Waste to power
Waste to power
Energy from Waste, or Waste to Energy, is becoming increasingly important globally. There is a clear trend towards decentralized Energy from Waste plants as these have the benefit of reducing the need for transportation as the waste is utilized closer to where it is created.
Another trend in waste treatment is to make use of technologies, such as Pyrolysis, Gasification, Plamsa, that gasify or liquify the waste turning them into combustible fuels. This enables the decoupling of waste treatment, turning waste into gas or liquid, and power generation, turning the gas or liquid into electricity.
What is Waste to Power?
Waste to power means utilizing the chemically stored energy within waste and transferring that into useful electricity and heat. Combined heat and power (CHP) applications where the heat output of the turbine is captured to provide very high overall efficiency.
Waste to Power, or energy from waste, is much more suitable to the environment than other means of waste disposal such as landfills or simple waste incineration.
How does waste to power work with the OP16 Gas Turbine?
Thanks to the unique robust design of the OPRA OP16 gas turbine, it is able to utilize very challenging fuels in liquid or gaseous form. The turbine is capable of utilizing pyrolysis oil made of tyres, biomass or other waste streams to generate power.
Heavy fuel oil engines, HFO, require cost intensive maintenance when operated with pyrolysis oil whereas OPRA’s OP16 gas turbine can operate reliably on these fuels.
Syngas is often a by product of the pyrolysis process and is generated in the reactor. This gas can equally be used in the turbine as it is capable of a dual fuel operation.
Waste to power application examples
Waste to power with the OP16 can be done with various waste streams. Together with our technology partners that excel in building pyrolysis reactors, we are exploring projects all over the globe.
Pyrolysis Oil
Pyrolysis oil is created in pyrolysis reactors together with product gas and ashes. Typical heating value of pyrolysis oil is LHV 40MJ/kg. It often contains acidic and particulate contents that require filtering.
Biogas
Biogas comes from crops, slurry, manure or other natural sources. It is generated by fermentation and digestion. Energy crops (e.g. maize or grain) are often utilized to generate it.
Syngas
Syngas is generated by gasification and often arises in the Steel or coke oven industry. It can be very efficiently used in these industries as they are very heat intensive processes.
Industrial Off gases
Off gases such as coke oven gas or blast furnace gas are often flared as flare gas. Flaring these gases is wasting energy as they can instead be utilized in the OPRA gas turbine.
Fertilizer Plants
Ammonia (NH3) is a chemical compound widely used to produce fertilizers like Urea, Ammonium Nitrate, and Ammonium Sulphate. Ammonia manufacturing is a very energy intensive process. High electrical load to drive the system auxiliaries along with large quantities of thermal energy for steam reforming, is required in the production process. This makes ammonia plants a perfect candidate to focus on energy efficiency and utilize every potential source of energy available onsite. One of these potential sources can be the byproduct gases that are released during the production of ammonia.
High Hydrogen Content Fuel
OPRA Turbines can operate on high hydrogen content fuel while being flexible on the composition as a whole.
How does OPRA Gas Turbine helps to decrease costs
Highly attractive government incentives are in place in different countries (for example, France, Turkey, UK) that subsidize waste gasification or pyrolysis technology. Compared to other technologies OPRA gas turbines help to reduce costs as they offer highly attractive and low cost maintenance cycles and a reliable operation even on gases and fuels derived from waste .
