Carbon Recycling
According to UK government statistics, in England and Wales, the average person creates around 515kg of waste each year (2001/02 DTI Statistics) and, as the population and the quality of consumer lifestyles continues to grow, volumes of waste are expected to increase by 2-3% per year.
Historically in the UK, the primary method of disposing of waste has been to landfill because it has been the cheapest and most readily available disposal solution.
Approximately 66 million tons of commercial, industrial and municipal waste produced in England and Wales are sent to landfill each year. It is increasingly recognised that this dependence on landfill disposal is not sustainable. In addition, there is increasing environmental concern about the impact of landfill disposal on the environment.
In order to find an alternative to the UK`s dependence on landfill, KP Renewable`s parent, (Kwikpower International) has successfully developed the concept of ``Carbon Recycling`` which is the recycling of carbon waste streams at the molecular level.
Just like conventional recycling, ``Carbon Recycling`` utilises waste as a material resource. Carbon containing wastes are broken down through gasification into Carbon (predominantly in the form of carbon monoxide and Carbon dioxide) and Hydrogen. The liberated Carbon and Hydrogen can then either be re-assembled to produce chemicals and fuels, or utilised as the fuel to produce power (and/or steam) to supply green energy.
Traditional Waste Management
Integrated waste management companies dominate the waste disposal market in the UK. Unfortunately, they rely almost exclusively on the traditional technologies and disposal methods such as landfill, which is going out of favour and will be generally unsustainable over the longer term. (The next 10 to 15 years) The value of the traditional industry is being eroded by legislation and environmental policy hampering these practices.
New Waste Management Solutions
Carbon Recycling as a Disposal Solution will revolutionise the waste industry by offering a waste disposal solution that will allow compliance with new legislative initiatives and environmental policies.
We believe that this innovative concept of ``Carbon Recycling``, (recycling carbon containing wastes at the molecular level), offers an innovative and cost effective commercial solution to the management of waste within these new guidelines.
Local government authorities, as well as the major waste disposal contractors, are looking to expand their markets and are looking at a broad cross section of environmental and recycling systems and technologies.
Since the early 1990s there has been considerable consolidation and integration within the waste disposal market in the UK due to changing legislation and accompanying regulation which has increased the costs of waste handling and processing.
As a result of these legislative and regulatory changes, permits for landfill development or expansion have become more difficult to acquire. There is a world-wide agreement regarding emissions from industry and incineration (The Kyoto Protocol) and general recognition that traditional disposal methods such as landfill and incineration do not represent sustainable waste policies for governments.
Benefits of Carbon Recycling
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It reduces the volume of waste by up to 98%, thus avoiding heavy transport costs, gate fees and minimising environmental damage
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It can generate substantial amounts of electricity, which can be used on-site to replace bought-in electricity or fed into the grid for local use, thus avoiding expensive transmission costs
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Carbon Recycling typically produces zero NOx, SOx and dioxins, thus minimising any environmental impacts or objections to developing projects on environmental grounds.
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The residual ash is inert and sterile and has a range of valuable uses.
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The technology underlying Carbon Recycling is tried and tested, having first powered blast furnaces over 200 years ago.
- Operation can be fully automatic or with minimal low labour costs.
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One key tenet of KPR`s business model is that, typically, the small modular plant will be situated inside the fence at industrial sites thus avoiding, or at least minimising, planning controls.
The range of its plants from its technology partners which are already in operation demonstrates the overall credibility in this business.
For KP Renewables, the benefit of using carbon waste streams as a biomass feedstock is the multiple revenue streams from the technology. These include revenues from fees for the sale of electricity as well as fees from the disposal of the waste.
We believe that the concept of Carbon Recycling in small modular systems can provide a highly cost-effective solution for the conversion of waste carbon materials into green energy. The cost of a typical module today ranges from a high of $3,000/KWh down to $1,500 of rated output for different technology modules. It should be noted that we expect the price to fall to around $1,000/KWh as mass production begins.
Distributed Waste Disposal
The concept of Carbon Recycling has been expanded to include ``Distributed Waste Disposal`` (or DWD for short) where waste disposal solutions are modular, and located directly at the waste site, thus removing the necessity to transport the waste long distances. The electricity generated can be used on site or exported to the electricity grid. In this way it reduces both customer`s energy bills and waste disposal costs. Each project thereby benefits from both renewable energy premiums as well as tipping fees from the avoidance of disposal to landfill.
Typically, the smaller units can be housed in a standard 40ft ISO shipping container, and comprises the waste pre-treatment (if any) a reactor unit, a scrubber unit and the engine generator set or micro-turbine.
Using a DWD, we install modular waste processing units at the site of the waste generation, each ranging in output from a small size of 125kW up to 1,000kW, mid-size modules of 2 to 3MW and larger modules of 5 to 6MW. Larger plants of 10, 20, and 30MW can be constructed from stacking of multiple units.
Optionally, depending on the type of waste, a waste drier may be added. Each DWD Process Unit is connected to a computer system that provides monitoring and automatic operation of the tasks.
KP Renewable`s strategy is technology independent and in this regard, it has access to advanced technology for Carbon Recycling which has been developed by not only Kwikpower and KP Wellman but by a number of third party technology partners.
