Water to wine, feces to fuel.
Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson served up a modern day miracle yesterday as he flipped the switch on North America’s first renewable district heating system – which takes sewage and turns it into heat for 16,000 homes.
The plant, under the Cambie Street Bridge, is operational in time to keep 2,800 athletes warm at the Olympic Village.
“It reflects the steps we are taking to make Vancouver the greenest city on the earth,” Robertson said at the opening of the Neighbourhood Energy Utility. “I don’t think it’ll be missed by the international media when they see such a concentration [of green initiatives in the area].”
The federal government spent $9.47 million on the project through the Gas Tax Fund and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities chipped into another $5 million.
The City of Vancouver paid for the rest of the $30 million price tag.
The plant is expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the area by 50 per cent.
Project manager Chris Baber said consultations with community groups prompted the city to adopt the system, after resident pooh-poohed wood chip burning technology.
“I’m very happy with how it turned out,” said South East False Creek resident John McBride. “They really did sit back and work with us.”
Matt Kieltyka reports for Vancouver 24 hours.
Perhaps you could explain
Perhaps you could explain how this project works.
Hmmmm
This must be bad because 1) there is no COPE mayor in Vancouver and 2) no NDP premier in the province, so therefore it must be capitalist/fascist/roader/flunkyism and indicative of class warfare.
Well...
The systems fuel certainly should be "sustainable"
Clerk of the Works
Sewage tends to have absorbed heat from the facilities it drains from, is relatively well insulated in the earth, and tends to flow though the sewers at around 20C picking up heat all the way from the rapid aerobic decomposition occurring in the waste stream. This is a perfect constant-temperature source of heat to run liquid-source heat pumps on, which use a quantity of electricity to run reversible refrigeration compressors to either draw the heat out of the water (thus cooling it to around 10C) or to reject heat into the water during cooling season. With optimal heat rejection temperatures of 80C and optimal refrigerant-evaporation temperatures of near 0C, there's plenty of delta-T for good heat transfer to occur.
Liquid source heat pumps can be more efficient that air-cooled heat pumps,and can have coefficients of performance of up to 7:1 - that is for every unit of electricity put into running the equipment, up to 7 units of heating or cooling can be taken out. They can also be run on fuels to provide for compression, though that is usually not as efficient.
The problem with these units is the relatively rapid fouling of heat transfer surfaces from the sewage. It's planned for, of course, and regular maintenance can keep it at bay, but this is a whole new operation here in Canada - I don't know of another system like this here, and there are qualitative differences in sewage between Europe where the principle was invented and where there are several units running, and here. Among them is the higher quantity of oil pollutants in our sewage from cooking and non-industrial sources which fouls the heat transfer surfaces more rapidly and thoroughly.
There's fuel backup, of course - sometimes it's too cold in Vancouver to operate reversible compressors at maximum load, and our 5% design temperature is somewhat below that. I think in this plant it's natural gas, having not seen any fuel tanks go into the ground for propane or oil, and the fact that the stacks by the Cambie Bridge have been belching since October....
Lighten up, Wilf
Or doesn't your shit stink? Perhaps your words could be fed into the sewer system instead of darkening the conversation here - at least then, their decomposition would provide some heat for the plant.
After all, your Fairview condo DOES drain into that system, right? Or are you back to being homeless?
zalm
Thanks for the info.
Zalm
Could you direct us to more information? Is this just a simple heat recovery system or does it also collect methane produced by the sewage as a natural gas supplement.
However I doubt that it is the first system nor is nearly as environmentally beneficial as the mayor claims. But still a good idea.
The ground is normally closer to a constant 11 deg C. The inlet would be a better source of cooling on a district system, cold at depth. CCIW in Burlington uses Lake Ontario for cooling and supplemental heating and only took 10 years to get through the bureaucracy.
This is going to smell
This is going to smell really bad. I don't think this is a good heating resource.
Next?
-Bob
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