Waste-to-Energy Plant:
The Waste-to-Energy (WTE) plant burns our garbage, reducing its volume by 90 percent. This means there is less material to go in the landfill. When the WTE plant burns trash, it makes it into electrical energy and leaves ash behind.
The plant burns garbage, heat from the burning garbage boils water, the water makes steam, and the steam turns a turbine to make electricity. The white “smoke” that comes out of our cooling towers is actually water vapor! Both ferrous (steel) and non-ferrous (aluminum) metals are recovered from the ash by using magnets and eddy currents. The recovered metals are sold to smelters for recycling and the ash is used for landfill cover.
Facts about our WTE plant:
- It can burn 3,000 tons of garbage every day, or almost one million tons per year!
- Burning garbage can produce up to 75 megawatts (MW) per hour of electricity.
- After we use some energy to run the plant itself, we sell about 60 MW of electricity to Duke Energy. This electricity powers around 40,000 homes and businesses every day.
The Pinellas County waste-to-energy plant’s boilers were placed in commercial operation on May 3, 1983. Later that same year, a second bond issue for $83,375,000 was authorized by the Board of County Commissioners to expand the plant. The expansion added a third boiler
and a second stack and second electric turbine generator, which increased the capacity from 2,100 to 3,150 tons per day. The third boiler and second stack were tested and accepted in September 1986. The first steam turbine generator produces 50 megawatts and the second one, 25 megawatts of electricity. The rated capacity of the total facility is 75 megawatts.
Some small towns wanted an incinerator too, but we would not do it for them unless they stopped recycling. All that stuff they were thinking that they were recycling (most of it went into the dump anyway) was good fuel for the incinerator. If they did not have enough trash to burn, the fire in the incinerator would go out and they would have to use fuel oil to keep it going, not a good thing.
