Waste Management Strategy - Question and Answer session - Compact Power - Transcript - 7 February 2005

STATES OF JERSEY

SCRUTINY COMMITTEE

BLAMPIED ROOM, STATES BUILDING

WASTE MANAGEMENT STRATEGY

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Present: Deputy Phil Rondel (Review Chairman)

Senator Ted Vibert

Senator Jean Le Maistre

Deputy Rob Duhamel

Deputy Bob Hill

Deputy Gerard Baudains

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QUESTIONS AND ANSWER SESSION FOLLOWING PRESENTATION BY MR JOHN ACTON

(COMPACT POWER LIMITED)

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on

Monday, 7th February 2005 _  _  _  _  _  _

(Digital Transcription by Marten Walsh Cherer Limited, Midway House, 27/29 Cursitor St., London, EC4A 1LT. Telephone: 020 7405 5010.  Fax:  020 7405 5026)

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DEPUTY RONDEL: Go o d morning.

MR ACTON:   Go o d morning.

DEPUTY RONDEL: C o u l d you please give your name and the company you represent for the

record.  Then I have to read you a small note?

MR ACTON: M y n ame is John Acton. I am the Chief Executive of a company called Compact

Power and I am also the Director of Engineering. I thank the Committee for allowing me to speak to them this morning.

DEPUTY RONDEL: T h a n k you. Prior to starting, I have to read to you the following notice. It

is important that you fully understand the conditions under which you are appearing at this hearing. You will find a printed copy of the statement that I am about to read to you on the table in front of you.

S h a d ow Scrutiny Panels have been established by the States to create opportunities for

training States Members and Officers in developing new skills in advance of the proposed changes of government. During the shadow period, the Panel has no statutory powers and the proceedings at public hearings are not covered by Parliamentary privilege. This means that anyone participating, whether a Panel Member or a person giving evidence, is not protected from being sued or prosecuted for anything said during a hearing. The Panel would like you to bear this in mind when answering questions and to ensure that you understand that you are fully responsible for any comments that you make.

MR ACTON:   T h a n k you.

DEPUTY RONDEL:   C o u ld you please commence with your presentation?

MR ACTON: T h a n k you. I am going to talk about the Compact Power process, which is a

pyrolysis and gasification technique, which we have been developing in the United Kingdom now for nearly 14 years and it is coming to a stage of development where we think we shall be making that break-through to one of the questions I have heard, which is the "two-plus-two" rule, which has actually bedevilled us since we first started.

Mr Acton gave the presentation on behalf of Compact Power Limited

DEPUTY RONDEL: On b ehalf of the Panel, thank you very much. I will start off by putting

the first question. Having taken note that you deal with commercial and industrial waste, would your

unit or units be able to deal with asbestos?

MR ACTON: No . Asbestos is, by definition, virtually inert and it comes in various fibres, as

you know. Some of them are moderately dangerous; some of them are very, very dangerous and the majority of it is so. There is no way that thermally because, if you remember, what it was used for was thermal insulation. It was made for making refractory blocks and so it isn't suitable for material which is totally inert and has very good thermal characteristics. So it isn't suitable for that, Chairman.

DEPUTY RONDEL: Ok a y . Could you give me the volumes for your bottom ash, please, and

your fly ash?

MR ACTON: B o t to m ash is dependent obviously on waste stream and it varies between the

types of waste that we're using. On clinical waste, which is what we're operating at the moment, it's about 4% to 5% of the input is residual by weight. If we were on sewerage sludges, it could go as high as 25% to 30% because of the high limestone content and various other inert materials. When we are running on tyres, if we didn't capture the carbon, it was less than a ¼% because all we were left with is the reinforcing wire. I think it virtually is a function of the waste stream. It is not going to be really very much different from a good quality bottom ash that you would get from a good combustion process by any other technique, because, if you remember, it comes out immediately after the pyrolysis and gasification phase. So, at that stage, you will be getting approximately the same sort of residual percentages. In our case, because of the way that we gasify, you will actually have more fixed carbon in it than you would perhaps if you had burnt it off. Certainly the CO2 captured would be slightly better.

DEPUTY RONDEL:   S e n at or Vibert ?

