Waste-to-energy

Fiberight WTE facility on track for April opening

Fiberight, Catonsville, Maryland, will start processing single-sort recyclables (SSRs) and municipal solid waste (MSW) at its new advanced recycling facility in Hampden, Maine, by April.

According to Fiberight, the $70 million, 144,000-square-foot waste-to-energy (WTE) facility is expected to recover 80 percent of waste collected from 115 municipalities into renewable energy. Materials will be broken down and converted into biofuel through a pulping process and anaerobic digestion.

Coastal Resources of Maine LLC, the project company formed by Fiberight to own and operate the Hampden facility, recently released a plan for the months leading up to full commercial operations of the plant. The plan includes the following stages:

• A utilities turnover as well as a pre-commissioning phase, when systems providing utility services to the facility will be completed and ready to perform. The truck scale, odor control and other essential supporting systems will be ready to enter service, and the facility will acquire an interim occupancy permit.
• The commissioning of the material recovery facility (MRF), which will involve testing the front-end recycling equipment provided by CP Manufacturing, San Diego, in two phases: without feeding materials, and then with SSRs and MSW feeding materials. Feed rates will be on a start/stop basis initially and will gradually become more stable. The plastics briquetter will also be commissioned and tested.
• The commissioning of the wet end, including pulping and washing equipment, operation of the fines processing unit and low-level wastewater treatment and biogas production. The goal will be to achieve stable steady-state operation and at least 50 percent diversion of incoming MSW. For the purposes of the lease, the commercial operation will commence when the facility demonstrates its ability to divert 50 percent of incoming MSW over a three-day test period, even with the anaerobic digester and other systems not yet on-line or operating below full capacity.

Processing will start by April and the anaerobic digestion system, full plant integration and optimization of operations will ramp up through May and June. The plan also identifies specific testing requirements and performance standards for the MRF, the wet end and the facility. The final tests of the facility will involve a seven-day measured performance test and a 28-day period during which performance would be monitored to confirm it can be sustained on an ongoing basis.