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  Straits Times 13 Jun 07
Coming soon: Electricity from food scraps
Singapore's first food-waste recycling plant opens next month
By Arti Mulchand

Channel NewsAsia 12 Jun 07
Organic waste treatment plant needs better trash sorting

SINGAPORE: Singapore's first organic waste treatment plant is set to be up and running by the end of this year. The plant - the first and largest of its kind in Asia - will turn food waste into power.

But the plant owner, IUT Global, says thus far its power generation capacity has not been the most efficient.

That is because it has been having trouble collecting the right kind of food waste.

Singapore-based IUT Global had hoped that it would make some headway with getting its food waste suppliers to sort out their trash properly since it broke ground at its facility in Tuas nearly two years ago by building an organic waste treatment plant.

"The big challenge is to actually collect what we want. Having a number of people, and even malls like Century Square signing up was not a problem because many of these people want to be seen to be green.

"We've quite a number of hotels as well, including the big hotels like Raffles (Hotel) and Shangri-La. But the current system has food waste all mixed in," says Edwin Khew, CEO, IUT Global.

IUT Global says it needs to collect the purest food or organic waste in order to be effective and profitable. And it remains hopeful that its S$60 million plant can deliver the promise of transforming a quarter of Singapore's food waste into electricity and compost materials.

"We've just started doing the testing and commissioning. Food waste will be coming in and we'll be ramping up, and this will take time. So we're hopeful that we can get the full 300 tonnes to move forward. But more hopeful that we can get the 300 tonnes that we want and not 300 tonnes that's mixed in with other things," says Mr Khew.

Singapore throws away some 1,500 tonnes of food waste on a daily basis. That makes up nearly one-tenth of Singapore's trash, which last year amounted to more than five million tonnes.

If successful, IUT Global's new plant will be able to turn food waste into enough electricity for itself and over 10,000 other industrial facilities. - CNA/yy

Straits Times 13 Jun 07
Coming soon: Electricity from food scraps
Singapore's first food-waste recycling plant opens next month
By Arti Mulchand

IT WILL not be long before leftover scraps from your meal at a foodcourt could be helping to power your home.

Singapore's first plant to recycle food waste kicks into action next month in a 1.8ha plant in Tuas. Belonging to home-grown green technology firm IUT Global, the plant will put food waste through 'bio-methanisation', the process by which food waste is 'digested' by bacteria.

Methane gas, one of the end products of this, can fuel large gas engines and generate electricity, IUT's chief executive Edwin Khew said yesterday. About a third of the digested food waste will become a second end-product - compost - to fertilise fruit and vegetable crops and the trees that will green Singapore.

Mr Khew said the initial stages of 'getting the bacteria to rock and roll' may take a few months.

In the meantime, IUT is training food centres, malls and hotels on the setting aside of food scraps and working out financial incentives to cushion any increase in their operating costs. Bins to hold these scraps are also being distributed to participating establishments islandwide.

By the year end, the $60 million plant will be processing about 300 tonnes of food waste a day, generating three megawatts of power in the process - enough to power about 5,000 households.

The plant itself will use about half a megawatt, and sell the rest to the national power grid. In its second phase, the plant will work through 800 tonnes of food waste daily.

Singapore produces about 1,400 tonnes of food waste a day but only 7 to 9 per cent actually gets recycled.

When the IUT plant goes into its second phase about two to three years from now, Singapore should surge ahead of its 2012 target of getting up to 30 per cent of its food waste recycled, noted Mr Khew.

The plant, believed to be the largest in Asia, will eventually be a model for more such plants in the region.

But even as the plant starts revving up, IUT's wheels have begun turning on getting backing from the National Environment Agency to apply for certification from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The certification will give the company the right to start earning - and trading - carbon credits. If this happens, IUT will become one of the first Singapore-based facilities to earn this right.

These credits, which are financial instruments, can be sold to polluting nations under the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism.

Mr Khew, who also chairs the Sustainable Energy Association of Singapore, was speaking on the sidelines of the opening of Sustainable Energy Week, which is on until Friday.

Senior Parliamentary Secretary for the Environment and Water Resources Amy Khor, who opened the event, outlined the initiatives Singapore has taken to become the region's green investment hub and the factors that will help it become one.

Firms like Conergy, Europe's largest solar company, and Vestas, the world's largest supplier of wind power systems, already have bases here. She said: 'I believe we do have some competitive advantage...and that there will be growth in this sector.' arti@sph.com.sg
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