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Organic Waste Treatment Facilities
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Objectives
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The OWTF aims to treat and recycle source-separated organic waste generated from the C&I sectors (mostly food waste) to useful products, thereby minimizing requirement for landfill disposal.
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Pilot Plant
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As Hong Kong has little experience in treating sizable amount of source-separated food waste by biological technologies, a Pilot Plant was developed at the Kowloon Bay Waste Recycling Centre in mid 2008 to provide experience and information for the planning of future organic waste treatment facilities.
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The Pilot Plant consists of two separate in-vessel composting units of a total treatment capacity of about 4 tonnes of food waste per day. After commissioning, the Pilot Plant first treated the food waste generated at the Olympic and Paralympic Equestrian Event venues in August and September 2008. After that, a trial operation for the recycling of source-separated food waste generated from selected commercial and industrial sectors would commence. These sectors would include restaurants, hotels, wholesale markets and generators of the catering, food production, bakery and bean curd industries.
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The Pilot Plant trial operation would generate information and experience on the collection of source-separated food waste, the treatment of organic waste as well as the market response to the recycled products. The information would be very useful for the planning and design of the OWTF developments.
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| Technology |
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The OWTF would adopt biological technologies such as composting and anaerobic digestion to stablize the organic waste and turn it to useful products such as compost or biogas for energy recovery.
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Benefit
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The OWTF will be developed in two phase, each phase would treat 200 tonnes of organic waste (mostly food waste) for the production of biogas and some 20 tones of compost every day. The biogas produced in each phase of the OWTF could be used as renewable energy for the supply of some 9 GWhr of electricity to other users annually or to 2,000 households in Hong Kong, thereby contributing to reduction of Green House Gas emission via reduction in use of fossil fuel for electricity generation. In addition, each phase of the OWTF would avoid landfilling of about 190 tones of waste every day, hence contribute to extending the useful life of landfills in Hong Kong.
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| Way Forward |
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A site search to locate suitable sites for the OWTF was completed. The proposed sites for the first phase and second phase of the OWTF are located at Siu Ho Wan of North Lantau and Shaling at North District respectively.
EPD is now carrying out engineering feasibility and EIA studies for developing the first phase of OWTF at Siu Ho Wan. The EIA study would be completed in 2009. Following tendering and construction, it is expected that the first phase OWTF would be commissioned before the middle of the 2010’s. |
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