New Horizons
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
By John Trotti
Maybe it’s that I’ve been looking in other directions, but I find myself stunned by the amount of change that has burst forth in the past several months in an industry more noted for its conservative approach to business than as a hotbed of innovation.
My realization that 2011 was going to be a very interesting year was fired up by the emerging acceptance of non-recyclable organics—particularly green waste—with management technologies running the gamut from composting to advanced bioenergy practices. Interestingly, it has been financing assistance by the US Department of Energy that has at long last attracted the attention of the investment community.
But my real wakeup call came on April 20th when Waste Management, Inc. (WMI) announced that it had entered into an agreement with AbTech Industries in which WMI will provide the latter’s SmartSponge to its customers, including municipalities.
SmartSponge is a sponge-like material with polymers to filter, absorb, and solidify petroleum hydrocarbons. It also removes other pollutants found in runoff from roads and other paved surfaces during wet weather, cleaning, or through direct spills. Simply put, WMI is adding stormwater management—now recognized by EPA as the number-one source of water pollution—to its laundry list of municipal services.
Dealing with non-point source pollution, however, is a far more daunting task, not only a result of the size and scope of the issues involved, but because of the wide variation in regulatory and permitting requirements throughout the country. One of the key benefits that WMI’s involvement brings to stormwater management is a consistency in how communities are able to reach their diversion, regulatory, and sustainability goals.
According to John Pistono, WMI’s vice president of public sector solutions, “We are working on a total stormwater quality management strategy that could comprise multiple services, from curbside collection to street sweeping to the installation and maintenance of stormwater systems and more. Because we are often entrenched and ‘omnipresent’ in the communities we serve; this is a natural evolution for us.”
An interesting aspect of the technology involved is its disposal. SmartSponge, once used—perhaps installed in a drainage filter through which stormwater runoff flows—is a solid “brick” that possesses some energy value. Although it can be disposed of in a landfill as ordinary municipal solid waste, it can also be burned to create energy in a waste-to-energy facility.
As AbTech’s VP of Corporate Development, Gordon Brown, explains, “The material has a tremendous porosity; it flows high volumes of water and collects the hydrocarbons and turns them into a solid, so that they cannot be washed off or squeezed back out. Depending on how much sediment and other components are in it, about 320 pounds of SmartSponge can create a megawatt of power.
“Few people have thought about harvesting hydrocarbons out of stormwater to be able to use it as fuel, whether in waste-to-energy facilities, cement kilns, asphalt plants, or those types of areas. You’re actually harvesting energy out of stormwater and using it as a fuel.”
The services will be offered first in parts of Florida, North and South Carolina, and eastern Canada. How quickly they move to other areas, Pistono says, depends somewhat on the receptivity of the municipalities that make use of the services first, but he expects that states bordering the ocean will be likely candidates in the near future.
Just how this will be received remains to be seen, but given the costs involved in developing and managing highly challenging and evermore restrictive stormwater management programs, the WMI/AbTech initiative appears to us to present an appealing option for many communities throughout North America.
Author's Bio: John Trotti is the Group Editor for Forester Media. |
Advertisement]