Design development of waste-to-energy system for Canadian communities

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Fulfilling energy needs of the increasing population while ensuring a minimum impact on the environment is becoming a priority worldwide goal. ATCO is committed to the complex challenge of transition to a lower-emitting energy while continuing to deliver the benefits of reliability, resiliency and affordability. In line with current business interests of ATCO, the present collaboration project aims at investigating the potential of extracting energy from residential and commercial wastes, to supply heat and electricity of a large scale mixed use community. The project will be carried out to meet the following key objectives: (i) Canadian waste assessment and technological review of advanced waste to energy (WtE) methods, (ii) design and development of best WtE technology suitable for a Canadian mixed energy use community (including both residential and commercial buildings) serving its electricity and district heating demands (also called combined heat and power generation, CHP), and (iii) environmental impact analysis of suitable WtE-CHP technology and its comparison with conventional energy generation technologies. The successful accomplishment of this project will result in reduced carbon footprint of building operations by using recovered waste heat for space/water heating. It will assist in reducing the reliability on fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas, contributing towards the government's goal of achieving 90% electricity from non-emitting sources. Demonstration of feasibility of WtE on large scale community has the potential to reduce net GHG emissions from building operations using conventional fuel, while simultaneously reducing GHG emissions from landfills (methane rich gases) and waste transportation.. Additionally, the significant volume reduction of waste through waste to energy conversion (upto 80%) can help the country to establish a high performing waste management system.