Post on 10-Jun-2020
The mission of the Earth Engineering Center (EEC) is to analyze existing and novel
technologies for the recovery of materials and energy from "waste" materials, carry out
additional research as required, and disseminate this information by means of the EEC
publications, web pages, and meetings. The guiding principle is that "wastes" are
resources and their management must be based on science and best available technology
and not on ideology or economics that exclude environmental costs.
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What is EEC?
The mission of EEC (founded: 1995) was to direct engineering research at
Columbia on reconfiguring processes and products with full understanding of their
lifecycle effects on the environment. EEC introduced at Columbia the teaching of
Industrial Ecology, co-organized the 1997 Global Warming International Conference
(GW8) in New York City, and contributed much to the formation of the Department of
Earth and Environmental Engineering (1998), the first of its kind in the U.S.
As of 2000, EEC research has concentrated on advancing Sustainable Waste
Management in the U.S. and globally. Economic development has resulted in the
generation of billions of tons of municipal solid wastes (MSW) and other residues of
human activity that can be a considerable resource or, alternatively, waste land by
converting greenfields to landfills, and form IIgarbage patchesll in the oceans.
In 2003, in collaboration with the Energy Recovery Council of the U.S., EEC formed the Waste to
Energy Research and Technology Council (WTERT), concerned mainly with technologies that recover en
ergy and metals from municipal and other solid wastes. In 2008, with the help of Waste Management
Charitable Foundation, EEC formed the Council for Sustainable Use of Resources (SUR) whose mission is
to quantify greenhouse gas emissions from all methods of waste management and advance those that
have a smaller carbon footprint. As of 2010, EEC has sister organizations in Canada, China, Germany,
and Greece; others are under development in France, India, Japan, Mexico, and the U.K.
EEC Research
The principal resource of EEC are its Research Associates from academia and industry and the
graduate students working toward advanced degrees on projects sponsored by WTERT or SUR. In the last
ten years, there have been over one hundred theses and technical papers on Sustainable Waste Manage
ment, such as waste reduction, recycling, aerobic and anaerobic composting, energy/fuels recovery by
combustion or gasification (WTE), and landfill gas utilization. All publications are available on the internet.
EEC and developers of novel tech
nologies sponsor graduate research pro
jects that involve a year-long critical analy
sis of a particular technology. In such
cases, EEC maintains confidential any pro
prietary information of the sponsors. It is
also understood by the sponsors that the
results of sponsored studies will be entirely
science-based and unbiased. During the
course of such studies, EEC researchers
have travelled abroad to collect necessary
information, e.g., to Austria, Canada, Chile,
Denmark, France, Greece, India, Italy,
Japan, and Spain.
Website: www.eecny.org
What is WTERT?
The WTERT Council brings together scientists, engineers, and managers concerned with advancing
sustainable waste management in the U.S. and worldwide. The WTERT mission is to identify and advance
the best available waste-to-energy (WTE) technologies for recovering energy and metals from municipal
solid "wastes" and other industrial, agricultural, and forestry residues.
WTERT Research
The breadth of academ ic re
search sponsored by WTERT is indi
cated by the wide range of subjects
of past theses (www.wtert.org, Publi
cations, Theses).
The WTERT Web Pages
The web pages maintained by
WTERT, SUR, and their sister organi
zations around the world, are a reli
able and up-to-date source of infor
mation on waste-to-energy (WTE)
Tipping
Stack
Air Pollution
Refuse Bunker
Ash Handling
developments and all other tools for Sustainable Waste Management. WTERT maintains the information
database SOFOS (www.sofos.org) that contains thousands of technical papers on these subjects.
The EEC/WTERT Awards
Every two years, EEC presents
the WTERT Awards for significant
contributions by individuals and or
ganizations to Sustainable Waste
Management. Among past WTERT
Award winners were Martin GmbH of
Germany for the dominant grate
combustion technology, the ASM
Brescia WTE plant in Italy, Prof.
George Tchobanoglous of the Univer
sity of California-Davis for his pio
neering textbooks on waste manage
ment, and Prof. Paul Brunner of
The island of Bermuda uses its WTE ash to make
2-ton concrete blocks and create new land
Vienna for his application of material flow analysis to waste and resource man
agement. The 2010 EECjWTERT Award will recognize the "City closest to Sustain
able Waste Management".
Website: www.wtert.org
What is SUR?
SUR is a university-industry consortium concerned with advancing all means for the sustainable
management of wastes, globally. The SUR Research Associates include faculty at Columbia (Profs. Marco
Castaldi, Kartik Chandran, Faye McNeill, Alissa Park, and Nickolas Themelis), North Carolina State (Prof.
Morton Barlaz and Joseph DeCarollis), and other universities.
Waste Management Technologies
A Columbia study has estimated that the urban generation of MSW will be doubled to two billion tons by 2030. On a per capita basis, the U.S. generation of MSW is twice that of other OECD nations. Therefore, there is a lot of room for waste reduction in this country. However, the goal of "zero waste" is unattainable. This has been demonstrated by the most environmentally conscious nations, such as Japan and Switzerland, where every possible effort is made to recycle but they still rely on waste-to-energy (WTE) to avoid landfilling of post-recycling wastes.
