A forum of leading recycling and energy professionals held in Ballarat has heard that the future of power production in Australia lies in converting waste to energy.
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The Australian Waste to Energy Forum is being held in the city for the second time. It is exploring the future of the sector and the potential for growth in converting our unrecyclable waste into fuels such as gas through processes including incineration and plasma gasification.
Chairman of host body for the forum Australian Industrial Ecology Network Garbis Simonian says Australia is now looking seriously at harnessing energy from the waste that currently goes into landfill.
“There’s an energy crisis right now”, said Mr Simonian.
“We’re short of gas, electricity – so this is very relevant now. We’ve got to look at all areas to see where we can recover energy.”
Speakers at the conference were at pains to stress that waste conversion need and should not have an impact upon recycling and other waste re-uses; nor should a thorough investigation of the economic feasibility of processes be ignored.
One of the processes under consideration at the forum is plasma gasification, a process which uses plasma torches to convert waste material into synthesis gas at extremely high temperatures.
“There’s an energy crisis right now. We’re short of gas, electricity – so this is very relevant now. We’ve got to look at all areas to see where we can recover energy.”
- Garbis Simonian, AIEN
The resulting gases are available to be used for energy and heating.
Barry Sullivan is the business development manager for the Downer Group and a proponent of plasma gasification.
He says waste-to-energy options for places like Ballarat need to be scalable in terms of how much waste can be brought in, but also flexible in the kinds of waste that can be used.
“A lot of what we talk about (in terms of organic waste reuse) is thermal, because anaerobic digestion is very finicky,” says Mr Sullivan.
“Projects fail because the feedstock fails; whereas thermal technologies will take basically anything. Then it becomes a question of what kind of thermal technology do you want.”
Sustainability Victoria CEO Stan Krpan says the momentum for waste-to-energy technology is the strongest he’s seen in in his six years at the head of the state government body.
“Our focus has been for 10 years now around waste, recycling, energy efficiency, renewable energy,” he says.
He says communities now have a low tolerance of landfill use and new processes are the inevitable answer.