The waste incineration plant PFAFFENAU was commissIoned and inaugurAted in september 2008. IT CONVERTS 250.000 tonnes of waste into 65 gigawatt hours of electricity as well as 410 gigawatt hours of district heat per year, thereby securing the annual heat consumption of approximately 50.000 viennese households and supplying some 25.000 viennese households with electricity.
Since 1 January 2009, municipal solid waste without prior treatment has been banned from landfilling in Vienna. With its new waste incineration plant Pfaffenau, fully operational since September 2008, Vienna ensures that 250.000 tonnes of residual waste per year are properly disposed of accroding to law rather than being landfilled without making use of its secondary resource potential.
Wiener Kommunal-Umweltschutzprojektgesellschaft mbH , responsible for the planning and construction of the waste incineration plant Pfaffenau, was founded in 2002 as a wholly owned subsidiary of the City of Vienna.
Already two years following the start of planning, an environmental impact assessment was successfully completed. After the commissioning of specialised contractors in 2005, the construction activities were initiated in March 2006. In only two and a half years, one of Europe's most technically advanded waste incineration plants was erected in Simmering.
The plant not only complies with the most stringent limit values in EU environmental legislation. Its pollutant emission levels are also 50 to 90% lower than the limit values. A four-stage flue gas cleaning system ensures that emission levels are kept to a minimum.
• Dust emission is 90 percent below the permissible limit value.
• Sulphur dioxide emission is 95 percent lower than the permissible limit value.
• Thanks to a co-generation (CHP) concept, the system achieves an efficiency of 76 percent.
• Moreover, the energy required for the operation of the system is generated on site.
Plant concept
The following plant concept was implemented at the waste incineration plant Pfaffenau:
- grate firing with multi-stage flue gas cleaning system and wastewater treatment
- extraction-back-pressure steam turbine for the generation of electricity and district heat
Up to 200 MD 48 waste trucks unload their contents at the waste bunker. Two cranes lift the garbage into the feed hopper of both combustion grates. 32 tonnes of residual waste per hour is combusted at a minimum temperature of 850 degrees.
In the heat recovery boilers, the hot flue gas is used to generate steam. This steam, with 40 bar pressure and a temperature of 400 degrees Celsius, drives a steam turbine to generate electricity. The steam resulting downstream of the turbine is converted into district heat via heat exchangers, with the heat being fed into the public grid. Approximately 76% of the energy contained in the waste can be used effectively.
Owing to a sophisticated four-stage flue gas cleaning system – consisting of an electrical filter, a two-stage wet scrubber, an activated coke filter and a denitrification unit – the plant boasts near-zero emission levels. The cleaned flue gases are released into the atmosphere through an 80-metre high chimney.
Waste materials destined for processing/recovery
All waste materials destined for processing or recovery in the plant are delivered by MD 48 staff. In general, the following types of wastes are used:
- pre-treated municipal solid waste
- household waste
- bulky waste
Residues
After roughly one hour, the incinerator residues such as slags, ashes, scraps and stones are channelled out at the end of the combustion grates. The scraps are recovered for use in the steel industry. The slags, from which all metals have been extracted, are combined with the ashes and processed into "slag concrete" at a municipal waste treatment plant and then deposited at the Rautenweg landfill.
2
incineration lines
250.000 tpa
amount of fuel
2 x 40 MW
rated thermal capacity
approx. 14 MW
net electrical output
25.000
households supplied with electricity
approx. 50 MW
district heat extraction
50.000
households supplied with district heat
9 June 2008
commissioning (1st firing)
9 September 2008
full operation
