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By Kevin Allen
Rappahannock News Staff Writer
Most people look at a pile of garbage and want to bury it. Brad Schneider looks at a trash heap and sees a clean source of energy.
With his Town of Washington-based company, Recovered Energy Resources, Schneider is lending credence to the maxim “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”
RER builds and operates gasification power plants that run on a variety of unconventional fuels, including waste from coal mines, oil refineries and municipal solid waste as well as byproducts from agricultural and forestry industries. All organic material - even sludge from wastewater treatment plants - has fuel value for a gasification facility.
Schneider said gasification reduces the need for landfills while also producing energy. It is even possible to mine and gasify garbage already in landfills, he said.
“If you don’t put the material in the ground, you don’t have to worry about it later,” Schneider said.
Gasification is different and cleaner than incineration, which produces air-polluting emissions while converting waste to energy. Gasification is contained and uses 900-degree temperatures to break down materials, which in turn release volatile gases that are used to move turbines and create electricity. Gasification can also be used to provide heating and cooling.
Gasification produces no flame or smoke and the containment process allows emissions to be controlled. Odors are not an issue either, Schneider said, because they are burned off during gasification and trash that has not yet been fully processed is not left out in open air.
“This technology is not the same as incineration,” Schneider said. “It’s cleaner, it’s smaller
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