Palm Beach County Waste-to-Energy Plant Burns 3,000 Tons Daily

Every day, garbage from Palm Beach County homes and businesses has to go somewhere, and some of it skips the landfill. The Palm Beach County waste-to-energy plant, officially Renewable Energy Facility 2, opened in 2015. It can process up to 3,000 tons of trash a day, burning municipal waste and using the heat to make electricity.

Trucks deliver the waste, and large cranes move it into one of three boilers. Each boiler can handle up to 1,000 tons a day, according to the Solid Waste Authority of Palm Beach County. The burning heats water into steam, the steam spins a turbine, and the turbine drives a generator. Babcock & Wilcox, which built the plant, says Renewable Energy Facility 2 can produce up to 95 megawatts of gross electricity. The site also has equipment to control emissions and to recover metals from the ash left behind.

The main payoff is volume. The plant can cut the waste sent to landfills by up to 90%, which matters when a county is handling 3,000 tons of trash a day at full capacity. The electricity is a bonus from material that would otherwise just need disposing of. Note that 95 megawatts is a gross figure, so the power actually sent to the grid will be lower. The Palm Beach County waste-to-energy plant also pulls metals out of the ash, which gives some of the leftover material a second use.

The report mentions no expansion plans or new figures, so there is little to project. What’s worth watching is how the Palm Beach County waste-to-energy plant reports its emissions and landfill savings in the future, and how much metal it recovers.