Already, the company has planned to open its first waste-to-energy plant in Rialto, California. The cost of Rialto plant is also $160 million. The Rialto plant will process over 270,000 wet tons of sludge each year and produce 60,000 tons of fuel pellets, which it calls E-Fuel.
“The New York City Department of Environmental Protection has issued a request for information, and we have responded,” said Kevin Bolin, chief executive of EnerTech. “We are also talking to a lot of agencies in the New York-New Jersey areas and the response has been very favorable. Our price point seems to be where it needs to be.”
Kevin Bolin has reported that the pellets are not pollution-free as carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, trace metals and dioxin emissions release during their production. Alternatively, dropping sludge in landfills may also result in a slower release of CO2, but the delay is negligible.
“Perhaps we do accelerate it, but sludge in landfill is not sequestered.”
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has declared that all are “well below EPA’s New Source Performance Standards for municipal waste combustion.”
The SlurryCarb process subjects sludge to extreme heat and pressure, splitting carbon dioxide and water from the remaining carbon pellet. The CO2 is released into the atmosphere and the water is returned to a wastewater treatment plant.
The New York city operates 14 wastewater plants. These plants treat 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater per day.
There are ten waste-to-energy plants operate in New York State, including five within 50 miles of Manhattan. None of the plants handles the city’s wastewater.
In 2000, EnerTech had planned to handle the city’s wastewater, but those plans were never realized. “We were a very small company back then,” said Bolin. “Just four employees.”
