by Nickolas J. Themelis
New facilities for the recovery of energy and metals from municipal solid waste are growing like mushrooms around the world, including several in developing nations such as China. In January 2008, the Waste-to-Energy Research and Technology Council (WTERT), an academic-industry organization headquartered at Columbia University with sister organizations in various countries, called for nominations to the WTERT 2008 Outstanding Contribution Award.
 This WTE plant at Pirmasens, Germany handles 180,000 tonnes of domestic and commercial waste per year, producing 16mW of electricity sotec |
It was looking for individuals who, as researchers, inventors, policy makers, statesmen or industrialists, have made an outstanding contribution to advancing the recovery of energy from municipal solid wastes (MSW) in a nation or region.
The nominations received were for outstanding leaders from several nations. They are described briefly in this article and are indicative of the vitality of the global waste-to-energy industry and technology. It is a common saying that certain people make all the difference in this world. This is true for the individuals described below. Through their life’s work, they have contributed much to the global advancement of thermal treatment technologies and the attendant environmental and resource conservation benefits.
Germany: Bernard (Bernt) Johnke
Bernard (Bernt) Johnke was trained as a civil engineer and specialized in process engineering. He has published over one hundred reports in the areas of noise abatement, emission control (e.g. PCDD/PCDF, NOx, PCB), co-incineration of municipal solid wastes and sewage sludge, beneficial use of waste-to-energy ash, and energy and metals recovery from wastes.
 Bernard (Bernt) Johnke |
Also, he is editor and co-author of two books – Problems of Public Acceptance of Waste Treatment Methods and Waste, Energy and Climate Change – Ways and Means for the Integrated Utilization of Resources. Until he took early retirement in 2007, Johnke was a member of the scientific staff of the Federal Environmental Agency of Germany for three decades. His last position there was as head of the thermal treatment technologies section. He has been very influential in the growth of waste-to-energy in Germany and in other countries through his work in the German delegation to the EU, where he was instrumental in the formulation of Directive 2000/76/EC by the Council on Waste Incineration in Brussels and the European Parliament.
Also, he headed the German delegation and was leading author of its contribution to the Best Available Technique reference document Waste Incineration that supported the BAT standard for waste incineration in the European Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
He was also leading author of the document Emissions from Waste Incineration for the IPCC/OECD/IEA National Greenhouse Gas Inventories Programme that was included in the GHG analysis and reports of IPCC. Bernard Johnke has also assisted newcomer nations to the EU, such as Romania and Slovenia, in their planning for implementing the EU directives on integrated waste management and energy recovery from wastes.
It is highly significant that Bernt Johnke has played such an important role in advancing sustainable waste management in the EU, not from an academic perch, but as a member of the largest environmental agency in Europe.
In contrast to some other national agencies, for example in the US, UK and Greece, the Federal Environmental Agency of Germany has not hesitated to exercise a leadership role by informing the public as to the environmental and resource conservation benefits of waste-to-energy.
The Netherlands: K. Daan van der Linde
This year’s WTERT Awards recognize, regrettably posthumously, the enormous contribution of K. Daan van der Linde to the planning and implementation of one of the finest new waste-to-energy facilities in the world: the two-line addition to the existing waste-to-energy plant of the Waste & Energy Company (AEB) owned by the City of Amsterdam. AEB and its predecessors have been in the incineration and waste-to-energy business since 1919. Operations at the present AEB location in Amsterdam harbour were started in 1993 with a facility that still processes about one million metric tonnes per year of MSW.
 K. Daan van der Linde |
K. Daan van der Linde studied chemistry at the University of Amsterdam, completed his studies with a thesis in nuclear chemistry, and then served in the Royal Dutch Navy Reserve. He then worked for the Lummus Heat Transfer Division and was in charge of marketing of heat transfer equipment to the petrochemical industry in Russia, South Africa and the Arab Emirates. From 1983 to 1994, he was Managing Director of Elf Atochem, Industrial Chemicals, in Rotterdam.
Shortly after joining AEB in 1994, van der Linde headed the planning of a 530,000 tonne/year expansion that was to be designed for maximum electricity production plus maximum recovery and reuse of the waste-to-energy ash. Different technologies were considered for the new plant, but AEB concluded that comparing laboratory or pilot processes with economically optimized and commercially proven grate-incineration was misleading. Therefore, the proven stoker combustion of MSW was selected, in spite of the ban that existed at that time. To overcome the ban, it was necessary to increase substantially the electric efficiency and environmental performance of the new addition.
