Konecranes to Supply Cranes for Florida WTE Facility
Babcock & Wilcox Power Generation Group (B&W PGG), Barberton, Ohio, has awarded Konecranes, based in Springfield, Ohio, a contract to supply three fully automated 17-ton CMAA Class F waste-handling cranes for the Solid Waste Authority of Palm Beach County’s Palm Beach Renewable Energy Facility No. 2, a waste-to-energy (WTE) power plant in West Palm Beach, Fla.
The facility, capable of processing 3,000 tons of municipal solid waste per day, is the second phase of an already-operating WTE enterprise, also built and operated by B&W PGG. According to the company, when complete, the two plants will be the largest WTE operation in North America.
Konecranes, which supplies cranes for the solid waste industry, has installed close to 400 WTE cranes worldwide throughout the last 50 years.
“The important thing to understand is that for WTE crane designs in the past, the amount of cycles that the cranes underwent were highly underestimated,” says Pat Patton, senior operations specialist with Arcadis-US, a consulting engineer to the solid waste authority. “Early U.S. cranes modeled on the steel industry were operating at levels three to four times their designed cycling rate in WTE applications. Therefore, the robustness of the cranes is critical to long-term performance. Konecranes takes this into consideration in their design, and I’ve never seen a report of a failure from Konecranes on cyclic fatigue.”
The cranes will be delivered in May. Konecranes’ service group will perform load testing and runway alignment analysis with its optic RailQ runway alignment survey in 2014. The facility’s burn tests will occur in early 2015, with the target date for full operation and power generation in mid-2015.
The cranes will be supplying three mass-burn boilers at a combined feed rate of 125 tons per hour, along with the ability to receive up to 600 tons per hour of waste delivered by truck. In normal operations two cranes will work while one is held in reserve, but during peak conditions all three cranes will operate. The facility will generate up to 100 megawatts of power.
GDT Tek to Provide Technology to Green USA Recycling
GDT Tek Inc., a Largo, Fla.-based company focused on renewable and sustainable energy technologies, has submitted a proposal to include its Phoenix unit with Green USA Recycling Corp.’s (GUSAR) Midwest Utility request for proposal (RFP). GDT’s Phoenix unit is a licensed, patented waste-heat-to-electric power generation technology.
GUSAR is a Westfield, Ind.-based zero-landfill recycler focused on single-stream waste recycling technologies and waste-to-energy technologies. The company manufactures RDF (refuse-derived fuel) pellets for electric utilities. GDT Tek will provide Phoenix units at GUSAR’s electric generation facilities recovering heat from the operations supplying electricity to the power grid.
Bo Linton, president of GDT Tek, says, “This is a huge step forward for GDT Tek to be included in a utility RFP. This opportunity could really put GDT Tek on the map and open even more opportunities for us with Green USA Recycling.”
Don Willis, president of GUSAR, states, “This will continue our plan of expanding involvement with GDT Tek. It’s important to our plans to increase our presence in, and market share of, the waste-to-energy industry.”
Energos to Provide Technology or UK Waste Treatment Facility
Conversion technology developed by U.K.-based Energos has been selected for the treatment of residual waste at the proposed Milton Keynes Waste Recovery Park in Milton Keynes, U.K., by the Milton Keynes Council and AmeyCespa, which is the preferred bidder to design, build and operate the overall waste treatment facility.
Milton Keynes’ three-stage waste treatment process will treat household waste using mechanical treatment to sort recyclables, anaerobic digestion and gasification.
As the final stage in the process, Energos will convert any remaining, nonrecyclable material into a syngas to produce high-temperature steam that can then be converted into electricity in a turbine.
The Energos facility will have a capacity of more than 90,000 metric tons and generate a gross output of 7 megawatts of electricity, enough to power about 11,000 homes.
Energos says it has a 15-year track record and more than 560,000 hours of operation at several gasification facilities across Europe, specializing in small-scale clean energy recovery from residual waste.
Nick Dawber, managing director of Energos, says, “Energos is pleased to be selected as a partner in the Milton Keynes Waste Recovery Park.”