Waste and Energy

As most of us will remember from our school science classes, E=mc2
What this means is that everything that has mass contains within it a quite extraordinary amount of energy – the trick is only how to harvest it.

In this respect we are witnessing ever more efficient technologies; and elsewhere on this site please read an article from TIME magazine that reports on a great success with a waste to electricity programme in Indonesia.

To provide you a feel of the energy available from waste sources consider the following generally accepted values:
    1) Coal (as a benchmark value): 18600 – 55800 kJ / kg (kilojoules              per kg)
    2) Waste:
        -    Municipal refuse: 10500 – 15100 kJ / kg
        -    Industrial refuse: 15400 – 17000 kJ / kg
        -    Paints and resins: 14000 – 23200 kJ / kg
        -    Spent lubricant: 23000 – 32500 kJ / kg

So, no doubt that waste has a very high energy content and this is reasonably easily extracted via processes such as anaerobic digestion.

Energy is valuable. Waste is convertible to energy.
Logically therefore, waste has value.

At Simbalism we have a vision of combining the energy and commercial value inherent in waste with job creation opportunities associated with collecting, sorting and processing it. The benefits we anticipate to include:

    -    Supplementary and possibly cheaper fuel source for gas powered plants
    -    Environmental clean up via market forces
    -    Job creation
    -    Carbon credit potential
    -    Public relations