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Dublin: Poolbeg incinerator - energy recovery

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  • 05-09-2014 5:59pm
    #1
    Impetus
    Registered Users Posts: 1,667 ✭✭✭


    http://www.irishtimes.com/news/environment/controversial-poolbeg-incinerator-plan-set-to-proceed-1.1919259

    Why not congregate buildings that can use direct energy around incinerator plants (eg Poolbeg)?

    Example: Cloud server farms. These need electricity and cooling. Incinerators can provide chilled water at 3 to 5 C which can be run through heat exchangers in a server farm to cool them with minimal electricity consumption. A large part of Monaco (Fontvieille) gets free air conditioning via chilled water from its incinerator - which consumes almost no electricity in apartments and office buildings that take advantage of the waste energy. This is not new technology - Monaco has been doing this for about 25 years. It was one of the first countries to incinerate rubbish in the 1800s and convert it into hot water back in the day. With current technology you can also get cold water and electricity from recycling rubbish. They use fourth generation incineration technology using catalysers and multiple filtration systems to trap the unwanted emissions in water which are sent to a specialist factory in Germany for safe conversion/disposal. As a result Monaco has one of the longest life expectancies in the planet (besides the contribution the country has from having a good public health service).

    How it is done - see the schema diagram of the process -
    http://www.sma.mc/images/uploads/doc/6-sma-broch-usine-frrdt.pdf

    Other documents on emissions, waste sorting, etc are at:
    http://www.sma.mc/historique.html#/documents

    If Monaco with 6,000 odd citizens, and one of the smallest countries in the world (202 ha - similar to a mid-sized/largeish farm in Ireland) can do this, why can't Ireland?


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    #2
    Atlantic Dawn
    Registered Users Posts: 81,404 ✭✭✭✭Atlantic Dawn
    M


    I think the issue really is the location, the area can't cope with trucks running daily at peak times with waste, plenty of areas of major motorways that would be much more suitable.


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    #3
    Impetus
    Registered Users Posts: 1,667 ✭✭✭Impetus


    Atlantic Dawn wrote: »
    I think the issue really is the location, the area can't cope with trucks running daily at peak times with waste, plenty of areas of major motorways that would be much more suitable.

    Which is why I suggested data server farms. They have very little vehicle access need. All their traffic flows over fibre optic cables. While 500'000 tonnes of waste can produce of a lot of electricity - not using the waste energy directly (ie going the electricity generation route) involves large conversion losses. eg you get about 38% of energy in the form of electricity or about 90% of the energy in the form of district heating or cooling.

    About 400'000 tonnes of waste going into an incinerator in Gothenburg produces 1,212 GWh of direct thermal energy, which they use to heat a large part of the city. While the "planners" did an awful job in Dublin and made no provision for district heating, it could be easily planned into a green field server farm scenario. Absorption refrigeration units can convert heat into chilled water which is piped to heat exchangers in the server farm.

    Electricity could also be generated from the waste, and this used to power dehumidifiers (heat exchangers don't really reduce humidity), and provide some of the electricity required to run the servers. Its proximity to the sea would also reduce the need for air conditioning further.

    If Poolbeg has a capacity of 500'000 tonnes of waste, you can figure on converting that to 3.3 MWh per tonne of waste combusted. If you used electricity at retail prices to produce this amount of heat, your electricity bill would be €297 million pa. The cooling value would be slightly less due to the conversion loss - but would be extremely valuable anyway. It would make it very easy to create an attractive plan for a data centre location.

    Only 3% of waste in Vienna is landfilled, and the city's downtown incinerator at Pfaffenau is a tourist attraction is looks so stunning architecturally.

    PS: Conventional power generation also emits wasted heat which could similarly be captured and turned into "free energy" for server farms or other uses.

    http://c40.org/case_studies/waste-to-energy-cuts-200000-tco2-annually-in-gothenburg


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