About half of Abu Dhabi’s trash will ‘burn’ into green electricity in new $850 million power plant.
Maybe you saw the wonderful movie, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. Or maybe you’d read stories on Green Prophet about Masdar, or Shams, the world’s largest CSP plant in Abu Dhabi. Arab nations and their economies are certainly not all about oil and natural gas these days, and in fact these nations are becoming leaders in amazing projects in renewable energy. Now in the news: Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates has just announced the creation of an $850 million incinerator plant which will take garbage from the city and “burn” it into green fuel.
The new plant is to be built at the Mussaffah Sea Port, according to The National, and is being commissioned by the Abu Dhabi National Energy Company. Suppliers and supporters start your business tender engines!
Figures estimate that a million metric tonnes of municipal solid waste (MSW) will be burned every year, to produce 100 megawatts of energy, that’s the same amount of power as the world’s largest CSP plant, Shams which also opened in March in Abu Dhabi.
The National Energy company which goes by the abbreviation TAQA will be looking for builders and operators, and to have the plant ready by 2016 or 2017. It is expected to run for at least 40 years.
Saif Al Sayari, executive officer and head of TAQA’s energy solutions division said: “The waste for our plant in Abu Dhabi will come from various collection points in the emirate of Abu Dhabi and will be diverted from landfill at Al Dhafra.”
Emirates Rail, the national railway of the region may be used to divert some of the waste. And waste will include solid residential as well as commercial and industrial.
Waste heat will generate steam to drive a turbine to produce green electricity.
“It is not too different to what we do at our other eight thermal power plants in the UAE, which all burn natural gas,” Al Sayari noted.
New technologies have produced better filters for removing contaminants that would otherwise enter the air. “The emissions will fall well within globally recognised guidelines, such as the Waste Incineration Directive, applicable to all European plants, of which there are hundreds,” Al Sayari noted.
According to estimates the 100 MW plant will prevent more than a million tonnes of CO2 or carbon dioxide from entering the air. Carbon dioxide is used to quantify all types of greenhouse gas including methane. Greenhouse gas emissions are what’s causing global warming and a forecasted radical climate change.
The plan here isn’t just to burn everything in sight, but to use the incinerator as a last stop for all waste that cannot be sorted and recycled. The City of Abu Dhabi currently produces about 5,000 tonnes of waste per day. The new plant will consume about half of that. A small pilot will be built on Delma Island before the larger plant goes into operation.
Meanwhile in other good news, Westin Abu Dhabi is turning food waste from its golf resort into fertilizer, and the city of Abu Dhabi’s area farms (yes there are farms in the desert!) is converting farm waste into compost.
Image via serdal
Author: Karin Kloosterman
Karin Kloosterman is an award-winning journalist and publisher that founded Green Prophet to unite a prosperous Middle East. She shows through her work that positive, inspiring dialogue creates action that impacts people, business and planet. She has published in thought-leading newspapers and magazines globally, owns an IoT tech chip patent, and is part of teams that build world-changing products to make agriculture and our planet more sustainable. Reach out directly to [email protected]
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