Teru Talk Newsletter

Volume III, Issue 52, December 30, 2013 

Teru Talk by Michael Theroux (pronounced "Terú")  

The New Year is approaching, and here are four Top Waste Conversion Lessons from 2013:

It's the Rules, not the Tools . We have the clean conversion equipment and methods; functional systems of all kinds are now available. Well-experienced development companies are finding effective waste conversion modules to work with. There is no lack of information regarding the conversion of waste and residuals into energy, fuels, and other commodities; if anything there is far too much detail to sift through. We certainly have the Trash Tsunami to pick apart for recyclates, using the rest as feedstock. And we have examples of functional projects up and running, turning crud liabilities back into goods assets. There remains, however, a distinct lack of political understanding and policy development.

Integration is the Ticket . Making a stand-alone facility is not as economical as plugging these same conversion systems into our existing resource management infrastructure. We do well to work with the haulers, and partner with the cities, counties, and military bases in order to minimize the cost of new construction and maximize use of whatever already is in place. By now, we also have seen that if a crucial element is missing, the site probably isn't right. More often than not, that crucial element is Public Support. When we find natural places that simply beg for us to waltz in and do the Waste Conversion Magic, things go so much better. But this is no time to dilly dally: at the rate things are changing, all the Good Sites will soon be gone.

Close the Economic Circle . Project developers are seeking and finding what isn't being utilized in the existing process flow. This has extended from the moment an item is discarded, past the part of the resource pathway where unwanted stuff usually goes to the dump, all the way back to re-entry of re-constituted materials into the marketplace. Waste cooking oil is a hot commodity. A supermarket's out-dated veggies can light and heat that same market. Even the best Recycling effort makes its own trash; just about every engine makes usable yet wasted heat. If what we are contemplating will make a lot of heat, it makes a whole lot of cents to look around the community and see who needs it. Most manufacturers simply love steam.

Finesse is Financeable . Improvements in efficiency translate into reduced main system cost and impact, and ancillary business is sure to follow. Even when a lot of easily-converted stuff is just lying around, careful pre-treatment will broaden the range of useful crud for almost every conversion project. Shrimp shells dissolve in ionic liquid, whatever that is, and turn into feedstock for further processing; woody waste makes fermentable sugar water, with proper pre-treatment. Then there is the back-end reforming and refining, turning the raw materials recovered from waste conversion into market-ready products. Digester and landfill biomethane can both be upgraded to clean fuel and pipeline injection; it pays to finish the job on-site.