Small Scale Waste To Energy

Small scale waste to energy (WTE) in its strictest form refers to any waste treatment that creates energy like electricity or heat from a waste source that would normally have been disposed of in landfill therefore making it environmentally friendly.

The habits of modern consumer lifesyles are causing a massive worldwide waste problem. With local landfill sites full to the brim, many developed nations are now exporting their refuse to third world countries. This is having a detrimental effect on ecosystems and cultures throughout the world.

Industry and local governments are now looking towards WTE systems because they represent an increasingly attractive option to control energy costs, generate money and alleviate landfill problems.

In the US there is over 100 waste to energy facilities using some form of combustion process.

These WTE plants process more than 30 million tons of waste each year. This is about 14% of America's solid waste.

Electric power generated by these facilities is approximately 2,816 megawatts per hour. These methods are the most widely used for converting large volumes of public waste into energy.

Recently, waste to energy technologies have been developed to produce clean energy from waste in specially designed power plants equipped with the most modern pollution control equipment to clean emissions.

This, coupled with solar photovoltaic energy and wind energy, is a step in the right direction.

For example, the Center for Biotechnology at The Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University are developing new technology which will potentially be able to extract electricity from pollution and organic waste products.

They hope their biological fuel cells will help slow global warming by cleaning excess carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

For a more in-depth look at this subject go to small scale waste to energy Useful articles

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