Public Funding for Paperback Collection and Recycling Limited

The UK Energy from Waste (EfW) market is under developed & lags behind the EU. Inefficient mass burning plants, high gate fees & low quality, inconsistent feedstock make the market unattractive to waste fuel suppliers & investors, meaning most of the UK's waste resources are exported to Europe or landfilled. Advanced Thermal Treatment techs eg. gasification, & high quality waste fuels are key to stabilising the output of EfW. Paperback Collection & Recycling (PCR), Refgas & the School of Engineering at Glasgow University, seek to develop a unique variety of briquette fuel recipes consisting of C&I & Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) streams, & test these in a modified 0.5MW gasification plant to provide a unique scalable, flexible & affordable integrated EfW solution to the marketplace. The waste fuel will increase the no. of gasification feedstocks, improve their consistency & quality, & divert significant amounts of waste from landfill. The plant will use proprietary Refgas technology, PCR will develop briquetting & shredding techniques to process the waste into a form that can be used in gasifiers, making gasification EfW commercially viable & opening the market.

Solid recovered fuels (SRF) are an alternative fuel derived mainly from C&I wastes. They are an effective solution to reducing landfilled waste & generating energy, two major UK government priorities. The UK currently sends ~60% of its waste to landfill but due to new EU regulations more must be done to increase reuse, recycling & recovery or the UK could face annual fines of £182.M pa. The UK is facing numerous challenges in developing secure and sustainable energy with volatile gas & oil prices, aging nuclear capacity & rising demand, at a time when the UK must reduce CO2 emissions & adopt renewable energy. Energy from waste (EfW) can overcome these challenges & deliver up to 20% of the UKs Energy needs. Current SRFs are low value (>20MJ/kg), inconsistent (fluctuating emissions & energy output) & low density. The EfW infrastructure in the UK requires better SRFs to remain profitable, reduce operational costs of emissions & plant shutdowns & exploit the benefits of producing EfW such as a large supply (~26Mtonnes of potential SRF available UK) & contribution to renewable energy targets (20% by 2020). Paperback Collection & Recycling(PCR) aim to develop a novel, high value, consistent & energy dense SRF that will deliver a valuable fuel to the EfW market. PCR will develop both a suite of novel, market desired prototype SRFs & a licensable processing methodology for the target market which consists of Mid-level EfW facilities and materials recovery facilities. The results will enable the target market to provide stable, renewable energy which can contribute to lower emissions & decentralisation. PCR’s novel SRFs & process methodology will be developed over an 18month development of prototype project & will enter the waste treatment market (worth ~£1.68bn) in February 2016. The project will contribute to revolutionising SRFs from a waste treatment method to a commoditised fuel comparable to coal(calorific value >20MJ/kg with 1/3 less Co2 emissions).