GE Supplies Gas Engines for Turkey's Waste-Gas-to-Energy Project

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Turkey has opened one of the world's largest waste-gas-to-energy conversion projects in the two main waste-disposal areas in Istanbul. The project is part of a national initiative to utilize waste gas from landfill waste disposal sites to produce energy and reduce the adverse environmental effects of waste disposal.

The waste gas from the landfill sites will be used to power 23 Jenbacher Landfill Gas Engines, supplied by GE Energy (Atlanta, Georgia), a division of General Electric Company (NYSE:GE) (Fairfield, Connecticut). With nine units already commissioned, the remaining units are scheduled for installation and commissioning by the project completion date of 2010, when the plant will be capable of generating up to 35 megawatts (MW) of electricity. This would meet the electricity needs of more than 100,000 households in Istanbul.

Landfills are the oldest form of waste disposal, but the decomposition of waste material produces large amounts of gas, especially methane, which is approximately 21 times more toxic than carbon dioxide. Methane usually collects underground and sometimes escapes through the covering ground layer. This seepage has been known to cause explosions. Such a mishap occurred in 1993 at the Umraniye Hekimbasi landfill site in Turkey causing 39 deaths, in Loscoe, England, in 1986, and in Skellingsted,Denmark, in 1991.

The landfill sites in Istanbul, located at the Odayeri waste field in the Kemerburgaz district on the European side and in Komurcuoda in the Sile district on the Asian side, have a disposal rate of about 14,000 tons per day and a total capacity of 47 million tons of waste. They have been in operation since 1995 and have been constructed in such a way that the methane gas generated can be safely collected through pipes. At depths of every five meters, waste is covered with 60 centimeters of clay and 50 centimeters of soil to retain the landfill gas, before it is extracted for use by the Jenbacher engines to produce electricity.

The GE Jenbacher engines have been used in more than 1,400 landfill sites across the world for more than 25 years. They were successfully installed in Turkey at a now closed landfill site in Istanbul. The site was closed for waste disposal in 1997 after collecting an estimated 6 million cubic meters of waste, but in 2000 the landfill was fitted with 4 Jenbacher engines, which began to generate 4 MW of electricity using methane collected from the site. To date, the project has consumed more than 30 million cubic meters of landfill gas through 130 gas wells drilled to depths of 25 meters and connected to 15 gas collectors.

Turkey signed the Kyoto Protocol in June 2008 and has been actively supporting protection of the environment since it experienced a severe drought in 2006, followed by the worst flooding in 100 years in October of the same year. The new facilities at the waste landfill sites will reduce carbon-dioxide emissions by an estimated 1 million tons per year during their projected lifespan of 22 years. This is expected to enhance Turkey's chances of joining the European Union.

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