Nowadays the world market offers many technologies to recover energy from waste, so why incineration? Other technologies like pyrolysis, gasification or plasma treatment are also popular. Moreover, incineration is often treated as outdated and even discarded.

In our daily activity, we encounter several common delusions concerning incineration. They lead to a total misunderstanding of the prevalence and roles of modern waste-to-energy technologies. That is why we think it is needed to comment on the current situation.

The map below shows quantities of waste-to-energy plants in Europe (blue numbers) and amounts of waste in million ton being annually incinerated (red numbers).

Why incineration? - CEWEP map 2018.

Even if we do not offer incineration plant to our clients, we need to use incineration as a reference point. Since it is a world prevalent, most approved technology. Incineration is not discarded, as mentioned by some observers, but vice versa. It is possible to download an extract from the 1000-page report “Waste to Energy 2015/2016” by Ecoprog, a professional consultant, well-known for comprehensive market researches.

Ecoprog says: “Today, more than 2,200 WtE plants are active worldwide. They have a disposal capacity of around 280 million tons of waste per year. More than 250 thermal treatment plants with a capacity of nearly 60 million annual tons were constructed between 2010 and 2014. We estimate almost 550 new plants with a capacity of about 150 million annual tons to be constructed by 2024.” As we can see from page 4 of the extract, ECOPROG considers only “9.2 Thermal treatment: incineration & gasification” technologies. This is because other technologies, including pyrolysis and plasma treatment, have a very small portion of the market.

New tenders for incineration

New tenders to construct big municipal solid waste (MSW) incinerators are called in different countries. For example,
Jordan – 1000 ton per day
Kuwait – 3000 ton per day

Some big plants became operational last time in:
UK – 320,000 ton per annum of MSW to energy
UK – 45MW wood waste to energy
Finland – 68MW from biomass and wood waste
UAE – 100MW from MSW facility is under construction in Abu Dhabi
India – Hyderabad municipality took the decision to construct 500,000 ton per annum MSW incineration plant

It is hard to offer incineration plant to the clients because quite often people’s opinion is based on rumours and wrong knowledge of the market. However what is evident: we have to compare any technology to incineration, since it is the most approved and widespread technology in the world. We cannot compare our offer with some doubtful pyrolysis producers, whose equipment has no successful track of record.

That is why when we offer ENCORE and another American pyrolysis technology designed mostly for MSW, we always compare CAPEX, OPEX, capacity factor, energy generation, with the incineration plant of similar capacity. This method gives our client a solid starting point for understanding the project and technology.

And of course, incineration is still developing and it has not said its last word in the global presence in the waste-to-energy market.

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6 Comments

  1. Please contact me – Whatsapp is best.

    We have direct contact with Federal Govt for a large WTE project

    What’s App is best +xx xxx xxx xxx

  2. Our Company Ares Enterprises, owners of the RAILWAY CONSORTIUM OF THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, are interested in learning about offers for solid waste (MSW) incinerators plant with a capacity of 1,000 TON per day

    Waiting on your prompt response.

    Yours Sincerely,

    Federico Ares
    Director of Equipment and Machinery

  3. It is commonly noted that Incineration plants are used to treat Hospital waste to dispose Hospital waste within Hospital premises n Not used for power generation, why?
    Kindly clarify n how can we use Incineration plants for Power /energy generation from Hospital waste n how much power from how much hospital waste?

    1. Medical waste is used for power generation, please see our plant as an example.

      Energy output highly depends on the waste quality. As a very average number, you can use an estimation of 1MW from 1 ton per hour.