When people drop trash off for curbside pickup, that’s usually the last time they think about it. Not so for the workers at Great River Energy’s Elk River Resource Processing Plant. When trash is sent out, that’s when their job starts.
Sherburne and Anoka counties deliver municipal solid waste (MSW) to the Elk River Resource Processing Plant. Trucks drop the MSW on the tipping floor, where a grapple crane removes large items that may damage equipment that processes the MSW into refuse-derived fuel (RDF).
“The Elk River Resource Processing Plant helps Great River Energy literally take what was trash, and turn it into the treasure of electricity,” said Facility Manager Tim Steinbeck. A series of 150-pound hammers and a nine-ton rotor form what’s called a flail mill that shreds the MSW into smaller pieces for further processing.
Recyclable metal, which makes up approximately 4 percent of MSW, is captured with a magnetic separator and recycled along with aluminum. Processing continues when a primary and secondary disc screen separate the smaller pieces of MSW to be used as fuel for Great River Energy’s Elk River Energy Recovery Station power plant.
About 90 percent of the MSW collected becomes fuel for the plant. Scrap metal is bailed and recycled after it is removed from the municipal solid waste at Elk River Resource Processing Plant.
Elk River Energy Recovery StationOriginally the site of a coal and nuclear power plant, Elk River Energy Recovery Station was converted to a waste-to-energy facility in 1989. The plant provides 33 megawatts of electricity using RDF. Each day, up to 50 truckloads of RDF are delivered to the on-site storage facility, and moved to the generating plant on a unique overhead conveyor system.
In an effort to make the plant a more economical resource, it typically operates at higher capacities during peak periods for energy prices and backs off on load in the off-peak periods. RDF is considered a renewable resource under Minnesota law.
Find more news by reading the February edition of Great River News.
