World-Gen May/June 2016 - page 4

WORLD-GENERATION MAY/JUNE 2016
4
Babcock & Wilcox Volund is building
the Amager Bakke waste-to-energy plant
in Copenhagen, Denmark. The 60 mega-
watt flexible plant named Copenhill is
Denmark’s 27
th
W-T-E plant and first ski
slope will be owned by five Danish Munis.
The flex plant can balance 5,070 mws of
wind and 784 mws of solar. First firing will
take place this summer with completion
scheduled for 2017.
The $389 million plant will treat
400,000 tons of waste annually from
700,000 residents and 46,000 businesses
and supply electricity to 62,500 homes and
district heating for 160,000 households.
Steam reaches 440 degrees and 70 bars
doubling the electrical efficiency com-
pared to the former plant. Several thou-
sand new jobs are being created.
Copenhill replaces a 45 year old, 29
mw plant to reduce sulphur emissions by
99.5 percent, an ESP to control particle
emissions and minimize nox emissions
with the first installed SCR in a W-T-E
plant in Denmark. The plant will also
recover 100 million liters of spare water
through flue gas condensation, separate
10,000 tons of metal and reuse 100,000
tons of bottom ash for road material, sav-
ing large amounts of gravel.
World-Gen
spoke with Ole Hedagarrd
Madsen, Director of Technology and
Marketing at B&W Volund in his
Copenhagen office. “It makes sense to sort
out metal, glass, paper and plastic. We
should try to keep the clean materials sep-
arate, reuse everything that we can and
process what’s left by recycling the
resources,” said Madsen. He explains that
they can then also destroy any medicine
remains contained in the waste, as well as
phthalates, bacteria and pesticides, instead
of spreading them on the fields and there-
by sending the unwanted substances into
their food production cycle.
Madsen added: “Under all circum-
stances, we are dependent on fuel for our
combined heat and power (CHP) plants.
But we are no more dependent on waste
than we are on fossil fuels or we will be on
biofuels. Waste just has a number of advan-
tages. It is a local resource that we pro-
duce ourselves. It requires almost no
transportation. We are not clearing any
forests in other countries. We are not
dependent on insecure regimes. We are
destroying chemicals, and it’s cheap fuel.
The quality requirements for water recov-
ered from waste combustion at plants are
more stringent than the requirements for
drinking water.”
In addition to its technological merits,
the plant’s architecture includes a roof-
wide 32,000 m2 ski slope designed by
Danish architect Bjarke Ingels. “It is a
multi-purpose plant that is already catch-
ing the eyes of the world because of its
local appeal. The plant provides energy
and waste treatment and will be an archi-
tectural landmark and a leisure facility,”
Madsen shared. The ski slope will operate
year round with wet snow seasonally and
plastic snow in the summer months. It will
have a glass enclosed elevator to the top
and ski lifts.
Bjarke Ingels is the founder and cre-
ative partner of BIG. Ingals was named
one of the TIME’s 100 most influential
people in April, 2016. BIG has projects
underway globally including 2 World
Trade Center in New York.
This is
World-Gen’s
second feature on
waste-to-energy plants, and both are by
Babcock & Wilcox. (see world-gen.com,
“Featured Articles,” WTE-Renewable Fuel,
2014.)
Ole Hedagarrd Madsen
Director of Technology and Marketing
at B&W Volund
COVER STORY
BRINGYOUR SKIISTO COPENHILL
BY DICK FLANAGAN
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