SENATOR VIBERT: I wo nder if I could just get a better understanding of the process from

you. From what I have heard, you can actually individualise your waste so that you can actually get a different kind of carbon. In other words, on one particular day you could say "Well, we're doing tyres today" and you would do tyres and, from that, you would get a different type of bottom ash.

MR ACTON: Ye s a nd no. We can actually do it at the same time. We could actually process

clinical waste in one of the pyrolysers and we could be using the other three for a variety of different wastes. What we shall be doing at Avonmouth is we shall be devoting one -- and we don't know which one because we can alternate it -- for treating the clinical and hazardous 3,000 tonnes a year. The other three will be devoted to a variety of waste streams, but mainly municipal waste. However, we have run one side, for example, on municipal waste and we have run the other side on clinical waste, because one of the advantages is that we can move the heat from one high CB waste to one that is a much lower CB and that gives us so long as the net balance is about 15MJ, then the process works.

SENATOR VIBERT: C o u ld I also try and get some ball park figures from you? Your basic unit

that you've been talking about is doing 30,000 tonnes, that's your first component.

MR ACTON:   Ye s .

SENATOR VIBERT: Wh a t would be the ball park approximate cost of that type of building and

process?  Have you got any ball park figures you could give us?

MR ACTON: We a re getting some figures, which are being honed at the moment as we are

coming together. They are slightly sensitive because we are just bidding Wrexham and I know that there is another company in the room that's also bidding it, so we are a little bit so I'm a little reluctant to give any figures at this time.

SENATOR VIBERT: C o u ld we enter an in camera session now or can you pass us the figure on

a piece of paper so that we have got it, because it really quite is important that we try and establish some kind of costs structure to this.

MR ACTON: S u re , I can understand that.

SENATOR VIBERT: B e c a use it makes a difference in the kind of thinking. So would it be

possible in fact for you simply to let us know on a piece of paper which will remain confidential to the Panel a 30,000, 60,000, 90,000 approximately ball park figure? Would you be prepared to do that for us?

MR ACTON:   I wo u ld be very happy to do that.

DEPUTY RONDEL:   In c o nfidence.

SENATOR VIBERT: In c o nfidence, yes. The final point I would like to put to you is there

could be an opportunity in Jersey, for instance, for you to have a reference plant here.

MR ACTON:   R ig h t .

SENATOR VIBERT: I a m putting an option here or a thought here, in which the Government of

Jersey, if it felt that the technology was going to be valuable, could become a stakeholder in the technology.  Is that something that your company would consider?

MR ACTON:   Ye s .

SENATOR VIBERT: It wo uld?

MR ACTON: De fi nitely. I mean, we are looking to develop and to produce strategic

relationships with key partners, and key partners are not only engineering partners and waste partners, but it is obviously people who have a belief in it and would like to take advantage of what we think is a very good technology.

SENATOR VIBERT: T h a n k you.

DEPUTY RONDEL:   An y q uestions, gentlemen?

DEPUTY HILL:   Ye s .

DEPUTY RONDEL:   De p u ty Hill?

DEPUTY HILL: Ok a y . Could you tell me, you are obviously Compact, so how compact are

you on Avonmouth? What sort of we call them vergees here, but we can talk in the English language. How many acres would you say your site would take there, because you can expand, you say?

MR ACTON: We l l , the way that I usually describe it is a 32,000 tonne plant, without the waste

hall, occupies the same space as a large tennis court, just to give it a feel.

SENATOR VIBERT: Wh a t 's a large tennis court?

MR ACTON: Ab o u t 30 metres sorry? That means you have got like me, I need the bit on

the sides because I do ----

SENATOR VIBERT: Do y o u mean it's doubled? Do you mean the whole doubled?

MR ACTON: Ye s , y es.

DEPUTY RONDEL: Yo u mentioned a stack height of 21 metres. I presume the location makes

a difference?

MR ACTON: A si g nificant difference. Every case has to be separately assessed. It has to take into account background emission standards. It has to take into account topography, wind direction and this is normally always covered in the environmental impact assessment. We have actually completed the one for both Bristol and for Wrexham and also for Dumfries and in all of

them we are looking at in Dumfries I think we are looking at a 26 metre stack. Bristol was 21.  Wrexham I think is going to I am not certain about Wrexham because the planning size was determined before they decided to move away incineration, so I think we have inherited the stack height that was already planned for an incinerator, but I'm not certain on that.

