A FILIPINO business group is offering to build a network of waste-to-energy (WTE) generating plants across the country at no cost to the government.
The group is finalizing a letter of intent to be submitted to Malacañang offering not only an advanced proprietary pyrolytic technology developed in the United States and now used in Georgia and some Caribbean countries.
One advantage of the technology is that it could possibly reduce the country’s dependence on the use of highly pollutive coal to generate electricity.
Filipino businessmen Juanito Dakis, Bobby Tuason and Romeo L. Munda of the IMMAC-DTM Energy Consortium Philippines (IMMAC-DTM Consortium) said their WTE technology uses both organic, like farm waste and abaca plants, and inorganic feedstock to generate electricity.
“We are as protective of the environment as green organizations,” Dakis, Tuason and Munda said in a statement, “and this is the reason we are bringing this state-of-the-art technology to the Philippines. Our system requires no incineration, for which reason compliant with the Clean Air Act and the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act.”
The businessmen said in partnership with three US-based companies, United Earth Energy (UEE), Biodiverse Energies (BDE) and SRADCO, Dakis, Tuason and Munda stressed they intend to build “a network of scalable 10-megawatt WTE generating facilities across the country. Each facility shall process approximately a minimum of 1,000 metric tons of municipal solid waste [MSW] and other wastes per day, built on a site covering between 5 and 10 hectares, and shall take only between 18 and 24 months to complete.”
Calling their WTE technology a boon to the environment, Dakis, Tuason and Munda said their power-generating plants “undertake the useful disposition of MSW, tire waste [which decomposes in 500 years], agricultural waste and all forms of waste complemented by biomass that meet or exceed US Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] standards and are compliant with the Clean Air Act and the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act.”
Stressing that it offer to be superior to others, IMMAC-DTM Consortium said, “It has assembled a strong team of partners to design, engineer, construct, manage and, more important, provide 100-percent project financing for all the proposed WTE power-generating facilities at no cost to the government and without sovereign guarantee from the Republic.”
Dakis, Tuason and Munda said these facilities will use their patented WTE three-stage biomass pyrolytic and gasification technology.
They added that the US-based IMMAC Power Solutions Inc. will be the project developer, as well as engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) partner, while UEE, BDE and SRADCO will share their WTE pyrolytic technology, called “thermo-decomposition and gasification,” now used all over the world.
“This technology,” they explained, “is not an incineration process but a carefully monitored and controlled thermal process that ‘cooks’ waste at a high temperature in the absence of oxygen. This applied technology converts any carbonaceous material into basic components of biogas and liquid biofuels with exemplary clean emissions that result in a highly efficient, self-sustaining energy production.”
The WTE technology to be applied to their power-generating facilities would boost the country’s campaign to reduce MSW and would support the energy needs of island provinces, like Palawan, and other places not connected with the power grid.
Recently, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) started cracking down on about 1,700 dumps all over the country to implement the law that shut them down as early as 2006.
Of the 23 sanitary landfills, five have been ordered to be closed and some waste collectors have transferred their MSW to Calamba, Laguna, and other sites.
Clarifying the acceptability of WTE, Dakis, Tuason and Munda said 48 WTE facilities using various technology are operating in the country or are set to operate, including one in San Jose City, Nueva Ecija, that uses 200 MT of waste daily to produce 20 MW of power.
Another such project in Nueva Ecija uses rice hull to generate electricity, they added.