Power Plant Fueled by Waste Plastic Starts Trial Operation

In the summer of 2002, Sanix Inc., an integrated environmental sanitation company in Japan, started trial operation of a thermal power plant fueled solely by plastic, in the Tomakomai Eastern Industrial Zone in Hokkaido. The company plans to start full operations next year.

Sanix built this plant to take advantage of an amendment of the Electricity Utilities Industry Law that partially deregulated retail sales of electricity in March 2000. The company said this is the first "resource-recycling power plant" to run entirely on fuel from recycled plastic waste. The recycled plastic is supplied by its plastic recycling plants.

The power plant will use approximately 700 tonnes of waste plastic fuel a day and generate about 74,000 kW of electricity. This power will be sold to large-lot users within Hokkaido as provided for under deregulation. Initial investment in the Tomakomai plant is about 10 billion yen (U.S.$81 million), including the land purchase and power plant construction.

According to a survey by the Plastic Waste Management Institute, waste plastic disposal in Japan totaled 9.84 million tonnes in 1998, of which 4.99 million tonnes were from household use and 4.85 million tonnes from industrial sources; most waste plastic was sent to landfills. Sanix considers waste plastic to be a recyclable resource and aims at to use it by recycling it into fuel for power generation.



Posted: 2002/11/30 04:02:04 PM
Japanese version