Mayor Caldwell opens new H-POWER sludge receiving station
Channel: Kirk Caldwell
Date: 14/08/2015

Mayor Kirk Caldwell dedicated the new sludge receiving facility at the H-POWER waste-to-energy plant in Campbell Industrial Park on April 23, 2015. The facility will begin daily operations early next month.

“The opening of this new facility takes O‘ahu closer to eliminating our need for a daily landfill,” said Mayor Caldwell.  “While Honolulu consistently ranks as one of the cleanest, greenest, most environmentally sound cities in the nation, we continue to push the needle towards sustainability.”

With the completion of the facility, items such as bulky waste, which were previously used to help process sludge at the landfill, will now be diverted entirely to the combustion process.  This provides the city with an additional $88,000 in revenue from the recycling of ferrous and non-ferrous metals recovered from the bulky waste.

"The addition of the receiving station ensures that less material is going into the landfill and sets the City on a course to eliminating the need for a landfill in my district," said Councilmember Kymberly Marcos Pine. 

The facility operates by feeding sludge into a hydraulically driven dual piston pump, which pumps the sludge to the injection header.  The injection header is composed of 18 valves that alternately open to inject sludge into the boiler feed chute where it’s co-mingled with municipal solid waste (MSW) and fed into the boiler’s fire for combustion.  The facility has 3,600 cubic feet of storage, which is equivalent to one day of sludge.

“Covanta is proud to bring this first-of-its-kind system to H-POWER and provide a vital new service to our long-term partner, the City and County of Honolulu,” said Paul Stauder, Covanta Senior Vice President, Sustainable Solutions.  “The completely enclosed sludge processing and disposal system provides tremendous benefits by helping to eliminate 40,000 tons of sludge and bulky waste from going to the landfill annually while generating clean, renewable energy and reducing greenhouse gases.”

The project took eight months to complete at a cost of $10,565,700.  The facility is able to feed approximately 90 tons of sludge per day, or more than 26,000 tons annually.  Until now, all of the wastewater sludge was taken to the Waimanalo Gulch Sanitary Landfill.