Bid to Create Electricity from Rubbish
Bangkok Post, October 4, 2003
Anchalee Kongrut
Kasetsart University is attempting to turn rubbish into cash by pumping methane gas from an old garbage landfill in Nakhon Pathom to produce electricity.
"This project will be the first power plant in the Southeast Asian region that runs on fermented gas from a garbage landfill," said Kanoksak Eam-opas, manager of the project and associate dean for academic, research and international affairs of Kasetsart University 's Kamphang Saen campus in Nakhon Pathom.
The research team is building a 435-kilowatt power plant and gas collecting pipe system on a 10 rai plot of the landfill which closed a few years ago. The landfill is 100 rai in total area and holds 14 million tonnes of garbage. The plant would use only 10% of methane from the field to produce electricity for sale in the next 10 years.
The site was managed by Group 79 Co, a waste disposal company that has been collecting garbage from Bangkok for more than 10 years.
The power plant would start supplying electricity to the national grid system at 2 baht per kilowatt-hour unit by October 2004.
The project is expected to generate income of around 60 million baht over 10 years.
The income would pay for power plant staff and promote the technology for other garbage landfill operators. The rest would be returned to the National Energy Policy Office (Nepo) that in 1995 gave the team 17.8 million baht in research money.
The idea of turning garbage into energy arose in 1995 when His Majesty the King presided over the opening of the annual Kaset Fair that year and saw a model of the technology on display.
"I remember His Majesty the King saying this project was good and could produce electricity. So we started it right away," Mr. Kanoksak said.
Aside from generating electricity, the larger benefit was to reduce methane gas, a greenhouse gas that causes global warming.
Back to Newsclippings | To top
|
