Companies Convert Chemical Waste into Fuel

Chemical distributor Univar has shipped its 100 millionth gallon of fuel-quality waste for reuse from its waste chemical business, ChemCare, to Systech Environmental, a provider of byproduct co-processing services in North America.

ChemCare, Univar’s waste management and disposal service, ships fuel-quality waste to Systech to fuel kilns in its cement processing plants. Since the partnership began in 1989, the cumulative shipment of 100 million gallons of waste has produced the fuel equivalent of 400,000 tons of coal. By converting otherwise unusable chemical byproduct for fuel in cement kilns, ChemCare and Systech have saved the mining and use of roughly 20,000 truckloads of coal, and produced 1.7 million tons of cement with the fuel-quality waste.

A subsidiary of cement manufacturer Lafarge, Systech Environmental primarily reuses waste byproducts by recovering energy or mineral content during the cement manufacturing process. Co-processing allows industries to divert otherwise unusable waste to be used in place of fossil fuels to fire cement kilns in processing plants.

In other waste-to-energy initiatives, MPM Technologies subsidiary Carbon Cycle Power has signed a memorandum of understanding with machining and manufacturing company Wheeler Industries to build CCP’s waste-to-value technology. The patent-pending photon-induced plasma arc gasification technology will process biomass, such as lumber mill waste and agricultural residue, and municipal solid waste for the cogeneration of heat and power.