The Wheelabrator waste-to-energy facility in Baltimore will undergo a major facelift over the coming months in an effort to improve the environment. Built in the 1980s, the facility has produced concerns about emissions. Now, as part of an agreement with the city, the facility’s owner and operator, WIN Waste Innovations, will begin installing state-of-the-art technology. The company is installing new technology to make emissions that come out of the facility some of the lowest in the world. “When it’s complete, we’ll have Baltimore’s waste-to-energy facility be one of the cleanest in the world,” said Mike Dougherty, market manager at WIN Waste Innovations.
The facility keeps more than 700,000 tons of trash a year out of landfills, generates enough electricity to power more than 40,000 homes, provides steam for the city and displaces other fossil fuels. “The energy we’re generating here displaces oil — about 700,000 barrels of oil a year — maybe about the equivalent of about 200,000 tons of coal or maybe the equivalent of about 2.4 million cubic feet of natural gas,” Dougherty said.
The facility consists of three boilers where the trash is burned. Over the next two years, crews will dismantle and outfit them with new emissions technology that is essentially filtered fabric — the old way of using electrostatic waves. “It pulls the emissions through the filtered fabric,” Dougherty said. “Think of a sock. The emissions and the particulate get caught up in the sock, and they’re obviously emptied periodically, and that’s the new technology, what’s enabling us to reduce the emissions.”
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Author: Lowell Melser, WBALTV 11
Image: WBALTV 11