Energy from Waste

[Bob Williams]

Didn’t really know where to put this. Anyhoo: my local district Councillor sends an e0brief around anyone who wants one, with County Council information, a lot of which is interesting and useful. This month he gave details of the EfW facility at North Hykeham, near Lincoln. Trucks collect waste from around the county including from my local Louth Household Waste Recycling Centre, and take it here to be burned and provide power into the National Grid. After reading this, I was quite chuffed that my laid back adopted county is at the forefront of efforts to avoid excessive landfill. Anyone interested, have a read:-

https://tinyurl.com/y4rfyzfl

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[Ed P]

They often run tours around such facilities. If you want to be very unpopular ask what steps they are thinking of taking to meet the latest EU recommendations on NO/NOx emissions, and if they regularly test for dioxins in the flu gas.

If such facilities only burnt clean sorted waste there would be no issues. Unfortunately all sorts of crud ends up going to the incinerators – including fairly high levels of radio-active materials! Unfortunately the pigs breakfast of stuff that typically goes to the incinerators means that the older facilities are high level producers of a wide range of nasties including carcinogens such as dioxin (Vietnam’s baby deformer — Agent Orange).

The radioactives and other non-inflammable nasties such as Chromium end up in incinerator ash – its always interesting to know how/where they dispose of that!

[JayCeeDee]

During the Extinction Rebellion reporting last week, there was a report where a councillor from Leeds was talking about their waste facility.

Info HERE .

I was impressed !! Pumping steam/hot water into the city centre – how many of those nasty boilers will that replace?!!

It’s the sort of thing that should be rolled out across the country, benefiting local people ( and Councils and Environment ) instead of going into the pockets of Corporations. Win, win.

 

The radioactives and other non-inflammable nasties such as Chromium end up in incinerator ash – its always interesting to know how/where they dispose of that!

@edps – According to that article, on our roads, it seems!!

[Bob Williams]

All metal is either in road builds, (very small quantities) but the majority is recycled. 99.9% of the stuff coming out of the chimney stack is pure water, the facility test that before it exhausts. Waste heat is locally redirected to the Lincoln suburb of North Hykeham*. Emissions are closely monitored:

https://tinyurl.com/y2gemmfa

Check out the types released under “Other Emissions.” This is the latest state of the art technology, I contend that it is above EU directives. I intend to take some family members and go for a tour.

Many years ago I worked with a foreman whose brother was grounds and security manager at the (then) huge Drax power station. He had taken it upon himself to pipe waste heat from a part of the station into a large, ramshackle greenhouse complex that he built, growing salad veg in big numbers. This bloke was making more money out of that, the rabbits he caught, the chickens he kept and the other – (cough!) – vegetation that he grew in a particularly secluded part of the wooded areas. He gave up the job and retired early, before passing on the entrepreneurial spirit to his successor, who was not as careful with his personal security and was caught selling samples of ‘other vegetation’ in Leeds.

*Nimbys in very small numbers protested before it was built (smell, trucks, noise, pollution, etc.) The air around the plant is cleaner than it is in the nearest streets and there is no noise or smell detected locally, with ruck deliveries staged at intervals and driven along a dedicated road, all loads covered and sealed. Why do these barmpots always protest about stuff, before checking facts?

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[Bob Williams]

Decided upon an additional post instead of adding to my previous windbaggery. 😊😋

The Leeds Heat Network linked by JayCeeDee had a smaller precedent many decades ago in my old pit village of Blidworth and its companion village of Newstead, both owned by Lord Newstead.

During the 1920’s, both pits were sunk and opened for production by Lord Newstead, who was something of a philanthropist. He had colliery boilers built which were very much oversize and over capacity. The waste heat was piped through the colliery estates in both villages, into each home. Later in the 30’s, he had electricity supplied to each house as well. He also had pithead baths in both pits, workers could shower off the coal dust and muck at a time when other pit workers in the UK were bathing in the big tin baths at home. Bathrooms were built into each home. My dad said that the Lord was revered by his workers and jobs at both pits were in big demand. Until nationalisation, miners at both pits paid 3d. (Three Old Pence) out of their wages each week, for electricity and hot water supply. Of course, the first thing Attlee’s nationalised NCB did, was to stop the supply. How very Socialist – everything and everyone down to the lowest common denominator!

There is very little new under the sun!

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[JayCeeDee]

Bob Williams wrote:

There is very little new under the sun!

As evidenced by NEW YORK . I can remember in the 60’s and 70’s watching Kojak and the like  and wondering why the pavements were ‘smoking’. When I found out what it was, I couldn’t believe that ( or a version of it ) hadn’t been adopted in greater numbers by  cities across the world to supply heat or whatever else could be resourced from the energy.

[Bob Williams]

Many features of New York start to make sense when you consider how easy it is to build increasingly taller skyscrapers there, in comparison to many other world cities. The geology consists of very hard, deep bedrock: hard to tunnel through, but hard enough to mean may tunnels can be unsupported, once finished. Compare London, built on clay and softer bedrock, with the ever-expanding cost and delays of the Crossrail project. In New York, the hard bedrock laid down 500 million years ago and scraped by the glaciers of succeeding Ice Ages, is a stable base for the tallest buildings. In London, supporting infrastructure has to be intensively engineered.

Can’t recall where I heard or read this, but apparently a nuclear explosion at Ground Zero in New York would make the hard bedrock ring like a bell.

The Death Knell. (Sorry!)

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[Ed P]

Your local incinerator (200mg/NM3) meets current standards but does not meet the new proposed standards of 180mg/NM3. That said it is a significant margin better than London’s incinerators where the Mayor has been trying to reverse BoJos approval for yet another one.

I must admit hard data for London’s incinerators is VERY hard to find – it is almost as if it is being deliberately concealed!

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