My name is Sarah and I write the use of Green Chair services, the events we participate at and useful tips on recycling!
The Green Chair volunteers recently visited the waste-to-energy facility located in Burnaby, BC. (We do these educational field trips from time to time. Sign up as a volunteer and you can get in on these!)
The group toured the facility and got a first hand look at the incineration process of products to energy. The tour started with a presentation on the facility’s performance and a detailed explanation on the operating process and some of the limitations it holds.
The facility is a mass-burn facility that is equipped with pollution control instruments to monitor air emissions and to keep pollution levels low. Emission reports are sent each month to the BC Ministry of Environment, local governments and health authorities in the region.
Our team got to walk through the processing facility that was presented in the earlier portion of the tour. Waste arrives at the facility in truckloads seven days a week. The waste is dropped into three chutes that will later lead to a furnace to be burned at temperatures of more than 1,000 Celsius. Boilers than process the hot gas from the combustion of the waste, and from this hot gas heats tubes with water. The steam that is created from the boiler is then used to power the generators that will turn the steam into energy in the production of electricity. In the control room the engineers monitor each aspect of the waste-to-energy process.
The processing of waste in the facility does generate air pollution. It really gave us volunteers a better concept in the sense that recycling has a vital part to play in our landfills. Not all the garbage from our landfills can be sent to the waste-to-energy facility. Recycling with Green Chair is a great place to start!
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Additional sites for more information on Burnaby’s Waste-to-Energy Facility:
http://www.metrovancouver.org/services/solid-waste/SolidWastePublications/WTEFactSheet.pdf
http://www.metrovancouver.org/services/solid-waste/about/wte/pages/04.aspx