With regard to increasing electric efficiency, van der Linde and his team considered the existing power generation technologies in the waste-to-energy industry. Since the best combination of these did not meet the goal of the waste fired power plant (WFPP) for 30% net electric efficiency, it was necessary to develop and patent new technologies. Presentation of the advanced design to the Dutch EPA led to a lift of the ban on grate technology and project engineering started in 2001. The City of Amsterdam decided to proceed in the autumn of 2003 and implementation started shortly thereafter. The start-up of the WFPP took place in August 2007 and the plant has already met all of the design goals.
The philosophy developed by van der Linde and his team for this fourth generation of waste-to-energy was ‘design for output’. Part of the 2001 plan for superior ash processing and maximum beneficial use was the assembly of a joint team between AEB and Delft University of Technology. Use of technologies that were developed by the mining industry made maximum recovery of ferrous and non-ferrous metals possible.
The remainder of the ash was washed and separated into clean sand and aggregate. The entire flow-sheet was tested in an industrial-scale pilot plant erected on the waste-to-energy site. The results of this test, in 2006–2007, showed commercial viability and proved that only 3% by weight of the MSW input needed to be landfilled afterwards. Material certification and engineering of a 200 tonnes/hour full-scale installation are currently under way.
The AEB original waste-to-energy plant produced electricity with a net efficiency of 22% – similar to most modern waste-to-energy plants in Europe. To increase efficiency to a net 30%, a number of design changes were made. The most important innovation is the steam/steam re-heat system between the HP and LP turbines. Re-heating by means of flue-gas is common in fossil-fired power plants, but it is not practical for the corrosive gases of waste-to-energy facilities.
Other design features included lowering the excess air to 6% oxygen, increasing the steam pressure to 130 bar and the temperature to 440–480°C. The very stable operating conditions of the WFPP and the application of special materials allowed AEB to use these new design parameters. At a calorific value of 10 GJ per tonne of MSW, the WFPP produces a net of 850 kWh per tonne of waste.
K. Daan van der Linde was the major driving force in the initiation and implementation of this project that, by all accounts, is a landmark in the development of waste-to-energy technology. He was there from the very first discussion of vague possibilities until the start up of the Waste Fired Power Plant of AEB Amsterdam. Regrettably, he passed away, after a short illness, just two days after the first boiler unit of the WFPP was fired up.
Sweden: Håkan Rylander
Håkan Rylander obtained his MS in Civil Engineering from the Technical University of Lund. In the first part of his career, he managed the Swedish Association of Waste Management (Avfall Sverige) and later the Gothenburg Regional Waste Company. Since 1996 he has been Managing Director of the world famous SYSAV group. SYSAV is a waste management regional company, co-owned by fourteen municipalities in the South Scania region of Sweden and serving a population of 650,000 people. Because of its outstanding performance and it high generation of electrical and thermal energy, the SYSAV waste-to-energy plant at Malmö was rated as one of the three top finalists at the 2006 WTERT competition for the best waste-to-energy facilities in the world.
 Håkan Rylander |
In addition to his leadership of the SYSAV group and of waste management in Sweden, Rylander has been very active on the European scene as President of the International Solid Waste Association (ISWA), past and current chair of the ISWA Thermal Treatment Group, and presently as Vice President of the Confederation of European Waste to Energy Plants (CEWEP).
In his nearly four decades of work in all aspects of the waste management hierarchy, Håkan Rylander has dealt with landfilling and biological treatment, recycling and two of the largest waste-to-energy plants in Sweden. However, he has also been very active internationally and through his many presentations and articles has promoted waste-to-energy around the world, using Sweden and the SYSAV case as a good example of the application of integrated waste management for maximizing resource recovery and minimizing the environmental impacts of landfilling.
USA: Artie Cole
Artie Cole’s career in the waste-to-energy industry spans three decades, starting in Massachusetts at the waste-to-energy plant of Wheelabrator Technologies as an entrance level maintenance mechanic and working his way up the ranks to his current position as Vice President of Technical Services, with several patents and innovations to his name. He is credited with overcoming multiple technical problems encountered at the oldest operating waste-to-energy plant in the US that recently completed its first 30 years and is on its way to the next 30. He is recognized widely as a ‘quiet force’ that has contributed much to the US waste-to-energy industry. Some of Artie Cole’s inventions since 1995 are:
 Artie Cole |
• Solving the problem of wear of steel nozzles and breakage of ceramic ones in air pollution control systems by developing a nozzle that floats in three o-rings that absorb the shock from the rush of air through the nozzle.
