Dubai civic body to tap energy in landfills

Dubai: Dubai Municipality is seeking new ways to divert waste from landfills to produce energy, Gulf News has learnt.

The central idea behind the new push is to turn garbage that cannot be recycled into a raw material to help provide a complementary source of energy using safe technologies. Energy so produced will be used to cool and light homes across Dubai.

The municipality said it will select technology from interested bidders in 2013. Compared to controversial incinerators that were, in the past, criticised for emitting harmful compounds into the atmosphere, new technology allows for scrubbers to be installed within energy facilities to trap emissions.

Speaking to Gulf News, Abdul Majeed Saifaie, director of the Waste Management Department at Dubai Municipality, said that the municipality is studying new ways to convert waste into energy but had chosen to look beyond recyclable materials.

“We have been taking lots of proposals from across the world because waste energy is very popular in other countries, as we have been looking for some time now into converting alternative energy and protecting the environment,” Saifaie said.

The UAE is succeeding with efforts to check waste but the statistics show there’s much work still to be done. The daily average for individual waste generation in the UAE was put at 2 kilograms, which is a decline from 2.8 kilograms in 2009, according to Dubai Municipality.

“We are looking into proposals from several countries, including China, Japan, Germany and America, and by 2013 we expect to announce a bidder, and take everything that’s not recyclable and convert it into energy waste,” Saifaie said.

Energy recovery from waste relies on the conversion of non-recyclable waste materials into useable heat, electricity, or fuel. Currently there are 86 facilities in the United States for combustion of solid waste with energy recovery.

Once any waste utilisation project comes into effect, it will check the amount of waste ending up in landfills in Al Qusais and Jebel Ali, particularly with the landfill in Al Qusais expected to exceed capacity in seven years.

According to the World Bank, solid waste is generated due to domestic, commercial, industrial, agricultural and waste water treatment activities. If the waste is not properly handled and treated, it will have a negative impact on urban areas and pollute the air besides surface and ground water, as well as the soil and crops.

“This type of renewable energy is not new and has been present in many countries for a number of years now,” Saifaie said.

In highly industrialised European countries, waste incineration plants have been used increasingly over the last 50 years, mainly because it has been more difficult to find new sites for landfills in densely populated areas.

According to the World Bank, the incineration of solid waste does not completely eliminate, but does significantly reduce, the volume of waste sent to landfills. The physical reductions in waste thus achieved are approximately 75 per cent by weight and 90 per cent by volume.