Odor Monitoring and Mitigation at the Hennepin County Waste to Energy Facility

Author(s):  
Jake Smith

Hennepin Energy Recovery Center (HERC) is a waste to energy facility owned by Hennepin County and operated by Covanta Energy. HERC has been in operation since 1989. The facility burns 365,000 tons of residential and commercial solid waste per year and generates about 34 mega-watts of electricity that is sold to Xcel Energy. HERC is located on the north side of downtown Minneapolis in the Historic Warehouse District, a neighborhood that is changing from industrial to a more commercial/residential mix with loft conversions and construction of new condominiums. The Minnesota Twins baseball team is also siting a new stadium in the parking lot immediately southeast of the facility. The potential for odors from the tipping floor of the facility affecting the neighborhood has become more of a concern due to the changes in the neighborhood. In March 2004 the County began an odor study. This included developing baseline information on odors from HERC and from the surrounding community by conducting daily odor monitoring at select points on the facility property and throughout the community: • Determining how far odors from HERC migrate into the community. • Quantifying detected odors using a Nasal Ranger. • Determining the factors that contribute to these odors. • Developing a method of controlling these odors. • Continued monitoring to determine the impact of mitigation methods. Odors detected were characterized as garbage odors, garbage-related odors, and neighborhood odors. Baseline data showed that while garbage odors from HERC were mostly undetectable beyond the perimeter of the property, there was room for improvement in decreasing the presence and intensity of these odors. The tipping hall was designed to operate under negative pressure to control odors, however the entrance and exit doors were always open and a negative pressure could not be maintained.

Author(s):  
Raymond H. Schauer

The Solid Waste Authority of Palm Beach County (Authority) has owned the North County Resources Recovery Facility (NCRRF) since 1989, producing clean, economical and renewable energy from refuse derived fuel while preserving precious landfill space. As with any facility as it approaches the end of its first 20-year operating term, the Authority found it necessary to initiate a comprehensive refurbishment to ensure its continued effective operations. The operating agreement between the Authority and the Palm Beach Resource Recovery Corporation (PBRRC), a subsidiary of Babcock & Wilcox (B&W), is set to expire concurrently with the end of the this 20-year term. The Authority acknowledged that PBRRC has unparalleled institutional knowledge of the NCRRF and, as such, took the opportunity to renegotiate its operating agreement with PBRRC for an additional 20-year term. The Authority was also able to build into the new operating agreement conditions for PBRRC to provide assistance to a third party design-builder performing the refurbishment. Additionally, understanding that B&W produced many of the key combustion unit components of the original NCRRF construction, the Authority worked into the new agreement terms for B&W to provide several essential components for the refurbishment that will be installed by the design-builder. When the refurbishment is completed in 2011, the Authority will still only have disposal capacity through 2021 with its existing landfill. To be able to keep up with rapid growth in Palm Beach County, the Authority has initiated the due diligence phase for the development of a new mass burn waste-to-energy facility and landfill that will expand the disposal capacity of the Authority’s system for more than 100 years.


Author(s):  
Ray Schauer ◽  
James P. Riley

The North County Resource Recovery Facility is a 2,000 tpd refuse derived fuel (RDF) Waste to Energy facility located in West Palm Beach, FL. Palm Beach Resource Recovery Corporation (PBRRC), a wholly owned subsidiary of The Babcock & Wilcox Company (B&W), operates and maintains the facility under a long-term operation and maintenance (O&M) agreement with the Solid Waste Authority of Palm Beach County.


2000 ◽  
Vol 151 (12) ◽  
pp. 502-507
Author(s):  
Christian Küchli

Are there any common patterns in the transition processes from traditional and more or less sustainable forest management to exploitative use, which can regularly be observed both in central Europe and in the countries of the South (e.g. India or Indonesia)? Attempts were made with a time-space-model to typify those force fields, in which traditional sustainable forest management is undermined and is then transformed into a modern type of sustainable forest management. Although it is unlikely that the history of the North will become the future of the South, the glimpse into the northern past offers a useful starting point for the understanding of the current situation in the South, which in turn could stimulate the debate on development. For instance, the patterns which stand behind the conflicts on forest use in the Himalayas are very similar to the conflicts in the Alps. In the same way, the impact of socio-economic changes on the environment – key word ‹globalisation› – is often much the same. To recognize comparable patterns can be very valuable because it can act as a stimulant for the search of political, legal and technical solutions adapted to a specific situation. For the global community the realization of the way political-economic alliances work at the head of the ‹globalisationwave›can only signify to carry on trying to find a common language and understanding at the negotiation tables. On the lee side of the destructive breaker it is necessary to conserve and care for what survived. As it was the case in Switzerland these forest islands could once become the germination points for the genesis of a cultural landscape, where close-to-nature managed forests will constitute an essential element.


