Vancouver Public Works is looking for a way to pay for a $7.7 million waste-to-energy project at its Westside Wastewater Facility. It would convert to electricity ash from burnt, treated sewage.
The project would save the city at least $300,000 a year, keep 1,840 tons of treated ash a year out of the landfill, reduce smells around the facility and have a number of positive environmental impacts, Public Works Director Brian Carlson said Tuesday.
“Our two main goals with this project are to put the ash to a beneficial use and to recycle waste heat to produce energy,” Carlson said.
The work could be done in phases, and would essentially change one of the final steps in treating sewage that comes to the city’s west side facility at 2323 West Mill Plain Blvd. in the Port of Vancouver, he said.
Sewage is treated by an incinerator, which is then cooled by water, creating a “wet ash” that is trucked to landfills at a cost of $130,000 a year to the city. When the furnace is running, the water that is released into the Columbia River can be 8 to 9 degrees warmer than the river.
The city wants to install a cyclone particulate separator, which would act as a dryer and create a “dry ash” that would then be used by local cement manufacturers and eliminate the landfill costs. In fact, the city has already discussed giving the ash with CalPortland Concrete, which has a location nearby, Carlson said.
The heat caused by the furnace would be reclaimed and converted into energy that could power 250 to 500 single-family homes. Vancouver could choose to use that electricity in its own buildings or it could release it back to the grid, Industrial Pretreatment Coordinator Frank Dick said.
Either way, it should save between $150,000 and $300,000 in energy costs, he said.
The project, which city public works has been researching for more than two years, would make Vancouver the first city in the country to have such a program, Carlson said.
The waste-to-energy conversion was part of the city’s federal legislative agenda last year; a $3 million request for the project is part of a proposed 2011 agenda as well. Carlson said that the city hopes to find a “variety of funding sources” for the project.
Senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray both were seemingly “excited” about the idea, and it may be part of an energy appropriations bill, Carlson said. Vancouver also applied for an EPA grant for the work last year; it didn’t win the money, but the city was encouraged to apply again, he said. Any matching city money would be from the capital sewer fund.
