Teru Talk Newsletter

Teru's Trash Talk

Maintained Availability is a metric important to almost every processing effort. It described the percentage of time a system keeps running, keeps operating, keeps doing whatever it is that you depend upon. When faced with a never-ending flow of stuff coming at you that needs to be processed and served up, Downtime is always difficult. Downtime is also unavoidable; nothing that Man cooks up keeps running constantly without a break in the action once in awhile.

When you are dealing with trash management, that constant flow doesn't quit just because a whats-it in your magic trash discombobulator comes unhinged. If your capacity to Do Something with that trash tsunami doesn't come back on line pretty fast, you'll literally bury yourself in your work. If you are trying to select a Whats-it to install, the percentage of run-time you can depend upon per year is as important as the amount of crud it processes per hour. Maintenance costs, but downtime costs more. So we count the availability, given all the necessary maintenance, and call that percentage the "maintained availability". It even has its own kind of insurance.

It's nice to have a spare whats-it that can kick in if the main unit craps out, but that is a characteristic luxury of larger operations. Small enterprise is usually lucky to have one of the main what-evers to do the job, so the trend toward smaller and more distributed waste conversion suffers more from lower maintained availability than the monster processors. But then when you are processing a few tons a day, things don’t back up as quick as when you must cope with many thousands of tons a day. There are always trade-offs.

Stuff Happens

Teru Talk celebrated our Five Year Anniversary last month, having posted our first news item to this web service in September 2010. We've kicked out a newsletter every week during that entire time and all strictly with our own Operations and Maintenance, never having a week go by without serving up Waste Conversion News to our faithful global readership. 5 years times 52 weeks = 260 issues packed full of carefully selected Waste Conversion specific news, each edition with its own Trash Talk and Hey Rube! Five years at 100% maintained availability.

But stuff happens, eventually. Last week saw a hard drive crash that took out our web publication software, dead on the e-vine. We finally got everything up and running again on our own in-house expertise … making it once again possible to process and package the News in time for today … but we missed one. Last week's issue just didn't happen. For those kind and selfless readers who thought they might have accidentally pushed their own Delete button: no, this was our bad. Sorry 'bout that. So all of last week's news is crammed in with this week's edition.

But c'mon: missing one newsletter issue in over five years means we've managed way better than 99% maintained availability. Whether converting Trash or News, 99% + is bankable.

Hey Rube!

Be sure to mark your calendar for November 4-5 and plan to attend this year's 10th annual California Bioresources Alliance symposium. The get-together will be staged in the main auditorium of the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board HQ in Rancho Cordova, near Sacramento. Teru is a speaker in Dr. Steve Kaffka's session on Compost, Co-Digestion, and Biochar on the first day, droning on about federal and international standards for Biochar, and then moderating a Biochar panel of actual specialists on the second day. See our Event notice, and check out the UC Davis and EPA Region 9 (co-hosts of the symposium) web announcements while you're there.

This Week's Extra Reading

SURCP Releases New Biochar Report for Forest Restoration in Western US

Oregon-based Wilson Biochar Associates (WBA) has prepared an article for the South Umpqua Rural Community Partnership (SURCP) entitled, "Biochar for Forest Restoration in the Western United States". 10/16/2015

This Week's Top Story

University of Utah Researchers Create LEDs from Food and Beverage Waste

Two University of Utah researchers have found a way to create light emitting diodes (LEDs) from food and beverage waste. 10/15/2015

The Week's News

Neste's NEXBTL Renewable Diesel Powers City of Oakland's Vehicles

The City of Oakland, California began filling up its vehicles with Neste's NEXBTL renewable diesel at the beginning of October 2015 in order to reduce the emissions of their municipal fleet. 10/16/2015

WRAP to Map Out Critical Raw Materials Recovery From Electrical Products

The United Kingdom (UK) based Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP) will partner with the Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN), Wuppertal Institute, European Recycling Platform (ERP UK Ltd), and the European Advanced Recycling Network (EARN) for a new project, which has received €2.1m Euros from European Union (EU) Life funding. 10/15/2015

Viridor Is Preferred Bidder on £700m Clyde Valley Residual Waste Project

Viridor has been selected as preferred bidder for the £700 million Clyde Valley Residual Waste project in Scotland. 10/15/2015

Linde Group Opens Pilot Plant for Dry Reformer Synthesis Gas Production

The Linde Group has announced the official opening of its Linde Pilot Reformer research and development facility at Pullach near Munich. 10/15/2015

AVA Cleanphos Pilot Will Recover Phosphorus from Sewage Sludge

Swiss company AVA-CO2 is receiving support from the Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt DBU (German Federal Environmental Foundation) to further develop a new process to extract phosphorus from HTC-coal produced from municipal sewage sludge at its AVA cleanphos pilot plant in Karlsruhe, Germany. 10/12/2015

Monterey County Selects BHS to Furnish Multi-Line MRF

The Monterey Regional Waste Management District (MRWMD) in California has selected Oregon based Bulk Handling Systems (BHS) to design, manufacture, and install its new Materials Recovery Facility (MRF). 10/12/2015

Outotec Awarded Three Energy from Waste Contracts in UK and Canada

Finland based Outotec Oyj has been awarded three technology and service contracts totaling EUR 55 million by different renewable energy producers in the UK and Canada. 10/12/2015

Covestro and Reverdia Partner for Plastics from Renewable Raw Materials

Covestro, formerly Bayer MaterialScience, and Reverdia have reached an agreement to jointly develop and promote thermoplastic polyurethanes (TPU) based on renewable raw materials. 10/08/2015

Veolia to Manage Belgian Eco-Energy's New Biomass Power Plant in Ghent

Belgian Eco-Energy (BEE) has awarded a 15-year contract to Veolia operate one of the largest biomass power plants in Europe, which will be built on the international port of Ghent. 10/08/2015

Infracapital Launches Investment Platform for Biomass and EfW Plants in UK

Infracapital has announced the launch of the Bioenergy Infrastructure Group (BIG), a platform established to invest in the construction of biomass and Energy from Waste (EfW) plants in the United Kingdom (UK). 10/06/2015

BioAmber Sarnia Producing Bio-Succinic Acid and Shipping to Customers

BioAmber Inc has announced that its Sarnia joint venture with Mitsui & Co. Ltd has begun shipping bio-succinic acid to customers and is operating its manufacturing process at commercial scale, meeting a significant company milestone. 10/06/2015

Stora Enso's Sunila Mill in Finland Is Now Running Valmet LignoBoost Plant

Finland based Valmet has completed the handover process of the LignoBoost lignin separation plant at Stora Enso Biomaterial's Sunila mill. 10/06/2015

United Kingdom's New National Infrastructure Commission to Address Energy

The government of the United Kingdom (UK) has announced a four-point plan to spur nation-wide infrastructure development, especially in housing, transportation, and energy. 10/05/2015

Aeromexico Signs Agreement with MEXICO2 Carbon Trading Platform

Mexico's global airline Aeromexico has announced a partnership with the country's leading independent carbon trading platform MEXICO2. 0/05/2015

PUC Approves Pacific Biodiesel Contract with Hawaiian Electric

Pacific Biodiesel Technologies (PBT) has announced that the Hawaiian Public Utilities Commission (PUC) has approved their contract with Hawaiian Electric for supply of biodiesel for Oahu power generators. 10/05/2015