September 11, 2008

ELAINE DELLA-MATTIA

Enquest Power Corp.’s Sault Ste. Marie pilot project takes household waste and converts it into energy.

Sault Ste. Marie strikes deal for demonstration waste-to-energy plant

ELAINE DELLA-MATTIA

correspondent

A deal has been struck between the City of Sault Ste. Marie and a private company that could see a waste-to-energy company construct a demonstration plant in the Sault.

The memorandum of understanding between the city and Enquest Power Corp. is a six-month deal that will allow Enquest to further develop its pilot project and produce test data for city staff and the Ontario Ministry of Environment to prove the technology works.

The Fonthill, Ont. based company is currently in the midst of a pilot project with a small plant established at the city’s landfill.

It is using city curbside waste to test the steam-reformation technology.

The MOU between the city and Enquest will net the company $3.4 million in funding from Sustainability Development Technology Canada to build the facility in the city.

A city capital contribution is not required, said Jayson Zwierschke, Enquest president.

The waste-to-energy process is fairly straightforward.

Curbside waste, the feedstock for the process, is collected by the municipality and dumped at one end of the rectangular plant.

It’s processed through a primary shredder and two magnetic separators that pare the waste down to a manageable size.

Any metal collected in the two magnetic separators can be recycled and sold off.

The shredded material is then fed into an “extruder” which further breaks down the waste and turns it into a sawdust or fibre-like material that is compacted into a log form. Oxygen is extracted and the material is pushed into a kiln.

In the rotary kiln, the material is heated to about 1,000 C, turning it into a molecular form and gasifying it.

The steam-reformation process includes putting the material through scrubbers and filters to remove acid gases and mercury and turns the material to a syngas.

Currently, the gas is flared off to meet MOE requirements, but a larger demonstration plant will likely be built near local industry where the gas could be used or sent through a turbine to generate power for the energy grid.

The process results in the production of 1.7 megawatt hours of electricity for every tonne of material processed.

The remaining granular material can be used as an asphalt filler or as a landfill groundcover.

The larger demonstration plant will, with MOE approval, process up to 75 tonnes of waste a day.

Zwierschke said the technology has drawn interest from throughout North America and as far away as China and Australia.

Under the terms of the agreement, the demonstration plant must be built within five years of MOE approval.

Enquest has said it will provide the city with a royalty or payback of $200,000 per plant up to $5 million if the demonstration plant nets the company contracts in other cities around the world.

The cutting edge technology varies somewhat from a similar process being tested in Ottawa by Plasco, another company testing the technology.

Ottawa has formalized an agreement with its test site project.

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