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Does the government need to rethink its incinerator project?

Laisee comments:

dynamco Jul 3rd 2013  9:19am

Incinerator bag houses and flues cannot control PM1 and PM2.5 RSP heavy metal emissions that are the killers.
The previous ENB minister left an air pollution + waste disaster for the incumbents.
His abject failure to act means HK now needs an immediate (less than 3 years) gasification treatment option instead of dinosaur incineration 7+ years + JR appeals hence. The obvious treatment site w/ existing marine waste delivery train at Tsang Tsui has been allocated as a columbarium. SENT will receive no more food waste but when it closes necessitates MSW transport from the entire East Kowloon for disposal. West Kowloon TS is already at capacity. Haul times + costs will double or 3x as will vehicle generated air quality problems unless E KLN waste can be barged. To minimise this problem KLN Bay TS will have to reopen to truck 2000 TPD to NENT. However this is opposite the new cruise liner terminal which displaced all the typhoon moorings in Kai Tak typhoon shelter SENT will need replacement by a major transfer station capable of dealing with 2700 TPD destined for WENT.
20,000+tpd public fill material construction waste from building + demolishing things handled by CEDD is currently being delivered along Wan Po Rd Area 137 + then shipped to China
(is that considered part of the recycling 48% number quoted by EPD ?)
www.epd.gov.hk/epd/english/environmentinhk/waste/data/stat_treat.html

www.wastereduction.gov.hk/en/quickaccess/stat_recycle.htm

Fuzzy numbers indeed !

Published on South China Morning Post (http://www.scmp.com)

Home > Does the government need to rethink its incinerator project?

Published on South China Morning Post (http://www.scmp.com)

Home > Does the government need to rethink its incinerator project?


Does the government need to rethink its incinerator project?

Wednesday, 03 July, 2013, 12:00am

Business

LAI SEE

Howard Winn howard.winn@scmp.com

The government’s plans for dealing with waste are beginning to look awry. It recently had to withdraw its proposal to extend landfills in the face of popular opposition. Its decision to build a big incinerator at Shek Kwu Chau looks as if it will be tied up in the courts for some time. Maybe it is time for the government to rethink some aspects of its plan.

The incinerator project has aroused opposition on account of its proposed location and because of the technology. Many people think it is in the wrong place. As for the technology, it produces a large amount of ash, which has to be treated because of its toxicity and then has to be dumped somewhere. The ash can amount to as much as 20 per cent of the weight of the municipal solid waste (MSW) burned. The present plan involves elaborate arrangements for loading the ash on to barges and shipping it to the ash lagoons in the Northwest New Territories until they are filled up.

The other concern is the public health aspects of incinerators. In the 1990s and 1980s, they spewed out high levels of toxic emissions that have damaged the environment and had a deleterious effect on people’s health. It is true that modern incinerators produce a fraction of the emissions of earlier generations. The impact on public health is harder to gauge. In Germany, which has the highest number of incinerators in Europe, and in some other countries, incineration is not seen to be a problem, but in Spain and Britain it is. So, is incineration the best technology for dealing with MSW in Hong Kong?

One technology that is increasingly being employed by municipal authorities around the world is plasma gasification. The EPD says it has looked at the technology but doesn’t think it is suitable for handling 3,000 tonnes a day. This view is not shared by the suppliers of the equipment, who say the units are modular and can be combined to deal with this level of waste. A paper by Mousad Pourali, a senior member of the US Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, written in 2009, says a typical plasma gasification with a feedstock of 3,000 tonnes of MSW a day is estimated to cost more than US$400 million (HK$3.1 billion) and generate about 120 megawatts of electricity. Even if the price doubles, this is a lot less than the HK$28 billion envisaged for the Shek Kwu Chau project. Emissions would be a fraction of the proposed incinerator, and the slag is inert and can be used for building roads, and there is, therefore, no need for barging toxic waste.

Indeed, instead of one large unit, a number of smaller units could be built – one for each of the landfills, which could gradually munch their way through the waste with the aims of emptying them. This seems a far less controversial path to pursue than the one proposed by the government. It’s cleaner, it appears to cost less, and it could eventually empty the landfills. For these reasons, the government may stand a better chance of getting such a plan through the Legislative Council.

Source URL (retrieved on Jul 3rd 2013, 6:31am): http://www.scmp.com/business/article/1274214/does-government-need-rethink-its-incinerator-project

Published on South China Morning Post (http://www.scmp.com)

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