Plastic to fuel facility to operate Nov. 22

CEBU, Philippines -  The P14 million “plastic to fuel” facility to be set up at the motor pool area of the Inayawan Sanitary Landfill will be fully operational on November 22.

Solid Waste Management Board chairman Jade Ponce disclosed that an intermediate waste plastics processing facility donated by Yokohama-based Mansei Recyvle Systems Co. Ltd, which arrived in Cebu Monday, will have a test run tentatively this weekend.

The tons of accumulated wastes deposited on the Inayawan Sanitary Landfill will be converted to “fluff plastic fuels” to be primarily sold at P1 or 50¢ per kilo to local cement manufacturers or paper mill companies. The final rate, though, will still be deliberated by the members of the SWMB.

The equipment, Ponce said, will gradually address the accumulated garbage in the “old” landfill, which was built and funded in 1998 by the Japan International Cooperation Agency amounting to P209 million.

The landfill was designed to last only for seven years which means it was supposed to close in 2005. It occupies 15.41 hectares but only about 11 hectares is used for actual dumping.

“The landfill has to be addressed. It has been there for the longest time. For the longest time we have been looking for solutions. This should be gone because its presence would affect the marketability of the South Road Properties,” he said.

The wastes from landfill will be recycled and become an alternative fuel to fossil fuels. With this, the city government will benefit from selling the plastic fuel to the local cement manufacturers in the Province of Cebu as an alternative to coal and other traditional fuel.

Based on the Mansei website, the plastic wastes will be processed and treated from primary shreddering pretreatment, to synthetic plastic removal devices [dispose as a blast furnance reductant], magnetic separator, secondary shreddering, volumetic feeder and compress packing machine, producing fluff plastic fuel.

The facility according to Yasuhiro Yamaguchi, Mansei advisor in Carbon Free Consulting Corporation, is capable of recycling plastic waste at Inayawan sanitary landfill into plastic fluff fuel and can process at least 50 tons of waste in eight hours, producing around five tons of plastic fuel. — (FREEMAN)