For a year now, the most powerful degassing station in Ukraine has been operating at the “Dalnytski Quarries” landfill. It was created and put into operation by the Clear Energy group of companies, the landfill and garbage collection in the city are managed by Active Energy.
What has changed during the year for the Odesa’s residents with the degassing station appearance?
In December 2020, the most powerful biogas plant in Ukraine started operating at the “Dalnytski Quarries” municipal solid waste landfill. The station generates “green” power from landfill gas released during the decay of organic matter. The Odesa degassing station operates based on three generating units of the Austrian manufacturer Jenbacher. The total capacity of the station is 4 MW, daily it generates more than 90 kWh of electricity (32 million kWh per year).
At the same time, the Odesa station destroys 3200 m3 of landfill gas every hour (28 million m3 per year), the danger of which for the environment is 24 times higher than CO2 emissions. Municipal solid waste landfill degassing is a mandatory process for every landfill to avoid the spontaneous combustion of methane.
The result of the plant’s operation is visible even to non-specialists. Vegetation, field animals, and birds have returned to Dalnytski quarries, and the unpleasant smell has disappeared. Andrii Hrinenko, the founder of Active Energy, compares landfill degassing to greening Mars: “We enter landfills that look like lifeless deserts, and in six months grass grows here”.
The construction of the Odesa biogas plant took place under the Memorandum of Cooperation signed by the Odesa authorities and Clear Energy Group in 2019 at the 5T Investment Forum. To date, Clear Energy Group’s investments in the Odesa region exceed EUR 12 million.
In addition to the largest landfill degassing in the eastern part of Ukraine “Dalnytski quarries” (96.2 hectares), Active Energy provides a full range of waste management in the region. Since April 2019, the Group has been managing LLC “Soіuz”, which carries out the сollection, storage and disposal of municipal solid waste in Odesa.
During the time of work under the management of Active Energy, the fleet of “Soiuz” LLC has increased to 52 units of equipment (including 35 garbage trucks). The number of waste containers in Odesa exceeded more than 6.5 thousand, 500 of them for separate waste sorting. In addition to household users, “Soiuz” LLC also carries out the transportation of solid waste and bulky waste from 15 thousand of Odesa`s enterprises.
Next year, a sorting station will be built at “Dalnytski Quarries”, which will increase the efficiency of generating “green” power from landfill gas, as well as further promote the development of refuse-derived fuel (RDF) in Ukraine. Also in 2022, work will begin on the construction of an energy-efficient waste disposal plant at “Dalnytsky Quarries”, which will generate both heat (estimated capacity will be 16 MWh) and electricity (MWh) by burning refuse-derived fuel (RDF). The total investment in these projects by Clear Energy Group will exceed EUR 50 million.
According to Andriі Hrinenko: “The Odesa region is a successful example of proper waste management in a multi-million city. The most powerful degassing station at ‘Dalnytski Quarries’, as well as an efficient waste collection and storage system, confirm this. And with the implementation of the projects on the sorting line and the plant for energy-efficient waste disposal, Odesa will become an independent energy cluster that will be able to fully realize its potential both in the field of ‘green’ energy and in the field of efficient waste management”.