Orlando, FL Considers Breakthrough Sewage-to-Energy Facility

Date: May 9, 2011

Source: News Room

A Florida-based company is proposing to build a first-of-its-kind commercial scale sludge-to-energy facility in Orlando, Florida under a novel revenue sharing agreement with the city. The company, called SuperWater Solutions (Wellington, FL), has built a pilot plant that employs "supercritical water oxidation" to treat wastewater plant sludge to create heat along with higher value byproducts, including inorganic salts, clean water, and liquid carbon dioxide. The plant takes sludge which is thickened, fed through a grinder and then pumped through a reactor where it is mixed with pure oxygen and heated to more than 700 degrees under high pressure. There it forms "supercritical water" which destroys more than 99 percent of organic matter and produces heat which can be captured or converted to electricity. Proponents of the process claim that the sludge contains about the same energy value of coal, although the plant cannibalizes about half of that energy to operate, the remainder of which can then be sold to a utility at a "green energy" premium. SuperWater Solutions said it is ready to build a commercial scale facility and has struck a deal with the City of Orlando pay them a royalty if the company builds plants elsewhere.

To learn more about SuperWater Solutions, visit: www.superwatersolutions.com.

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