High Class Garbage
July 28th, 2008. Filed under: Monday's Musings.
Raise your hand. How many of you actually know what happens to the stuff you have carted off in the garbage pick up? What happens to it if you toss it in a recycling bin? My county’s system is more cutting edge than I realized. I’m still learning about the subject, but we seem to have a class act going here. We have a 25 year old waste-to-energy facility that came with a hefty price tag of $500 million. Most garbage here gets burned in an incinerator and then converted to energy for household usage. This facility operates 24/7. That’s a heck of a lot of trash.
First, the garbage trucks dump their contents into a holding pit. Then a giant claw (think about those machines with a claw that you crank and pick up the stuffed animals and other toys) snatches up a bunch of yuck and dumps it into one of three hoppers. This mass of disgusting debris heads down to a boiler where it is burned at 1,800 degrees. The resulting ash is water cooled and placed on a conveyor belt. The metal bits are removed by magnets and sold as scrap. The remaining ash goes to the landfill to cover construction and demolition debris and household garbage overflow which couldn’t be handled by the facility.
The gases that result from the process are piped through a scrubber and fabric filter which is like a giant vacuum bag that collects the airborne ash. This removes hazardous chemicals. Heat from the burning garbage turns water in the boilers into steam. This steam operates a turbine to generate electricity for up to 45,000 households daily. That means my computer is powered by garbage. How many of you all out there are running on garbage?