B1-Summary description of the project
Contents
(Max. 3 pages; to be completeddiscuss in English)
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Project title:
Project objectives and key messages:
With a view to breaking the link between growth and waste generation, the European Union has provided itself with a legal framework aimed at the whole waste cycle from generation to disposal, placing the emphasis on recovery and recycling.
The Waste Framework Directive sets the long-term strategy aims to help Europe become a recycling society that seeks to avoid waste and uses waste as a resource, in accordance with smart and sustainable development targets set by Europa 2020.
The Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive, under the Water Framework Directive, and a future Sludge Directive now under discussion, regards producers of sewage sludge.
Treatment routes and use of sewage sludge is very similar to that of biowaste.
Waste streams such as sewage sludge (SS) and the organic fraction of municipal solid waste (OFMSW) are underexploited feedstock for bioenergy, withdrawing valuable resources irrevocably from economic and natural cycles.
Anaerobic codigestion can be considered one of the most promising way to give a proper disposal to the organic fraction of municipal solid waste (OFMSW) coming from source or separate collection systems.
The two flows of OFMSW and SS may converge into anaerobic co-digestion for the production of biogas.
In Europe there are more than 35000 facilities that already use anaerobic fermentation for stabilizing sewage sludge. Because of the composition of SS these plants in most case just use the low quantity, low quality biogas obtained for maintaining process heat sending the remaining to flare-torch. This is impressive European asset can be upgraded to co-digestion to produce heat and power if there is sufficient quantity and quality of inflow material.
OFMSW coming from separate collection may secure the required additional supply of biodegradable matter.
While, municipalities are interested in keeping collection and treatment costs low, biogas plants are only able to treat OFMSW with low plastics contamination. As a result OFMSW is often sent to composting.
In order to solve this drawback to widespread upgrading of existing SS treatment facilities, COWS project partners Sea Risorse, Sea Ambiente and the Municipality of Viareggio devised an innovative processing solution that experimented at low-scale, achieving positive results.
That solution is now brought to demonstration scale upgrading the sewage sludge plant of Viareggio to a biogas power-generation facility, diverting 15,000 tonnes/year of OFMSW from composting, and innovating also the business model of cooperation between municipal waste services and water/wastewater services who are producers of sewage sludge.
The objective of COWS project is to demonstrate how most sewage sludge treatment plant can be upgraded to co-digestion with OFMSW with sustainable outcomes on environmental, social and economic sides.
COWS project will implement a full scale process upgrade (15.000 ton/year) that will include a prototype pre-treatment unit for high-performance separation of a clean and most useful fraction of OFSMW as slurry to be mixed with sewage sludge and the forwarded to anaerobic digestion. The biogas obtained exceeds by large the heating and power needs of the plant, allowing a to upload to the grid power enough ti satisfy the needs of 3.000 people equivalent.
COWS implementation will firstly ensure the participation of all stakeholders: citizens and CSOs, utilities interested to apply the same approach, technology providers. Works for modifying current stabilization process will run parallel to the development of the pre-treatment prototype, which will make use of a stable industrial technology that will be adapted for the purpose.
The process will then be adjusted and balanced to optimal performances and finally run on "showcase" mode for all interested parties.
A high quality for the OFMSW that is supplied to a biogas plant can be achieved by two main concepts: either by establishing a source-sorting collection system that achieves a low content of contaminants or by selective removal of contamination from the collected OFMSW before it is supplied to the biogas plant.
However, this separation has to be very efficient to ensure a high purity of the waste on both flows (the wet flow being mixed to digester and
Earlier experiences have shown that compost derived from mechanical separation hardly meet the required standards for useful application as soil conditioner.
