Electricity from the Inayawan landfill

Residents living near the Inayawan Sanitary Landfill will soon be free from the foul odor that the landfill emits as the city will rehabilitate and upgrade the site by converting it into a waste-to-energy treatment facility.

This Wednesday, the Philippine Bio-Sciences Co. Inc., the contractor of the project, will launch the 100kW Biogas Pilot Power Plant. The project costs P8 million, but officials of the company said they will build the project with no cost on the part of the city government.

Mayor Tomas Osmeña announced earlier that the upgrading of the Inayawan Waste Disposal Facility into a biogas facility will not only reduce landfill mass, but will also generate power, produce additional revenue for Cebu City, and provide livelihood to the residents near the landfill area.

The mayor said that the upgrading of the existing waste disposal facility into a modular type sanitary landfill will also save the city a lot of money because it no longer needs to look for a new landfill site.

To note, the city has also awarded the contract to PhilBio for the City Hall Legislative building’s waste-to-energy airconditioning system.

Osmeña said that once materialized, both projects would become the first of their kinds to be implemented in the whole country.

PhilBio-Cebu branch manager Ricky Beltran said that the demonstration project is a prelude to the coming bigger project that would be launched next year.

The company has proposed to install a biogas facility at the 15-hectare sanitary landfill in January under the Build-Operate-Transfer scheme. The project, with an estimated cost of P500 million, will generate 10 megawatts of power, which is equivalent to 10 percent of the projected power requirement of the future locators at the nearby South Road Properties.

He said power produced by the landfill would be sold to SRP at 20 percent lower than the rates offered by the National Power Corporation.

The upgrade plan for the Inayawan landfill will involve three components — the conversion of a segment of the existing waste disposal facility into a park-cum-digester, installation of cell-type modular landfills, and increased recovery of biogas for energy applications.

Under the first component, the 1.2 million tons of waste currently dumped in the 12-hectare waste disposal facility will be transferred, compacted and properly capped in an estimated five-hectare segment of the facility. This closed portion will be converted into a park that will serve as an aesthetic buffer between the landfill and the SRP, which are merely separated by a 50-meter wide channel. The mini park will serve two other functions — that of an anaerobic digester that will produce biogas and a containment of decaying waste that will eliminate foul odor emissions.

The second component will involve installation of cell-type modular landfills. The seven hectares of land freed by the transfer of the existing waste will be upgraded into modular landfills that will take in residual waste and Covered In-Ground Anaerobic Reactors that shall treat and process organic waste into biogas.

At present, Beltran said that Inayawan landfill takes in an average of 400 metric tons of mixed solid waste per day. Half of the total load (or 200 tons) are organic wastes that will be converted into biogas by the CIGARs. The other half is composed of 30 percent or 120 tons of recyclables and 20 percent or 80 tons of residual waste. If purely residual waste is deposited in the new modular landfills, the new seven-hectare modules will have an economic life of 21 years.

Third, PhilBio shall integrate its biogas facility into the City’s Upgrade Plan by installing a Central Gas Collection System that will transport and convert biogas into energy from the upgraded Inayawan landfill’s multi-digester system. The leachate pond will be rehabilitated and converted into an anaerobic digester. The pond together with the CIGARs and mini–park digester will provide electricity and district cooling to the adjacent SRP project.

Highlighting the Inayawan upgrade plan is the 100 kW ReSTORETM Resource Recovery Facility, a waste-to-energy system that will be launched this Wednesday. It will demonstrate the viability of its proposed multi-digester and biogas power plant system.

The demonstration project will provide electricity to the landfill’s administration building, covered courts and perimeter lighting while excess biogas will be flared. Using the demonstration plant as its data base, PhilBio will conduct a comprehensive feasibility study that will become the basis for its main project proposal, which is the 10-MW power plant. —  Wenna A. Berondo/MEEV