Pirocrack

Project "Pirocrack" data sheet

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 Partnership

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 Project objective

Waste disposal is one of the biggest problems that the world is facing. Increasing population, urbanization and industrialization are accelerating drastically the generation of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW). Landfilling is the usual method but is the least recommended option since they release GHG, contaminates the soil and ground water, produces unpleasant odours and spread pathogenic microorganisms. Recycling is unable to deal with the huge amount of garbage produced. Mass-burn incineration eliminates waste but emits highly dangerous dioxins and furans creating major social opposition. Composting is limited to large fractions of organic waste and is very odorous. Most of the gasification plants that started to operate have shut down failing to provide a solution to the problem. New clean and cost-efficient technologies to dispose this huge amount of garbage are urgently needed. PYROCRACK uses a patented Pyrolysis process to treat MSW obtaining a mixture of liquids, gases and solids with high energy content and a novel Thermal Cracking process that improves the quality of this mixture. Pyrolysis decomposes waste without using O2 which avoids pollutant emissions. Thanks to its endothermic feature it transforms waste into high value products that can be commercialised in the industry making of PYROCRACK a flagship of the Circular Economy. Pyrolysis has been known for centuries but now it is the focus of the MSW treatment business because of the inability of the existing techniques to respond to the ever-growing generation of garbage. Our approach is disruptive since we will treat MSW in a distributed manner through profitable and clean small/medium plants located closer to households and businesses to transform the content of waste into usable products (biochar, syngas and power). Our aim is to reach a gradual and scalable market implementation in Solid Waste Market of the PYROCRACK technology so has to reach a ROI of 6,59 and a payback period of 2,25 years.