New energy and the triple bottom line
Waste-to-energy technologies can be adapted to the needs of any location worldwide, says Dr Michael Langen of HTP Engineers
NEW energy is energy from renewable sources such as solar, wind or biomass, says Dr Michael Langen, a partner and managing director of HTP Engineers in Aachen, Germany, which works in the areas of recycling and renewables and does technical consulting.
Waste-to-energy (WTE) technologies explore biomass such as bio-waste, wood, or residual waste, which contains biomass to a considerable extent. Technologies applied are bio-digesters including biogas purifiers and incinerators with combined heat power (CHP) units, he adds.
“These technologies are flexible and can be adapted to the needs of any location worldwide – for example, for district heating where residential areas are nearby, electricity production or feeding to the local gas grid,” he tells The Business Times (BT) in an interview.
WTE strategies are environmentally beneficial in 2 ways. Firstly, they reduce the waste to be disposed of. Secondly, they save primary resources by substituting coal, crude oil or natural gas, he adds.
Dr Langen says good examples are the recycling of bio-waste from private households in bio-digesters, the reuse of the biogas after purification as fuel for the waste trucks which collect the waste, and the use of the digestate as a soil fertiliser. Such a project was implemented by Berlin.
Another good example is the modular WTE and recycling site of Attero, in the Netherlands. The so-called Energy Transition Park features a comprehensive inventory of new-energy generating facilities such as digesters, waste incinerators with CHP and recycling facilities. There are several more across Europe and the world.
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“Let me make a general remark on the semantic of ‘reuse and recycle’, which is sometimes mixed up. Reuse means the extension of the lifetime of a certain good – for example, the refill of a drink bottle or the repair of an electronic gadget. Recycling means to loop the material of which the good is made back into a product of the same material type, not necessarily an identical product,” Dr Langen tells BT.
“The benefits of reuse and recycle strategies are manifold and add to each other rather than being contradictory. The most important benefits are cost savings, localisation of supply chains (as both reuse and recycle strategies can be implemented on regional levels) and the minimisation of the environmental footprint of industry and commerce as well as society at large.”
Decisive factors
The importance of WTE, sorting and biological treatment (biogas) facilities stems from the position of such plants in the circular economy. None of the goods, which are being disposed of once a reuse strategy is no longer feasible, can be mechanically or energetically recycled without facilitating advanced technologies.
WTE, sorting, reprocessing and bio-treatment plants are the essential hubs by which the material or energy content is valorised. The right design, capacity and location of these hubs are decisive factors to accomplish the environmental and economic goals of modern waste management, says Dr Langen.
His work in plastic recycling goes back to the 90s, when a cluster of research organisations in Germany developed a fully automatic process to recycle plastic packaging waste. His role was at the transfer point from science to industry to implement that process and demonstrate its feasibility in the industrial scale plant at the Expo 2000 world exhibition in Hannover, Germany.
“It was a huge success and the plant had been in operation for about 10 years now. My personal vocation has always been to implement advanced recycling technologies as a consulting engineer and partner of HTP,” Dr Langen tells BT.
The challenges in plastic recycling are exceptionally high, as plastic is a much more complex material than metal, glass or even paper. A clear understanding of the cost structures, technologies and markets is particularly important when making plastic recycling successful, he adds.
The recycling industry is transforming rapidly from a volume-based to a quality-based approach. The volume-based approach was mostly driven by the waste management companies, which in the past needed easy, fast, and cost-efficient solutions for the recycled streams. Waste managers always take a volume approach as this is a core basis of their business model. Success of recycling was measured by recycling rates that considered the recycled volumes only.
“Today, the transformation of a linear economy to a circular economy leads to the involvement of any player in the supply chain and henceforth a shift in focus,” says Dr Langen.
“Success of recycling is being monitored by recycled content of the packaging and goods placed in the market additionally. As any player must safeguard recyclability and the recycled content, the quality of recycled commodities becomes a core issue.
“It does not mean volume is no longer important – contrary to that, only a quality-based approach can ensure the most needed volume increase,” he adds.
Companies in the circular economy help to save natural resources, give employment to people, clean-up and save the habitat of wildlife and care for sustainable economies.
These targets are manifold, as the activities of individual companies are wide and diverse, covering science and education at universities and private institutions, engineering, analytical services, manufacturing, operations, sales and application engineering, collection, and clean-up services, monitoring, and so on.
“The key target is to collaborate truthfully, open-minded, and amicably across disciplines, regions, and industry segments. It is for the benefit of all, and there is more to gain from collaboration than from being seclusive and competing just for individual success,” Dr Langen tells BT.
New players
Some experts say that a circular economy for plastics can only be successful economically when it is decoupled from the oil market.
“Formerly, recycled plastics could only be sold at a discount against virgin plastics. With virgin plastic prices following a similar volatility as crude oil, the small and medium-sized companies in the recycling industry could never weather the lows,” says Dr Langen.
“Additionally, recycled plastics carry the cost of disposal services – collection, cleaning and so on – which virgin plastics do not. These are the 2 main factors which put recycled plastics at an insurmountable disadvantage.”
Today, at least partly, recycled plastics are getting out of this because a recycled content is stipulated by the regulators for many consumer goods – for example, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles. Now that recycled PET granulates are competing with its peers and not virgin, the price level of recycled PET is less volatile and traded at a premium of 30-50 per cent against virgin granulate. A similar tendency can be seen for other polymers, such as polyolefins, he adds.
In any new area, especially work of a developmental nature, getting financing is an uphill task. However, for plastic recycling, the times are changing rapidly. In the last 2-3 years, a lot of new players with substantial strategic interests and strong financial capabilities are entering the market.
“Such players are from the petrochemical industry or retailers such as the Schwarz-Group in Germany. It is a kind of gold rush among some of the technology providers, and investors should be careful about which project and technology to invest in. On the other hand, the demand for new facilities and recycling capacities is enormous, and the manufacturing industry is not up to satiate the needs,” says Dr Langen.
Waste management and recycling projects are complex and depend on many core competencies, of which technology is just one. Other ones are manufacturing and construction, operations, sales, and sourcing. A banker would try to analyse the project team as to the rightful and balanced way in which these competencies are represented. Payment and compensation models should reflect the commitment to a successful project delivery.
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