Burn system designed for on-site operation by small communities
Problem:
To destroy non-recyclable municipal waste at the remote site of CFS Alert on the northern tip of Ellesmere Island in the High Arctic.
Solution:
After exploring various options the decision makers at the High Artic site chose the Eco Waste system, because it is designed for on-site operation by small communities.
The facility's operators were persuaded by Eco Waste's double-burn process, which reduces waste volumes by 90%, yielding inert byproducts, recyclable ash, colorless/odorless exhaust, and thermal energy that can be converted into electricity or used to heat buildings—the last asset having particular attraction.
The basic Eco Waste system is configured in two steel modules, one for each phase of the burn. Each module is roughly the size of a dumpster. This means the system can be transported to different sites relatively readily.
Module One of the two-stage Eco Waste process maintains a slow, starved-air burn at about 1000ºF, where the garbage is reduced to ash and vapors in 8 to 10 hours. That is hot enough to get rid of pathogenic and all other waste materials but leave glass and metals intact for harvesting and recycling. Module Two sustains a flash fire at 1850ºF that in two seconds obliterates vaporous toxins.
The whole computer-driven process takes about 12 hours, from loading, to cleaning, to preparing for the next load. Different garbage burns in different ways. The computer monitors and controls each burn, keeping it consistent automatically; producing the most complete burn, the cleanest outcome.
System Capabilities
The system can take on a wide range of solid and liquid wastes—body fluids, bandages, gauze, needles, plastic, live biological materials—and such residential, commercial, and industrial refuse as tires (tires' being gasified rather than converted to liquid), motor oil, coolants, dye, paint sludge. It is at its most cost-effective dealing with up to 50 tpd of solids having up to 60% moisture content—equivalent to about 10 garbage truckloads.
Eco Waste installations are also operating on the Hawaiian Islands of Oahu and Kauai and in Skagway, Alaska and Cheltenham, England as well as in the Ontario communities of Burlington, Toronto, Mississauga, London, Dorchester, and Windsor.
Those installations treating medical waste use a configuration having a third module, which houses scrubbers to complete the destruction of the toxic heavy metals and chlorinated gases found in waste streams from hospitals and other health-care facilities.
According to the company, capital costs for the system range between U.S.$250,000 and $4 million, depending on capacity. Medical-waste operating costs run about 18 cents a pound compared with the 30 to 40 cents hospitals pay to have their waste carted away by commercial haulers.
Frank D. Sherman, president of Eco Waste Solutions Inc. said, "Dioxin and furan concentrations are only one-tenth of allowable [U.S.] EPA limits."
Sherman, an engineer, and company Executive Vice President Lucy Casacia, a metallurgist, developed the Eco Waste process system.
Both contend that Eco Waste's computer monitoring and control set the system apart from other similar equipment and setting the pace for systems of their genre.
The system received a U.S. patent in early March.
Contact: Eco Waste Solutions Inc., Lucy Casacia, Burlington, ON. Tel: 905-634-7022.
Edited by Paul Hersch, Editor, Pollution Online