Sludge Watch ==> NC -Expensive Sludge Cooker - pay for pellet drying instead of trucking!

[Maureen Reilly]

Sludgewatch Admin:

Problems with the math on this story.
They say there are economies for drying sludge into expensive little pellets
and hauling the pellets to forests for $400,000 in hauling fees per year,
undisclosed costs for fuel for the dryer,  $30 million for the pelletizer 
construction (operation costs?  fire insurance?)
and then another $43,000 for consultants to find a market for the little 
spontaneous combustion fire hazard pellets.

Looks like its out of the sludge pan into the dryer fire for this utility.
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http://www.journalnow.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WSJ%2FMGArticle%2FWSJ_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1149191776722&path=!localnews&s=1037645509099

Sunday, November 19, 2006
Helpful sewage recipe sought from sludge cooker
Utilities commission to shrink its waste, save money, make fertilizer and 
spare the landfills


By Bertrand M. Gutierrez and Jim Sparks
JOURNAL REPORTERS


Every day, nearly 34 millions gallons of wastewater flow down drains and 
into Forsyth County's two treatment plants - a massive, underground 
wastewater network.
The end product, once purged of toxins at the plants, is a cake-like form of 
sludge called a Class B biosolid. About 47,500 tons of this sludge are made 
each year. Much of it is hauled to adjacent counties and used as fertilizer 
on farmland.
But with farmland being turned into subdivisions and industrial parks, 
utility officials are running out of ways to dispose of the sludge. About 
1,300 tons of it had to be dumped in landfills last year, a disposal method 
that is costly for both the environment and the taxpayer.
As a result, utility officials have approved a $31 million project to reduce 
the amount of waste product and make it safer - and easier - to get rid of. 
The new end product, tiny fertilizer pellets, could wind up on nearby tree 
farms, with citrus growers in Florida, or on the shelves of local hardware 
store and, eventually, in your garden.
"This is a nutrient source that should be returned to the Earth," said Ron 
Hargrove, the deputy director of the City-County Utilities Division.
The City-County Utility Commission has approved the financing to build an 
extremely high-temperature waste dryer on the grounds of the Archie Elledge 
Wastewater Treatment Plant on Griffith Road.
The dryer will cook and dry the sludge into tiny pellets. Unlike the Class B 
waste product, the pellet will be safe enough to till into any farm field, 
spread around fruit trees or add to the garden.
The dryer plant comes with a large price tag, but its advantages for the 
environment and the treasury have prompted utility officials in North 
Carolina and other parts of the country to consider this increasingly 
popular technology, industry experts said.
The dryer will produce a biosolid pellet that is 95 percent smaller in 
volume than the Class B biosolid that is produced now, and it will be safe 
enough to use on farmland that grows food for the dinner table. Other 
advantages include lower hauling, processing and landfill costs.
The drying process has long been done in some parts of the country, but 
Winston-Salem's plant will be only the third of its kind in North Carolina.
Officials expect it to be ready by March 2008 and to last for 30 years. 
There's a concrete pad on the ground now. A manufactured building to cover 
the operation will be arriving over the fall and winter
Forest City had the first sludge dryer in the state.
Its operation, however, is much smaller than both Cary's and what 
Winston-Salem's will be, Hargrove said. Adams Robinson Construction Co. in 
Dayton, Ohio, is the contractor for the project. The company built Cary's 
waste-drying plant, which started operation earlier this year.
Cary is going to avoid a lot of painful decisions by using a dryer plant, 
said Rob Bonne, the town's utilities director. In his 29 years as a utility 
official, he said, this is one of the best projects he has seen.
Because Cary converted to the drying process, the town avoided spending $6 
million to $8 million on more wastewater-treatment equipment; it will not 
have to pay to dump sludge in a landfill; and it will save $800,000 annually 
in sludge-hauling expenses.
It recoups a little money, about $9,000 a year, by selling its pellets to a 
Virginia-based timber company, which spreads the material on its woodlands.
In addition, Cary has cut its hauling costs from more than $1.2 million a 
year to less than $400,000. Each year, it was hauling 4,300 tractor-trailer 
truckloads of sludge to farms as far as 70 miles away.
"The distances we were having to haul were getting ridiculous and they were 
only going to get worse," Bonne said. "All the farms around here are raising 
condominiums."
In 1984, Forsyth and adjacent counties had 13,000 acres of farmland on which 
utility officials could spread sludge. Today, 3,200 acres remain - not 
enough to handle the waste product that comes out of the two treatment 
plants.
Utility officials have paid HDR Engineering Inc. of the Carolinas $42,394 to 
develop a plan to find customers for the pellet product that will be made. 
Customers could include companies that blend fertilizer and do business with 
local stores, officials said.
But officials stressed that the biggest advantage of the pellets is the cost 
savings.
"Our interest is in pelletizing it to get it out of the plant," Hargrove 
said. "It's not meant to create a revenue stream. It's not a get-rich 
product."
There are three other disposal methods for sewage sludge. Greensboro, for 
example, incinerates its waste product by burning it. The incineration 
method produces the least amount of byproduct, but it also creates concerns 
about air pollution, a longtime problem for Forsyth County.
The utilities division also could use composting or a process called lime 
stabilization, but Hargrove said that those two methods actually increase 
the amount of waste product. And composting creates a strong odor.
The drying plant cooks away most of the sludge in an 800-degree furnace, 
producing far fewer pellets at the end of the process than sludge at the 
beginning, Hargrove said. That will make it easier and cheaper to get rid 
of.
One truck will replace the five trucks now hauling biowaste to farms. During 
the 2005-06 fiscal year, utility officials paid $650,000 to haul and spread 
about 39,000 tons of sludge. They spent another $260,000 to dump 8,500 tons 
in landfills.
Methane gas captured in the wastewater treatment process will provide about 
half of the fuel needed to heat the material. Natural gas will be bought to 
supply the rest.
Hargrove said he believes that it will cost much less than the current $1.7 
million a year in total disposal expenses. That doesn't count the intangible 
benefits of recycling the material and saving landfill space.
"It's to avoid taking it to the landfill," Hargrove said. "The fewer 
landfills you have to build the less headaches all around."