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.

If

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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~m _llmaQ~ wtert.gr

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