Service key to success of waste-to-energy project: Perkins supplies additional engines for landfill power generation application.

Together with its Belgian partner for electrical power generation projects, E. Van Wingen NV, Perkins Engines has recently supplied an extension to the electrical power generation capacity, at Belgium's largest landfill site.

The installation of six new power generation modules employing 90[degrees] V configuration versions of Perkins' 4000 series engines at the Mont-Saint-Guibert waste site brings the total to 13. Six of the existing seven modules date from a contract supplied in 1996 by Perkins and E. Van Wingen, (EVW), based in Evergem, a suburb of Ghent.

The power generation modules employ the 16-cylinder 4016 TESI spark-ignited gas engines (3.82 L/cyl., bore 160 x stroke 190 mm) built and adapted to landfill gas at Perkins works in Stafford, U.K. Driving Leroy Somer generators, each generator set produces 700 kW at 1500 rpm. Output voltage at the generator terminals is 400 V, which is stepped up to 11 kV for distribution to the Belgian national grid. With a combined output of over 9.5 MW Mont-Saint-Guibert delivers more than 200 million kWh to around 20,000 homes in the area, EVW estimates.

Mont-Saint-Guibert is operated by CETEM, a division of U.K. waste disposal specialists Shanks plc, and receives 300,000 tons of waste annually. The landfill gas produced is filtered and then compressed prior to cleaning, drying and screening so that the proportion of methane in the gas is around 50%. Since February 2003, CETEM reports the site has stopped accepting industrial waste, and the distinction is being made between poor and rich gases. Rich gases will contain more methane and will serve to fuel biogas engines. For the poor gases, Shanks is considering burning them to dry the sludge from wastewater treatment plants and then using the briquettes to fuel another installation that could be capable of generating another 4 MW.

Initially, six 4016 TESI modules were installed in 1996, followed by a seventh module in 2002, bringing the total electrical output of the site to 5 MW. In the same year the original six engines underwent a 35,000 hour major overhaul, on the basis of which EVW and CETEM determined that the engines' life cycle could realistically be extended to 80,000 hours. At the time of writing, the oldest engines had logged over 45,000 operating hours, and are proving to be real workhorses, Perkins and EVW note. The recent engine commissioning is the result of a follow-up order placed by CETEM in 2003.