2019 ◽  
pp. 3-20
Author(s):  
V.N. Leksin

The impact on healthcare organization on the territory of Russian Arctic of unique natural and climatic, demographic, ethnic, settlement and professional factors of influencing the health of population, constantly or temporarily living on this territory is studied. The necessity is substantiated of various forms and resource provision with healthcare services such real and potential patients of Arctic medical institutions, as representatives of indigenous small peoples of the North, workers of mining and metallurgical industry, military personnel, sailors and shift workers. In this connection a correction of a number of All-Russian normative acts is proposed.


2018 ◽  
Vol 68 (suppl 1) ◽  
pp. bjgp18X696929
Author(s):  
Jill Mitchell

BackgroundThere is an emerging debate that general practice in its current format is out-dated and there is a requirement to move to a federated model of provision where groups of Practices come together. The emergence of federations has developed over the past 5 years but the factors that influence how federations develop and the impact of this new model is an under researched area.AimThe study explored the rationale around why a group of independent GP practices opted to pursue an alternative business venture and the benefits that this strategy offered.MethodA single organisational case study of a federation in the North of England was conducted between 2011–2016. Mixed methods data collection included individual and group semi-structured interviews and quantitative surveys.ResultsFederations promote collaborative working, relying on strategic coherence of multiple individual GP practices through a shared vision and common purpose. Findings revealed many complexities in implementing a common strategy across multiple independent businesses. The ability of the federation to gain legitimacy was two dimensional – externally and internally. The venture had mixed successes, but their approach to quality improvement proved innovative and demonstrated outcomes on a population basis. The study identified significant pressures that practices were experiencing and the need to seek alternative ways of working but there was no shared vision or inclination to relinquish individual practice autonomy.ConclusionOrganisational development support is critical to reform General Practice. Whether central funding through the GP Five Year Forward View will achieve the scale of change required is yet to be evidenced.


2019 ◽  
pp. 4-15
Author(s):  
I. A. Korgun ◽  
G. D. Toloraya

The presented study analyzes the opportunities for North Korea to capitalize on its competitive advantages in foreign trade in the context of sanctions.Aim. The study aims to identify mechanisms that allow North Korea to engage in foreign trade in circumvention of UN sanctions and to analyze their impact on the national economy.Tasks. The authors analyze the structure of North Korea’s national economy, its initial competitive advantage, identify the specific features of North Korea’s foreign trade in the context of sanctions, and determine the consequences of illicit trade in circumvention of sanctions for the national economy.Methods. This study uses an interdisciplinary approach that combines the classical theory of competitive advantage with the concept of rent seeking, with the concept of rent seeking and analysis of trade flows.Results. The study shows that, despite the restrictions imposed by sanctions, North Korea strives to make the most of its advantages, such as resource availability and cheap labor, in global trade. The country builds its own export-import chains in circumvention of sanctions. These chains are rather mobile, flexible, and controlled by the elite. As a result, benefits from trade that could be evenly distributed among the population are concentrated in the hands of a narrow segment of society. ‘Rent seeking’ makes it possible to formulate the negative consequences of these processes for the North Korean economy and the international community.Conclusions. Solving the North Korean issue requires an economic transformation in the country through the replacement of restrictive sanctions with more constructive ones. The exclusion of North Korea from open global trade leads to the country’s marginalization and impairs the transparency of international commodity flows.


1995 ◽  
Vol 31 (10) ◽  
pp. 61-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Enell

During the last 20 years there has been an interesting development of the Nordic fish farming, with regard to the feeding and farming technology and to the increase in production quantities. During the period 1974-1994 the production increased from 15,800 to about 250,000 tonnes/year. In 1974 the major part of the production was in Denmark, and in 1994 the major part was in Norway. The nutrient impact of fish farming on surrounding sea areas is mainly a function of the feed coefficient, the feed composition and metabolic processes in the fish. The comprehensive development of the feed composition and the feeding technology has resulted in reduced load of unmetabolized nutrients from fish farms, calculated per tonne fish produced. In 1974 the mean Nordic feed coefficient was 2.08 and in 1994 the coefficient was 1.25. Feed coefficients of 1.0-1.1 are now reported for Danish and Norwegian freshwater and marine fish farms. The nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) content of the feed has decreased, in addition the quality of the nutrient substances in the feed has changed, especially for N. The N content has decreased from 7.8 to 6.8% during the period 1974-1994 and the content of P has decreased from 1.7 to 0.7% during the same period. This development of the feed coefficient and the feed composition has resulted in a present load from a typical Nordic fish farm of 55 kg N and 4.8 kg P/t fish produced. The figures for 1974 were 132 kg N and 31 kg P/t fish produced. The Nordic fish farming production in 1994 resulted in a load of about 13,750 t N and about 1,200 t P on the actual recipients. The load from the Swedish, Finnish and Danish fish farming operations, with the Baltic Sea and the Skagerrak as the recipients, is negligible in comparison with other pollution sources. The quantities of N and P from the fish farming are equal to 0.5% of the atmospheric deposition on the sea surface and 3% of the atmospheric P load. Norwegian, Icelandic and the Faroe Islands fish farming operations are using the North Sea and the Norwegian Sea as the recipients. However, the nutrient load from single fish farms in certain coastal and inland water bodies can be significant and must be considered in the impact assessment together with other sources.


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