Recycling - The next best thing in the IIhierarchyll of waste management, after waste reduction, is recy
cling. On the average, the U.S. recycles about 20% of its MSW (BioCyclejColumbia survey).
Composting - Aerobic or anaerobic composting is practical only for source-separated organics. About
10% of the U.S. MSW is com posted , mostly in the form of lIyardll or "green" wastes.
Waste-to-Energy (WTEl - Less than 20% «200 million tons) of the worlds urban MSW is processed in waste-to-energy (WTE) plants that provide electricity and district heating to millions of people and recover metals and construction materials.
Landfilling - The bulk of the global urban MSW, over 800 million tons, is landfilled. SUR has estimated that one square meter of land (10 square feet) is used up, forever, for every ten tons of MSW landfilled. For true sustainable development, only non-recyclable WTE ash should be landfilled, as is already done in several countries. However, this requires new WTE capacity which can be too costly for some developi ng nations. Therefore, it is necessary to construct sanitary landfills that protect surface and ground water and, also, collect biogas to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The U.S. is the world's largest landfiller (about 25% of the total MSW landfilled) but it is leading in the capture and use of landfill methane.
Anaerobic composting
Modern landfill recovering and using CH4
Modern landfill recovering and flaring CH4
Landfills that do not capture CH4
Hierarchy of Waste Management
Website: www.surcouncil.org
Training of Engineers and Managers
An important objective of the Earth
Engineering Center (EEC), WTERT, and SUR is
to provide graduate level training in the ways
and means of sustainable waste manage
ment to engineers and scientists, in particular
those from rapidly developing nations where
the need for managing the ever increasing
vol u me of wastes is most pressi ng. EEC, in
close collaboration with the Department of
Earth and Environmental Engineering of Co
lumbia University, has trained dozens of engi
neers. Some of our alumni are working in vari
ous parts of the waste management industry
in the U.S. and abroad.
Reg lonal Breakdown Landfllllng. recycling and ,-----------,
Incineration rates I1f region, 2004 Great Lakes
New England
tAiso inctuct.s A1uka and Hawaii _ Landf�ing _ RecycHno - Waste-to-Energy
SOURCE: BioCyc.
National MSW Survey
A bi-annual survey of waste
generation and disposition in the U.S. is
carried out by EEC and BioCycle journal.
The State of Garbage in America (SOG) is
based on data provided by the waste
management departments of the fifty
states in the U.S. By now, the results of
the SOG Survey are used by U.S. EPA in
thei r esti mation of the green house gas
(GHG) effects of MSW management.
The Combustion and Catalysis laboratory is headed by Prof. Marco Castaldi, Associate Director of
EEC. Its focus is the thermal conversion of carbon-based materials, such as MSW, biomass and carbon
dioxide to synthetic fuels. CCl is the experimental arm of WTERT and is fully equipped with TGA, DTA, MSj
GC, corrosion testing, and other equipment necessary for high temperature testing of materials and proc
esses. Research is focused both on improving existing WTE technologies and developing novel combus
tion or gasification processes. The feedstocks examined include MSW and MSW-sewage sludge mixtures,
used tires, medical wastes, and the co-processing of fossil fuels and waste materials. The global objective
of CCl is the development of environmentally benign energy sources.
Website: www.cc/abs.org
WTERT Sister Organizations
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Sponsors and Supporting Organizations
• Columbia University (u.s.) • The Green Fund (u.s.)
• Dept. of Earth and Environmental Engineering • HDR Engineering (u.s.)
• Henry Krumb School of Mines • INTRAKAT, S.A. (Greece)
• School of Engineering and Applied Science • Martin GmbH (Germany)
wtert.cn
wtert.ca
• Covanta Energy (u.s.) • Energy & Materials Recovery, ASME (u.s.)
• Energy Answers International (u.s.) • Waste Management Inc. (u.s.)
• Energy Recovery Council (u.s.) • Wheelabrator Technologies Inc. (u.s.)
Academic Research for Sustainable Waste Management
• Aristotles University of Thessaloniki (Prof. A. Karagiannidis)
• Chongqing University of Science and Technology ( Prof. Y.K. Tang) • National Technical University of Athens (Prof. D. Tassios) • North Carolina State University (Prof. M.A. Barlaz)
• Sheffield University (SUWIC-Prof. J. Swithenbank)
• Zhejiang University (Prof. K. Cen)
Earth Engineering Center, Columbia University
500 West 120th Street, #926 New York, NY 10027 USA
Websites:
• Earth Engineering Center (EEC): www.eecny.org
Tel: +1 (212) 854 9136 Fax: +1 (212) 854 7081
E-mail: earth@co/umbia.edu
• Waste-to-Energy Research and Technology Council (WTERT): www.wtert.org
• Council for Sustainable Use of Resources (SUR): www.surcouncil.org
• Combustion & Catalysis laboratory (CCl): www.cc/abs.org
• Department of Earth & Environmental Engineering (EEE): www.eee.co/umbia.edu