Will Waste Management Lose Oahu Business?
The only general landfill in Oahu, after great citizen pressure, will close in 2008. Waste Management hauls 600 tons of ash from the incinerator to the landfill. Because a suitable new landfill site has not been found, the city and county of Honolulu has issued a request for a proposed Plasma Arc/Torch and/or Gasification Facility. The proposal is due May 14, 2003. Below is further information on this development.
Honolulu, Hawaii and the island of Oahu generate about 1.5 million tons of waste annually from residential, commercial and industrial sources. Currently, most of the island’s residential and commercial Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) is disposed of in two waste-to-energy plants, called H-POWER. The H-POWER Plants, located in Campbell Industrial Park, process over 600,000 tons of waste annually, and produce 7 percent of Oahu’s electricity. H-POWER reduces the volume of received waste by 90 percent through incineration, with 10 percent ash residue going to landfills. Noncombustible construction and demolition (C&D) debris and industry wastes go directly to a landfill. The Waimanalo Gulch Landfill is one of two landfills on Oahu. The other landfill in Nanakuli is permitted for C&D waste only.
As the only remaining MSW landfill on Oahu, the Waimanalo Gulch Landfill receives approximately 800 tons of MSW and 600 tons of H-POWER incinerator ash daily, for a total of 1,400 tons per day. Local residents have requested that this landfill also be closed as soon as current permits expire. Therefore, city and county officials have been evaluating alternative MSW and ash disposal technologies.
On February 14, 2003 the City and County of Honolulu issued a Request for Proposals for the financing, design, construction and twenty (20) year operation of a Plasma Arc/Torch and/or Gasification Facility for the processing of up to 1,000 tons per day of MSW to be located in Campbell Industrial Park. The submission date of the proposal is 4:00pm on May 14, 2003.
A major business activity of Geoplasma, LLC is the use of plasma arc technology for the remediation of waste materials. Plasma technology is an emerging technology, which uses high power levels of electricity (100kW to more than 10MW) to create a plasma (a form of artificial lightning), with temperatures exceeding 7,000 degrees Celsius. The development of a stable, efficient and cost-effective heat source three times hotter than conventional fossil fuels has opened the door to a wide range of applications previously not possible. Originally developed by NASA in the 1960’s to test the integrity of heat shield materials, plasma torches were commercialized by industries in the 1970’s for use in the steel making and metallurgy industries. In the 1980’s the benefits of this high heat source to remediate waste materials were becoming apparent. Today prototype and commercial projects are being developed in the U.S. and in several countries around the world to demonstrate the technical and economic feasibility of plasma arc processing of municipal/industrial wastes, medical wastes, hazardous/toxic wastes and radioactive wastes.
The plasma arc technology (PAT) uses heat generated by a plasma arc to melt the inorganic portion of waste material while destroying the organic portion. Types of waste materials tested include medical incinerator ash, Longhorn sludge, open burning ground soil, agricultural and plastic/glass blast media, surrogate absorbent materials, Mendocino soil spiked with dichlorobenzene, and waste paint.
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