Innovative long-term planning and advanced engineering at the upcoming Integrated Waste Management Facility (IWMF) in Singapore will enable the island nation to reap the benefits of energy and resource recovery maximisation for years to come. When completed it will establish new standards for how we manage and harness our waste resources.
A multi-disciplinary consultancy team led by Black & Veatch* and AECOM, in association with Ramboll, is drawing up the IWMF’s engineering plans and design specifications. These will serve to tender the project to both local and global engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractors.
The IWMF is an integral part of the National Environment Agency’s (NEA) long-term plan to meet Singapore’s solid waste management needs. The Waste-to-Energy (WTE) facility within the IWMF will be designed with an incineration capacity of 5,800 tonnes per day (tpd) making it one of the largest in the world. In addition to the treatment of incinerable waste, the IWMF will also process source-segregated food waste, household recyclables collected from the National Recycling Programme (NRP) and dewatered sludge from an adjacent used water treatment plant, the Tuas Water Reclamation Plant (TWRP).
The co-location of the IWMF with PUB’s TWRP marks the project a world’s first: never before have two large scale advance solid waste and used water treatment facilities been planned from the ground up.
Together, the operation of the IWMF and TWRP will realize various synergies as compared to building two standalone plants. They will also optimize land use footprint and help free up land for other developments in land scarce Singapore.
NEA’s Integrated Waste Management Facility (IWMF) and PUB’s Tuas Water Reclamation Plant (TWRP) will be co-located to maximize both energy and resource recovery in their respective solid waste and used water treatment processes. The co-located IWMF and TWRP will be the first of its kind that is being planned from ground up. It will enable NEA and PUB to reap the benefits of a water-energy-waste nexus. Image source: PUB.
The plan is to develop IWMF in two phases. The first phase comprising a WTE Facility (capacity: 2,900tpd), a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) (capacity: 250tpd), food waste treatment facility (capacity: 400tpd) and a sludge incineration facility (capacity: 800tpd) will be completed in 2024.
The incineration capacity of the IWMF will increase to 5,800tpd when the 2,900tpd WTE facility under the second phase is developed in 2027. The highly energy efficient processes at IWMF will maximise electricity production. The amount of electricity product will be sufficient to power both the operations of the IWMF as well as the TWRP with excess electricity export to the grid from its 230kV electrical substation.
The IWMF is set to be an engineering marvel in the world of solid waste management. The Black & Veatch and AECOM multi-disciplinary consultancy team in association with Ramboll are providing professional Owner’s Engineering services in project management, supervision of the construction works and commissioning of the IWMF.
*A project undertaken in Singapore when Black & Veatch owned that business.
For more information, contact the IWMF Project Director, Geoffrey Piggott: geoffrey.piggott@iwmf.sg
