In this text we want to tell you something about the work in our Comenius – Project.
Maybe we should first tell you why we decided to join this project:
We are interested in topics like climate change, environment and waste reduction. We want to make our school a bit more environmentally conscious and we want everybody to know and think about the problems that are mainly caused by the climate change.
When we started on the project, we were nearly 40 students from classes 7-11. First we had to build groups on different topics we wanted to work on, for example Waste reduction, Raising awareness and Cooperation.
Regularly, the members of Comenius meet and gather their results.
The Comenius – Project from our school also works together with a school in Wath, England and Barcelona, Spain. In connection to that, there were already some exchanges between the students from the different countries.
When the students from England and Spain visited Germany the last time, we went on a trip to a waste incineration plant in Essen. We already wrote a text about that visit. You can read it when you go on the link “Waste reduction” on the left.
On 25th November 2010 some students from Bochum and the guest students from Wath and Barcelona went on a trip to the waste incineration plant in Essen Carnap, together with six teachers (Mrs Bunuel and Mr Garriga from Barcelona, Mrs Chisholm and Mr Minshull from Wath and Mrs Biehl and Mr Schönberg from our school).
The plant is a very special one, that produces energy (heat and electricity) from waste!
When we arrived, we entered a conference room, where Mr Schliesser, an important person of the RWE concern, welcomed our group.
While we had some drinks and heated up ourselves with hot coffee, Mr Schliesser showed us a presentation about the plant and its work.
First he gave us some general information, for example that the waste management scheme serves 1.2 million people in the Ruhr-area (Gladbeck, Bottrop, Essen, Gelsenkirchen, Mühlheim). That means, that the plant produces 1 kW of electricity per person per day8.2 million people all in all82 000 MW of electricity for everyone per day!!
We also learned something about the structure and the machines of the plant:
The highest part of the incineration plant is, obviously, the chimney. It is 200m high! There is also an electricity grind which is in charge for the northern part of Essen. The plant has also got a flue gas cleaning and an evaporating plant.
Overall, you would think that it is very loud for the people who live next to the plant. But the noise (135 dB) is insulated so strongly that the local residents hear almost anything.
Then it got a bit more difficult to follow the presentation, because we now talked about the more physical aspects of the incineration plant.
Here is some data:
-the plant has got a waste sorting concept: glass, glass recycling, paper, paper recycling, bio waste, composting, light packing, plastic recycling, gray bin, burned in plant.
-some values about the work area of the plant:
inhabitants
area (km²)
waste input (MHKW)
Essen
572 624
210.36
275 780
Ruhr - area
1 196 270
452.99
606 527
-bottom waste bunker records 10 000 tonnes of rubbish.
-remainders and its disposal:
bottom ash (162 147t)sorting and screening
fly ash (15 426t)utilization
gypsum (1 660t)further processing possible
sludge (1 495t)hazardous waste
-gases that are released during the burning process:
component
unit
Limit value (17.BlmschV)
Ø 2009 (behind EmMa)
dust
mg/m³n
10
0.15
SO2
''
50
0.48
NOx
''
200
97.71
CO
''
50
8.74
C (org.)
''
10
0.57
HCI
''
10
0.14
NH3
mg/m³
5
0.02
Hg
mg/m³n
0.05
<0.005
CD,TI
''
0.05
<0.05
Σ other HM
''
0.5
<0.2
PCDD/F
mg/n³n
0.1
<0.05
These were the most important details about the incineration plant. We also inspected some of the machines and the operations there. We can just say, that the trip was very interesting and impressive. We were lucky that we had the chance to see this incineration plant.
But still: Even if waste is processed in a useful way here, it does not mean that we should produce more waste...
