Yesterday, I got yet another amazing opportunity to leave the office and learn something completely new. The Ambassador and I embarked on a trip to Iru Power Plant to tour the brand new Waste to Energy facility, which is in its first year of operation. This addition to the plant incinerates about 220,000 tons of Estonian waste annually, eliminating the need for landfills and providing all of Tallinn and the neighboring Maarda municipality with thermal energy.
Now, I have traveled to parts of the world on numerous occasions where I have seen my fair share of trash on fire, but nothing would prepare me for the scope of the operations here, especially the fact that it is environmentally friendly.
About 80 garbage trucks arrive at the Iru facility daily, bringing with them 700 tons of garbage. The trucks go through radiation detection and a weight bridge before dumping the garbage in the tipping hall. From there, the trash is moved to the waste bunker where it is picked up by cranes, a large scale version of a claw machine but instead of grabbing a toy, these engineers are grabbing a ton of trash and depositing it into the boiler. In the boiler, the trash is heated to 1200 degrees Celsius. The plant can incinerate 27.5 tons of trash per hour. The heat released from waste combustion produces overheated steam which is then guided to a steam turbine to produce electricity. The leftover heat is guided to the district heating network through heat exchanges. After this, the flue gases are cleaned using a semi-dry cleaning process and an environmental impact assessment has shown that the WtE unit to have no impact on the pollution level in the vicinity of the power plant.
After walking through this huge factory and seeing some really interesting sites (like 20 tons of garbage on fire!), we walked to the chimney. The chimney is a 200m tall tower which stores energy, and the day was sunny and perfect so we got a chance to hop in the Willy Wonka style elevator and ride to the top! We saw amazing views of Tallinn and learned about the 60m cooling tower we saw below us, though it looked tiny from our vantage point.
This new addition to the plant completely changes the waste management system in Estonia, as there is no longer a need to put trash into landfills; instead it is being used to provide people with heat and electricity. There are some metals that don’t burn, and those are also reused as they get sold off to a company that deals in scrap metal. Estonia produces about 500,000 tons of waste annually, but after half of that gets sorted for recycling, the Iru power plant deals with the leftover miscellaneous garbage.
After a great afternoon in the factory, I can conclude that the Iru Waste to Energy unit is a new solution for Estonia, both in terms of energy production and waste handling, as well as being an important environmental project. It is great to see the people of Estonia exploring alternative energy sources so they can save precious nonrenewable resources.
Post and photos by Public Affairs Intern Aalia Udawala
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