Burn Trash — Get Energy!

An incinerator, perfectly preserved for our exploration.

 

I will begin at the place where the trash was transported in.

Trucks drove up the first ramp into the building, emptied the tanks, and left for more garbage via the second ramp. Here the trash is separated from the street only by a sliding door. Even several years after the closure and the clearing of most of the trash from the dumpster, the stench remains.

With such claws, the operator would pick up a bunch of garbage and throw it into one of the three hoppers, from which the garbage was fed to the boilers.

Let's move on to the boiler room. The photo shows the pipes around the boiler. The steam pressure in them, by the way, is ridiculous by the standards of the CHPP: the capacity is not the same. On the other hand, you can't get much energy from garbage, even if you burn it in a stream of natural gas. From the bottom of the boiler, there is a pipe with a square cross-section, which directs the flow of combustion products to the absorber (a large cylindrical thing on the right in the photo).

The combustion products from the absorber were sent to the bag filters and electrostatic precipitators. Here they are, looking like cubes covered with profiled sheets.

We go upstairs as the sun begins to hide behind the tops of the houses.

Let's take a closer look at the absorbers.

There are quite a few toxic substances among the products of burning garbage. But no matter how hysterical environmentalists are, emissions from incinerators (especially those that have undergone modernization) are not harmful to nature in any way other than carbon dioxide. Why? Because of the multistage combustion products (CP) cleaning system.

The cylindrical absorber. Here the CP were mixed with lime milk and activated carbon, which absorbed most of the toxic substances. The rest of them were absorbed by a cocktail with tricky organics in the next stages.

Large and small particles like ash, absorbent, and other solid CP were caught on the grids, bag filters, and electrostatic precipitators.

A couple more shots of the upper site and we're going down.

Dusk.

Conveyors for ash and non-combustible waste can be seen.

The ash repository. Here it was stored and then sent for dumping. All surfaces were covered with a thick layer of ash. Luckily I had a respirator with me.

Let's go back to the unloading area. Here's the manipulator operator's working place. Despite the monitor being connected, the manipulators are not working, and it's impossible to pull a huge toy out of a heap of trash :)

In the office part of the building, there are many other rooms but I didn't take photos of them. Instead of it we decided to rest for an hour or two in the comfortable operators' chairs and continue photographing at dawn.

Turbines! Here they are.

Compared to conventional cogeneration plants, their size is very small. I haven't looked at how many MW they are, but something tells me it's about 1 MW. For comparison, at modern cogeneration plants, there are 50-100 MW turbines.

Underneath the turbines are other machines with specific names familiar to specialists.

Why do people like power plants? It's warm here.

Let's go to the control panel for the turbine generators.

It's very steady, the lights can be turned on, but there is a significant layer of dust on the table.

Let's hope this incinerator won't meet the fate of a typical abandonment. There is a big chance of putting it back into operation.

Until we meet again!