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The City of Cape Town is looking to turn waste into an energy source to power a landfill site and an under-construction recycling facility.
The City said its Waste to Energy Project is designed to produce electricity from the combustion of landfill gas.
Landfill gas, primarily made up of methane, is produced when organic matter such as food scraps break down in the oxygen-depleted environment of the landfill.
To convert this gas into electricity, perforated pipes or "wells" have been dug into the landfill site to extract it and channel it as fuel to produce electricity in specially-designed engines.
Before the gas engines can be put into operation, a specialised thermal mass flow meter must still be installed and various regulatory processes must be followed to permit the connection of the engines to the electricity grid.
The City said it is awaiting delivery of critical spares for the gas engines.
"All things considered, the estimated date for first electricity production will be somewhere in the second half of the 2024 calendar year, barring unforeseen complications.
"When running at full capacity, the project will produce approximately 15,000,000 kWh/year, which will be used primarily for powering operations and equipment at the landfill site, including the new recycling facility that is currently under construction."
The City said the electricity produced will not be sufficient to off-set loadshedding on its own, "however it will assist in conjunction with other efforts being made in the Energy Directorate."
While the process to put the gas engines into operation is under way, the City said it is using a flaring system at the endpoint of the well system to destroy landfill gas before it can enter the atmosphere and contribute to climate change.
Project to earn City carbon credits
Landfill gas has a global warming potential estimated to be 25 times higher than carbon dioxide.
The flaring and electricity generation system has been designed in such a way that destruction of the landfill gas can earn the City carbon credits.
This is in terms of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change-approved (UNFCCC) Clean Development Mechanism and the replacement Article 6.4 mechanism formulated as part of the Paris Agreement signed at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21).
Basically, these schemes award one carbon credit for each metric ton of carbon dioxide or equivalent that is removed from the atmosphere. These credits can be sold to governments or industries that need to lower their carbon footprint for regulatory or even ethical reasons.
In Cape Town, the proceeds from planned auction of these carbon credits will be ring-fenced to fund projects of the Urban Waste Management Directorate to reduce the health and pollution impacts of waste that will generate additional co-benefit for communities, the City said.
Cape Town pays out homes, businesses for excess solar
Recently, the City announced that Cape Town businesses and households have already earned over R25.8m under the Citys Cash for Power programme since the start of the 2022/23 financial year.
This after the City became the first metro to buy excess solar PV power from small-scale generators in exchange for municipal bill credits and cash.
Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis said key policy changes have enabled power sellers to earn credits against their total municipal bill, and to go beyond that to receive cash for power fed back into the grid.
Previously, sellers could only be credited against their electricity bill up to a zero balance. |
