VietNamNet Bridge - Realizing that waste is a ‘gold mine’ which can be recycled to generate power, one investor has spent tens of millions of dollars to develop projects to turn waste into electricity in HCMC and Tay Ninh and Binh Duong provinces.

Dong Minh Toan, chair and CEO of Binh Phuoc Import/Export Company, has poured VND30 billion into the Hydraulic Machine Company (HMC), a science & technology business specializing in waste treatment. 

The project turns industrial waste at Go Cat dumping ground into power. It has been running smoothly and Toan is satisfied about the investment.

According to Toan, HCMC discharges 8,600 tons of domestic waste a day, 1,500 tons of industrial waste and 400 tons of medical waste, all ideal materials to earn money from projects on generating electricity from waste.

One kwh of electricity generated can be sold to EVN at VND2,200. He can also get money from the industrial waste treatment paid by the owners of the waste sources.

“I am planning to invest $40 million more in the project to increase the capacity at Go Cat to 20 MW. Go Cat would treat 1,000 tons of waste a day,” he said.

Town is meeting with Tay Ninh provincial authorities in several days to discuss the implementation of a 10 MW project on generating electricity from waste, capitalized at VND300 billion.

Toan said the abundant waste resources at Go Cat dumping ground, plus the 5 million tons of waste left from before, will allow the waste electricity project to run for a long time.

Meanwhile, according to HCMC’s general director Nguyen Gia Long, the plant has treated 500 tons of industrial waste. Electricity generation capacity for the national grid is 7 MW.

The technology used by the plant aims to convert solid materials to gas-formed materials through thermochemistry under a lack of oxygen. 

At first, the products of gasification (the process of converting solid to gaseous material) are syngas and carbon (clean coal). After that, the source of energy is used as fuel for internal combustion engines to generate electricity – the final stage of the electricity generation process. 

Long said that electricity generation is an automatic closed process under conditions which lack oxygen, so it won’t produce secondary emissions or affect the environment. 

Toan estimates that it will take him five years to take back the investment capital, compared to at least 10 years to recover capital if injecting money into wind and solar power projects.

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