**Risk Analysis of the Waste to Energy Pyrolysis Facility Designs for City of Konin, in Poland, Using SimLab® Toolpack**

Boguslaw Bieda *AGH University of Science and Technology, Management Department, Kraków, Poland* 

#### **1. Introduction**

The term "*thermal treatment*" is used to describe a range of technologies that use heat to degrade the constitution of solid matter. These includes incineration and its variations, as well as advanced thermal conversion (ATC) technologies such as pyrolysis and gasification (Everard, 2004).

To ensure sustainable development in waste management, faster development and uptake of new technology is necessary. Landfills pollute the valuable underground water, incinerations emit dioxin and produce toxic ash. The solution is Integrated Waste Management, which uses all available resources for dealing with the waste problem. Novel processes utilizing pyrolysis and gasification have attracted publicity as a potential alternative to incineration. The main advantage that gasification has over incineration is its ability to conserve the chemical energy of the waste in the produced syngas rather than convert it to heat energy in hot flue gases. Therefore, gasification has greater flexibility in the recovery of energy and chemical value from waste stream (Klein et al., 2004). Gasification is by no means a novel process; in the 19th century so-called: "*town-gas*" was produced by gasification of coal and for example used for illumination purposes (Astrup & Bilitewski, 2010). Gasification (and combinations of pyrolysis plus gasification) processes are being developed in a number of countries. In Europe, there continues to be a strong desire to avoid incineration and reduce the amount of waste going to landfill in order to meet the EU landfill Directives. In the USA, low disposal costs and plenty of landfill availability in most regions have proved a significant barrier to the construction of any new thermal treatment facilities. Incinerations also increase the amount of CO2 in the carbon cycle because the have to burn fuel together with the wastes. The governments of most countries have signed a treaty to limit CO2 emissions at their 1999 levels. In Canada, a number of waste management projects are being planned based on the waste incineration technology. In Japan all leading thermal process companies now offer gasification solutions alongside incineration with financial support from the Japanese Government.

For many people, thermal treatment technologies for waste management represent an image of hell on Earth (Everard, 2004).

Risk Analysis of the Waste to Energy Pyrolysis Facility Designs for City of Konin, in Poland, Using SimLab®

mean that incineration would no longer be necessary.

at the nearly 11,000 MWth gas-to-liquid.

**3. Description of case study** 

Tadeusiewicz, 2008).

al, 2004).

Waste Management.

Some technologies, including gasification and pyrolysis, offers flexibility in terms of energy production and material recycling, and is an attractive technology option for Integrated

The main advantage that gasification has over incineration is its ability to conserve the chemical energy of waste in the produced syngas rather than convert it to heat energy in hot flue gas. Another reason for interest in gasification is the view by political decision-makers (especially in the UK) that gasification is an alternative to incineration, because which would

The United States Department of Energy (DOE) sponsored the 2004 World Gasification Survey in order to accurately describe the world gasification industry as it exists today, to identify planned capacity additions, and to keep the gasification community apprised of

An additional 38 plants with 66 gasifiers have been announced and are forecast to become operational between 2005 and 2010, according to the 2004 survey. The additional capacity from these new plants is 25,282 MWth, an expected increase of 56%. Worldwide capacity by

 Regional distribution: The Africa/Middle East region will lead the world's regional growth with 43% of planned capacity growth from 2005 to 2010, all from a single gas-toliquids (GTL) project in Qatar that will produce liquid fuels from natural gas. The Asia/Australia region has planned projects that comprise 37% of the total planned growth, with China leading in this region. By contrast, plans for new gasification plants slowed in North America due to factors such as the economy and natural gas prices. Feedstock distribution: Coal is the feedstock of choice for new gasification projects, identified for 29 of the 38 new plants (largely on the strength of the 24 chemical plants to be built in China). However, natural gas will be used in the largest single project from 2005 to 2010

Solid waste management is developing into a complex task. New or modified treatment technologies are appearing. During the past two decades, thermal wastes management followed heavily disparate trends. In the 1980s, the focus was on new market players, and then in the 1990s on new technologies, especially pyrolysis and melting processes (Bieda &

Novel processes utilizing pyrolysis and gasification have attracted publicity as a potential alternative to incineration. Such systems offer some benefits in terms of recycling and public acceptance. However, because they are new, they are less proven in operation than conventional technologies-and may therefore be more risky. The main advantage that gasification has over incineration is its ability to conserve the chemical energy of the waste in the produced syngas rather than convert it to heat energy in hot flue gas (Klein et

The new Polish environmental strategy emphasizes the principle of sustainable development and it encourages the government of Konin to develop a waste management

current data and trends (National Energy Technology Laboratory [NETL], (2005).

2010 is projected at 70,283 MWth of syngas output from 155 plants and 451 gasifiers.

Toolpack 247

The main potential benefits and advantages of pyrolysis and gasification of waste with respect to incineration are (Juniper, 2001; Klein et al., 2002; Malkow, 2004 as cited in Astrup & Bilitewski, 2010):


The main drawback of the current technology for pyrolysis and gasification are:

