping heat in the atmosphere.
Power generation from waste depends on technologies such as biogas, pyrolysis (decomposition or transformation of a compound via heat) and incineration. The latest technique is homogenisation, developed by South Korea-based Eco Creation Co.
Pinyo Tanviset, the chairman of Clean City Co, which holds a landfill management licence from Si Racha municipality, said his company was testing machinery and equipment from Eco Creation that could produce diesel and fuel oil from waste.
Clean City will soon pay 80 million baht for a homogeniser with daily diesel output of 900 litres and a 1.6-MW power generator.
Waste plastic homogenisation is a restoring process that produces oil by heating and decomposing waste plastics in the reverse direction from manufacturing plastic products, with the the oil used as a raw material in the petrochemical industry.
Mr Pinyo’s licensed landfill has accumulated more than 300,000 tonnes of waste, mostly plastics. About 100 tonnes arrive each day from Muang Chon Buri and Si Racha.
Thailand has 93 landfills, each containing at least 300,000 tonnes of waste, said Sompong Tancharenphol, vice-chairman of the Federation of Thai Industries and chairman of the Thailand Institute of Packaging and Recycling Management for Sustainable Environment (TIPMSE).
“Such huge amounts of waste sitting under landfills for long periods will make an impact on the environment, as most of the garbage is plastics that take at least 400 years to degrade,” he said.
The Pollution Control Department said Thailand produced 15.1 million tonnes of all types of waste in 2009 – 50% decomposable organic compounds, 42% recyclable waste such as glass, steel, paper and plastics, 3% hazardous waste and the rest construction materials and scrap.
A department report showed only 3.1 million tonnes of recyclable waste are actually recycled each year, while another 3.2 million tonnes are simply buried.
TIPMSE said recycled waste was worth an estimated 20 billion baht a year. However, countries with sufficient recycling capability could double that value.
Source: http://www.bangkokpost.com/business/economics/231884/power-from-waste-poised-to-take-off
We, ROHTO E-TEC Co., Ltd., are interested in the landfill projects in Thailand. Our client operates the landfill priject near Bangkok and generate electricity for selling.
Now, we are discussing with them about the waste plastics mixed with MSW which are buried in the landfill.
Since the waste plastics are “Recyclable Resource”, approx. 1,000,000 Tons of waste plastics in the landfill should be considered its effective utilization.
We propose them to introduce the Pyrolysis Process to convert the waste plastics to OIL. The estimated volume of oil production will be 600,000 Tons.
Please inform us why the waste plastics are left in the landfill even if the biogas generation was terminated.
Regarding the generation of a landfill plant, the waste plastics mixed with MSW which are buried in the landfill. please advise us why the waste plastics are left in the landfill even if the biogas was run out.
In Japan, the waste plastics are “Recyclable Resource”.
We would like to propose to converte the waste plastics to OIL by using our Pyrolysis Process Plant.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Yoshi Terashita
ROHTO E-TEC Co., ltd.
There is talk of landfill use and creating additional power but no discussion of T&D. I now work for the top ENR Contractor in this field and would like to find out if there are any opportunities to perform some of this work.