NEA, NTU to develop S$40m waste-to-energy facility in Tuas

SINGAPORE — Singapore’s first waste-to-energy research facility will be built by late 2018 to test such renewable-energy projects, in a bid to drive the land-scarce Republic closer to zero waste.

The National Environment Agency (NEA) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) signed an agreement at the CleanEnviro Summit on Wednesday (July 13) to jointly fund the development of the S$40-million facility in Tuas over 10 years.

When completed, the facility will have a waste-to-energy plant that will test two main technologies: One is to turn ash into slag, a glass-like by-product that could be used in construction, and the other is to turn waste and biomass into synthetic gas, which could be used to generate electricity.

The facility will also have a laboratory for researchers to test projects with the aim of commercialising them, and to train manpower with technical skills in the waste-to-energy field. The target is to have six projects yearly and train about 12 to 20 civil engineering post-graduate students a year.

Professor Ng Wun Jern, executive director of NTU’s Nanyang Environment & Water Research Institute, said: ”We want to use NTU campus as a source of feed. So we are going to be testing the garbage from campus to the facility... (and) treating about 15 to 20 tonnes of garbage a day.”

This will include food waste and daily domestic waste from the campus, and the energy generated will go back to feeding the plant.

He added: “The objective of collecting the garbage is because we need something to feed the facility. And once the facility is up and running, it becomes a platform for various technology partners to come on board to work with us, to develop new technologies... to test technologies to prepare this for the market.”

Mr Choi Shing Kwok, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Environment and Water Resources, said: “As a nation with very limited land resource and a highly urbanised and densely populated setting, we have to manage our waste sustainably and efficiently. This means that sending our waste to the landfill should be the last option.”

Statistics from NEA show that last year, 21,023 tonnes of waste were generated daily in Singapore. Of that, 38 per cent (or 7,886 tonnes daily) was incinerated, while 2 per cent (or 516 tonnes daily) of non-incinerable waste was disposed of at Semakau Landfill.

In the same year, the overall recycling rate was 61 per cent (or 12,739 tonnes daily). This includes 118 tonnes of metal recovered daily from incineration bottom ash.