Rubbish: now that’s an elephant of a problem …

Isam Janajreh

• Last Updated: November 03. 2009 8:07PM UAE / November 3. 2009 4:07PM GMT

Abu Dhabi is fostering the growth of a “new economy” anchored in researching, developing and implementing alternative energy and sustainable technologies. Despite progress in this field, efficient disposal of waste remains a serious challenge – and one that is being addressed with vigour by the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology.

The emirate produced nearly six million tonnes of waste in 2007-08: or, looking at it another way, about 3.7 tonnes per person – the weight of an adult Asian elephant. When you consider how you might accommodate more than 1.6 million Asian elephants every year in Abu Dhabi, the scale of the problem becomes apparent.

Historically, the emirate’s municipal services disposed of waste in a way that was both inefficient and unfriendly to the environment. The number of landfills scattered around is testament to this approach, which is clearly unsustainable on several levels.

Waste threatens the UAE’s ecological footprint from its associated gas emissions and heavy-metal groundwater leaching. The ideal solution is one that not only results in the environmentally appropriate disposal of waste, but also finds new ways to benefit from what was previously just discarded.

This is where Masdar Institute comes in. Technology that converts the chemical energy stored in these waste streams into fuel and electricity in an environmentally sound way is the focus of the research being conducted by a team under my supervision at Masdar Institute’s mechanical engineering programme.

Masdar Institute was established by the Government of Abu Dhabi with the support and collaboration of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the top five universities in America. It is the first graduate institution in the Middle East aimed at the research and development of alternative energy and sustainability technologies.

Masdar Institute is part of the Abu Dhabi Government’s wider commitment to diversify its economy away from reliance on hydrocarbons. Masdar City, as most people know by now, is intended to be the world’s first zero-waste, carbon-neutral city, offsetting generated carbon dioxide using sustainable and renewable energy resources. Of these resources, waste is expected to contribute between 7 and 10 per cent to the carbon-offset programme by reusing, recycling, and deploying waste-to-energy conversion technologies.

Waste is a growing economic problem throughout the world. The old practice of incineration is losing ground even in developing societies. Fortunately, waste-to-energy technologies are being practised in many countries in addition to the traditional “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” strategy when it comes to waste management.

Until recently, in this part of the world waste was considered useless. In fact, many types of waste – such as municipal and industrial waste, refinery by-products and certain types of biomass – contain considerable quantities of stored chemical energy. The problem is how to harness it. Masdar Institute believes that thermochemical pathways – processes that use high-temperature conversion to turn the chemical energy found in waste into a cleaner and easily accessible energy form, such as electricity – might be a solution.

We have been able to show the added value of different waste streams in our laboratory at Masdar Institute, and are now at the stage where we are ready to take it to the next level: a demonstration plant. Our analysis revealed that synthetic gas produced by the waste we tested, in this case old tyres, had the energy content of high-quality coal.

We have been conducting this research for a year now in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and we plan to establish world-class expertise in the field of waste-to-energy, with a special focus on technologies that are compatible with the economic and demographic profile of Abu Dhabi.

The Masdar Institute research group consists of four graduate students: Ilham Talab, Rana Qudaih, Zaki al Nahari and Husam al Kuran. They have been closely involved in the research project, and have played an important role in preparing the Institute to take it to the demonstration level.

Our group has been successfully engaged with local waste management facilities such as the Centre of Waste Management in Abu Dhabi, the consultants Snowy Mountains Engineering Corporation, Creative Power Solutions and Takreer refineries. We are also considering potential collaborations that will lead eventually to local technology deployment.

The research group is also playing an important role in a Masdar City waste management study by studying and identifying combustible waste streams resulting from the city’s construction. In addition, the laboratory being set up by Masdar Institute will establish guidelines for any proposed large-scale deployment of waste-to-energy technology in Abu Dhabi.

We are confident that changes can be made, thanks to the ground-breaking research we are doing. We do not claim to have solved the problem of waste management and control – but we believe we can be part of the solution.

Dr Isam Janajreh is the Masdar Institute’s principal investigator in thermochemical pathways for renewable energy and fuels from waste