DEPUTY RONDEL: C u r re ntly we have an incinerator in the valley. There is talk also of a

possible site which is very exposed on the coast.  Would that affect the chimney height?

MR ACTON: It c o uld do, yes. Valleys, of course, are bad news, particularly if they are ones

which have got stagnant air, because they are not cleaned by prevailing winds or what-have-you. They don't always have to be, but they can be. Obviously, with sea coasts, you get prevailing winds and, again, you have to find out where the hot spots are and you have to legislate for it. So there is no easy rule. The stack height as far as the Environment Agency is concerned is determined by a computation of what is in the gas, what is the waste, etc, etc, and, from that, having applied all those factors and taken into account topography and geophysical conditions, you get a stack height. I did look at one in Devon which they were going to stick right at the bottom of the valley and well, it would have needed a stack about 100 metres high, I reckon. So we decided to put it on the top of the hill and make it smaller.

DEPUTY RONDEL:   Wa t e r vapour from the flue?

MR ACTON: B e c a use we do high temperature -- the exhaust gas is between 200 and 220 degrees centigrade -- it is well above the normal viewpoint. If in fact we get very adverse conditions, very cold, then you will get some detectable, but it is some way away from the stack

and so it is very difficult to determine whether it is sort of but it is very unusual to get those sorts of atmospheric conditions. As far as I know, we've never had detectable emissions made from ours, but it's not saying that, if it was in Dumfries, for example, where it is probably colder,

there might be some days, but it's so rare because you can compute what temperature you would have to

drop it to before it in fact became visible pluming and, because we use dry coolers, we don't get any pluming off of the pluming mechanism. Therefore, you would be looking at the dispersion from the top of the stack and it would be some several hundred metres away before it in fact, and had dispersed quite widely, before it had been cooled sufficiently to be detectable. But, no, if you can take it back below it's viewpoint it will become visible.

DEPUTY RONDEL:   Od o u rs from the plant?

MR ACTON:   S o rr y ?

DEPUTY RONDEL:   Od o u rs from the plant?

MR ACTON: We l l, odour actually comes mainly from the waste stream and what we use the air from the waste hall as a means of our oxidation air. For every tonne we are using about

6,000mm3 of air, so it's quite a if you're running on 4 tonnes an hour, that amount of air that's being shifted out and it does put the waste hall under slight negative pressure, very slight, but sufficient to stop egress of odours. Any air that's taken in will actually go through the oxidation process and, as far as I know, there is no odour that can withstand 1250 degrees for two seconds.

DEPUTY RONDEL:   S e n at or Le Maistre?  Sorry, Deputy Duhamel?

DEPUTY DUHAMEL: Ye s . Could you highlight the advantages of the modularity within your

solution process in terms of the advantages that could accrue to small island communities in using your technology?

MR ACTON: Ye s . It has several advantages, but the principal one is active redundancy. All thermal, all processes, it doesn't matter what it is, will occasionally go wrong and obviously

what one has to do is you have to have active redundancy, which means components which are working all the time available. Now, what we've done on ours is we have got four active units with eight pyrolysis tubes inside and one of the things we have demonstrated very, very conclusively at Avonmouth is that the oxidation the pyrolysis tubes, which are actually the bit that is the most stressed and in which we have invested a tremendous amount of time developing, is a component which we can change, but we have to obviously take that unit off. We can

change it in under 10 hours once it's off. Now, the beauty of having four chambers is, of course, that

you can come off fairly quickly and so you will probably be off for no more than 15 hours to do a complete tube screw change, so that would be your maximum exposure, and of course that helps greatly when you're talking in terms of availability and reliability. Every major component, as is customary in all well engineered projects, is duplicated on the essential features. It is only those static devices that have good reliability which you can measure and which have been measured, like the boiler and like the oxidiser, which is a static device, etc, which we don't believe there is any need to duplicate. However, we look at a complete stream. A 32,000 is complete with its gas clean up, boiler etc. So if you were having the 64, you would actually have two steams complete and, again, the common coupling point would be at the steam output.