• A replaceable roof element that does not require the entire grate to be removed. Von Roll is using this technology in Europe in its water-cooled grates.
• A ram feeder slide plate guide that eliminated the need for bearings that would wear out when they became full of dirt. Artie’s slide plate guide keeps the ram feeder perfectly aligned and requires less hydraulic force. This invention is used by Von Roll.
• A series of expansion joints made from high temperature fibre rope that is placed around the ceramic tiles protecting the lower part of the combustion chamber. These joints allow the tiles and the water-cooled wall to expand at different rates and thus avoid breakage of the tiles. This seemingly simple invention solved a significant problem in waste-to-energy operation and is now being used around the world.
• Development of shields that protect the open space tubes in the super-heater and the generators from erosion and corrosion.
Cole’s most recent invention is the use of water-wall furnace platens in front of the super-heater. He proved that evaporative plates lower the temperature of the gas exiting the combustion chamber, reduced super-heater tube corrosion and significantly increased time between furnace outages.
USA: John M. Klett
John Klett’s waste-to-energy career began in 1978 at the Hempstead Resource Recovery facility in Long Island, New York. He then assumed various operating and start-up responsibilities at Dade County (Florida), Pinellas County (Florida), and Andover (Massachusetts) waste-to-energy facilities. In 1986, he joined Covanta Energy as Vice President of Operations and in the next decade he was instrumental in the procurement, design, construction and operation of 25 resource recovery facilities that established waste-to-energy as a mainstream technology for environmentally sound waste disposal in the United States.
 John M. Klett |
In 1998, John Klett was promoted to Executive Vice President and continued to provide the leadership that has established Covanta as the major waste-to-energy company in America, including the acquisition of American Ref-Fuel Company in 2004. During his tenure, Covanta’s capacity has expanded to over 15 million tonnes of MSW processed and 8000 GWh of electricity provided to the grid. Twenty-two Covanta facilities have received the prestigious Voluntary Protection Program STAR designation of the Occupational Safety and Health Agency of the US (OSHA). This is OSHA’s highest honour given to power generating facilities.
John Klett is now Chief Operating Officer of Covanta and his current focus is China’s pressing need for environmentally sound waste management and clean energy. To this end, he has led the acquisition by Covanta of 40% ownership in Chongqing Sanfeng Environmental Industry Co. Sanfeng designed, built, and is operating two modern 1200 tonne per day waste-to-energy facilities. They are the beginning of what the Chinese government envisions to be the construction of over 200 waste-to-energy facilities by 2020.
USA: Charles O. Velzy
The work of Charles Velzy has spanned several decades and he is still active professionally as a senior consultant to industry and government. Early in his career, he was the designer of Oceanside, a New York plant that, in 1965, was the first waste-to-energy co-generation facility in the US; it produced electricity and used the low pressure steam to desalinate water used in the plant’s operation.
 Charles O. Velzy |
Charles Velzy has been active in US incineration and waste-to-energy technology since the 1950s. He was a founder of the Solid Waste Processing Division of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and has also been its president. He is co-author of the chapter describing waste-to-energy in the Handbook for Mechanical Engineers (McGraw Hill) and the Handbook of Energy Efficiency (CRC Press).
He has served as special consultant to the EPA Science Advisory Board and also completed a number of assignments for the World Health Organization. Velzy has been a Fellow of ASME since 1976 and has served in many organizations concerned with the technology of waste treatment, such as chair of the Committee on Incineration of the National Standard Institute, vice chair of the ASTM Committee on Methods of Atmospheric Sampling and Analysis, and secretary of the US Technical Advisory Group to the International Organization for Standardization Committee on Air Quality. He is a registered professional engineer in 15 states and has written numerous technical papers. Charles Velzy is rightly considered by his peers in the Solid Waste Processing Division of ASME as the dean of engineers in this field.
Conclusion
In recent years, the author has regularly contributed articles to the annual Review Issue of Waste Management World on various technical advances of integrated waste management and energy recovery from municipal solid wastes. This article has focused on some of the people who through their work and dedication have made such advances possible. Four of them are from the European Union and three from the United States of America. It is interesting to note that two things that these outstanding people have had in common is their willingness to disseminate the results of their work through publications and presentations and their active participation in the shaping of professional societies, such as the International Solid Waste Association and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
Nickolas J. Themelis is Director of the Earth Engineering Center of Columbia University in the City of New York and Chair of the WTE Research and Technology Council
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