08:27 PM
A few weeks ago, in the midst of his participation in the “Grow sustainably” forum organized by EL COLOMBIANO, Mayor Federico Gutiérrez spoke about the challenges that Medellín has to overcome to take a leap into the future and become a model city and viable in the coming decades. And in that way he spoke about the big mess that the capital of Antioquia has with the disposal of solid waste, pointing out that only a cultural transformation of citizens can reverse the situation and in passing he stated that he is willing to explore what new technologies it offers. the world for Medellín to change its outdated landfill model which became a headache.
A group of Colombian experts who started a company in the United States and who have a technology called plasma gasification that looks like something out of science fiction – but which already works in several parts of the world – responded to the mayor that he does not have to go out and spend resources in search of this technology because he does have the political will and the audacity to distance himself from what all his predecessors did —bury garbage to leave the problem to someone else— they are willing to build a project that will not only take away Medellín’s headache but also bill the city breaking down your trash to turn it into energy.
Nelson Franco is a chemical engineer who co-founded and CEO of WES International, and who has managed projects for Exxon, Merck and Pfizer. He explains that although plasma gasification is the latest technology offered by current technology for solid waste management, it is a relatively simple thermichemical process. It consists of building a plant fed exclusively by garbage that receives waste of all types, including even hazardous waste. Once the waste enters, it reaches a first reactor where it is dried, thermal degradation (pyrolysis) is carried out and the gasification of that waste begins at a temperature between 800 °C and 1,000 °C. The gases generated there pass to a second reactor where the temperature rises from 3,000 °C to 5,000 °C and the gases are converted into plasma. Finally, this plasma is cooled in a heat exchanger where it is finally converted into syngas, considered a super fuel composed mainly of carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen (H2), capable of moving turbines that generate electrical energy. “We can say that We transform a garbage dump into the equivalent of an oil well because with the garbage that comes in we produce a gas similar to that of oil,” says Nelson. This entire process also generates commercial hydrochloric acid (HCl), metals for recycling and a vitrified rock that is highly sought after in the construction sector.
The big question is whether such technology, which already exists in at least 10 countries including two giant plants in China, is viable to replicate in Medellín. Freddy Uribe, WES project manager in Colombia, points out that although they presented the project to Emvarias in recent years, EPM, the Metropolitan Area and the Government now have a plus that they did not have before: multilateral financing for the construction of gasification plants. by plasma. “We know that there are many people offering supposed cutting-edge technology to Emvarias or EPM, such as waste incineration (very different from gasification), which in Europe and the United States have been prohibited for generating furans and dioxins in their process, highly carcinogenic. But we also know that they are proposals that come asking for money and the plus we have is that there are already those who put up the investment,” he points out.
The firm has been perfecting the project for years to make it viable in Colombia and Freddy assures that the numbers they have show the break-even point for financial closure. Building a plasma gasification plant costs between 72 million dollars, to process 100 tons per day, to 446 million dollars to process 1,000 tons per day. In their accounts, they have that Medellín could have a capacity of 1,000 tons/day, receiving only 40% of all the waste produced by the capital of Antioquia and just a little more than 30% of the daily tons that enter the La Pradera landfill daily.
Nelson and Freddy explain that the plant is capable of generate one megawatt for every ton of garbage and it may be more depending on the type of waste (plastic and tires, for example, generate more yield than organic waste). The financial closing gives them a price of 10 cents per kilowatt. Energy generation would be the main income, but it would also generate money from the garbage disposal charge, even being cheaper than the fee currently charged to municipalities to receive their garbage in La Pradera (30 dollars per ton). In addition to that, because it is considered green energy before world banks, the energy generated by plasma gasification can sell carbon credits. For every ton of greenhouse gases that the plant prevents from entering the atmosphere, 3.7 carbon credits are emitted. To access this market, one of the demands of multilateral organizations is to guarantee the inclusion of the recycling population, which is why they also contemplate a station where formal recyclers sell directly to them.
After the granting of the environmental license as a biomass energy generation project, they point out that the plant would take 24 months to build. Once in operation, after paying the loan, interest and operating costs, they assure that it would be able to leave 100 million dollars net per year of which, according to the matrix they manage, 20 million dollars could correspond to Medellín as a partner if 20% of the project is signed up.
Medellín and the municipalities that would like to associate do not need investment to build it, but they do need the lot to build the plant and the guarantee that they will be able to be supplied with solid waste for 25 years, and that EPM (owner of Emvarias, which in turn is the ‘owner’ of the garbage of the city and the municipalities that dispose of it in Pradera) guarantees the commercialization of the renewable energy generated.
The plant is also required to be in an area with access to interconnecting power networks. With these characteristics, according to their analysis, there are viable properties in several subregions of Antioquia (North and West, for example), including Pradera itself, between Barbosa and Donmatías, where they would need about 10 hectares or less.
But Nelson repeats that the first thing needed is political will. They say that after sitting down with Emvarias to show him the project, they are now in the process of formally filing the proposal with EPM, the Mayor’s Office of Medellín and the Government and waiting for Mayor Gutiérrez, interested as he seems to be in becoming a leader to give him a change in the disposal of garbage in Medellín, listen to their proposal with which they intend to stop Medellín from dumping garbage, accumulating health and environmental problems and burying money in the process.