DEPUTY DUHAMEL: R ig h t . Could you tell the Panel your experiences when you were running

your plant on MSW? Any particular problems in terms of outage levels caused by running on that particular fuel?

MR ACTON: We ll , it's no secret that our experience on MSW is short and to the point. We

haven't actually we in fact operated at Coventry for some years on MSW and we had to use MSW to prove the IPPC because we weren't allowed to run clinical waste. However, being the plant is only a single plant, we had to go on to clinical waste as soon as we could, and so we tended to do just small batch demonstrations for people of that type. The RDF was a fairly long cry and so on. So we haven't got exhaustive experience on MSW, and this is our argument with DEFRA as to why they should give us some money, because until we've got, we've demonstrated that we can actually run on MSW, I don't think I'd put my money in. So, you know, I mean, it's it needs somebody who is prepared to take the risk and that's what DEFRA are saying they are going to do.

DEPUTY DUHAMEL: Wo u ld it be fair to say that running on clinical waste is a more

challenging material to be dealing with rather than MSWs?

MR ACTON: I t h in k it is the most challenging of all waste streams. It has got to be done at a higher temperature. The oxidation temperature on all our processes is always the same, so it

doesn't matter whether it is MSW or clinical, we always operate it as if it were clinical waste. So even

MSW would be treated at the same temperatures and the gases would be subjected to exactly the same clean-up. So we believe that clinical waste is the challenge, but that's and it has certainly beaten a lot of other people.

DEPUTY DUHAMEL: T h a n k you.

DEPUTY RONDEL:   S e n at or Vibert ?

SENATOR VIBERT: I t a k e it that the fibrous type of material, that is the reason why you get

such a high price for actually getting rid of it?

MR ACTON:   In d e e d.

SENATOR VIBERT: Ha v e you actually had an opportunity to put your proposals to the Public

Services and Environment Department in Jersey?

MR ACTON: No . We did in fact try and invite ourselves to put a proposal, but our kind offer

was refused. So we have never actually ever been able to do that because, I think but we have expressed interest very much in working with you and seeing how we could help.

SENATOR VIBERT: S o th ey have actually made no approach to you, bearing in mind your

technology is now quite well known in waste management, the system, and that you came through the DEFRA process?

MR ACTON: We ' ve actually had indirect approaches, but no direct approach. We were

approached by one of the consulting engineering practices, which I think was Babtie Fichtner. SENATOR VIBERT: B a b ti e Fichtner.

MR ACTON: Wh o approached us and we provided some information, but when we looked at

the conditions that were being the "two-plus-two" rule just leapt off the page, so we said "Sorry, but we'll have to pass on that particular one."

SENATOR VIBERT: If I c ould be time specific and say in the last 12 months, have you had any

approach from you to come and talk to them about the system?

MR ACTON:   I d o n 't think so.  I can't remember that precisely, but I don't think so.

SENATOR VIBERT: T h a n k you.

DEPUTY RONDEL:   De p u ty Hill?

DEPUTY HILL: C o u l d I just come back, because you mentioned, I think it was, PFI in

Cornwall.

MR ACTON:   Ye s , a  PFI.

DEPUTY HILL:   Wh a t does that mean?

MR ACTON: We ll , this is a public finance initiative, which is a way that it is the kiss of

death, apart from people like the waste companies, who seem to it is a huge amount of investment by anyone bidding them. The project was proceeding quite happily with the incumbent local authority owned LAWDAC and just as they were about to I think it was 10 days from planning consideration, the Government advised them that they had won PFI status and from that the whole thing was stopped and they have now invited proposals from all the major waste contractors for, whatever it is, a 25 year PFI contract to take all of the waste arisings collection and so forth. So it is not something we would do, but we would be very keen to talk to the winner to see if they would be interested in our thermal technology.

DEPUTY RONDEL: An y further questions, gentlemen? If not, on behalf of the Panel I would

like to thank you very much for attending.  Thank you.

MR ACTON:   T h a n k you.  We will now have a short break until the next presenters arrive.

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