Mindanao, Philippines is currently suffering from power crisis because of the rehabilitation of Agus-Pulangi power plants. And it is a great burden to the people of Mindanao and to the businessmen who are dependent on the electricity.
Mindanao is the second largest island in the Philippines and it is dependent on Hydroelectricity from Pulangi river in Bukidnon and Lake Lanao in Marawi City, Lanao del Sur. Since 2010, the island is experiencing a rotational brownout, everyday. Many businesses closed and some are finding a solution to cover this problem, like purchasing a generator.
There was a summit held in Davao City, it was called "Mindanao Power Summit," last 13th of April 2012. The role of the said summit was to solve the power crisis in the island of Mindanao. The summit was attended by President Noynoy Aquino and the Department of Energy Secretary Luwalhati Antonino and congressmen and governors and other private and government sectors in Mindanao.
But the summit's result did not turn out right, because President Noynoy said, "the simple truth is: you have to pay more", in which, the people of Mindanao was disagree for this kind of solution or proposal. It suggested that the power plants will be privatized so that it the island will experience sustainable power distribution.
Here's an excerpt from Mindanews
Aquino said that Mindanao has to accept some trade-offs in exchange for reliable supply. “What we need you to realize is that the old days of cheap power are no longer sustainable, and you must also put in your fair share in solving the problem. You have to pay a little more for the current and future health of the energy sector in Mindanao,” he explained.
Suggestions like Solar Power was suggested to the said event by Bayan Muna Representative Teodoro Casino. According to him, the Congress should approve House Bill No. 5405 or the proposed One Million Solar Roofs Act. "Solar resources are the most promising. This is because the average range of hours of sunshine in the Philippines is between 4.3 hours per day in July and August and 8.6 hours per day in April. On balance, there are 2,105 sunshine hours annually and approximately 5.8 sunlight hours for each day the whole year," Casino added.
Here is my suggestion.
Have you heard about Plastic trash than can be turned into electricity?
The students from Northeastern University developed a device that converts plastic to electricity.
The waste combustion processes non-recyclable plastic within two tanks. The first tank or the top tank converts the plastic into gas through pyrolysis. Then the gas travels to a lower tank, where it will burn to generate heat and steam. Then the steam will power the turbine to produce electricity.
Yiannis Levendis the leader of the research and a professor of Mechanical Engineering, is examining ways to pull off the vaporization of plastic in order to reduce any harmful gas emission from the said process.
The MIT Energy Conference featured a prototype of the device. According to the researchers, it will take a lot of infrastructure adjustment to a power plant.
Copied from BiomassMagazine
Catalytic Pyrolysis of Waste Plastics
While interest in combusting and gasifying plastic appears to be growing, there is another route to making practical use of all the waste plastics modern society produces. Through what it calls catalytic pyrolysis, Polymer Energy LLC, a division of Northern Technologies International Corp., has developed a system to convert waste plastics into liquid hydrocarbons, coke and gas, which can then be used as boiler fuel for power generation. "The technology uses lower temperatures than gasification-significantly lower-so it's more energy efficient to produce," says Kathy Radosevich, business development manager with Polymer Energy. Through "random depolymerization," or selective breaking of carbon-to-carbon bonds, in addition to feeding in proprietary catalytic additives, the reactor melts and vaporizes waste plastic in one step at temperatures between 840 and 1,020 degrees F. The company reports that, on average, 78 percent of every pound of plastic fed into the Polymer Energy system is converted to liquid hydrocarbons, coke and gas. The resultant coke can be further processed to produce additional fuel oil.
Polymer Energy's catalytic pyrolysis system processes polyolefins like polyethylene and polypropylene with up to 5 percent other plastic materials, plus up to 25 percent additional non-plastic waste, such as paper, glass, sand and water-making it ideal for processing municipal wastes.
Radosevich says the company has already sold nearly 20 of these systems in Europe, India and Thailand. "The interest in the United States and Canada is huge but I expect that we won't be marketing units in North America until next year some time," she tells Biomass Magazine. Hitherto the markets for these units outside North America have been "more conducive" mainly because higher fuel prices in places such as Europe and India have increased the desire for such alternative-fuel production units. "In the United States I'm doing preliminary testing for EPA approval, although I don't anticipate we'll have any problems . The only item that would be of interest to EPA that I can think of would be any type of contaminants in the ash." According to Polymer Energy, the output oil contains no chlorine, sulfur, nitrogen or heavy metals. Any of that material would remain in the ash, which Radosevich says would differ on an individual usage basis depending on the average makeup of the plastic-waste feedstock. "What we would do is sample the input plastic and the [post-processed] ash, and cross-check that with local requirements the community has for permit approvals," she says.
Clearly there is growing interest in doing something different with waste plastic than dumping it in landfills or the oceans. The global community must force itself to change its present path and become truly concerned about the environment in which its descendants will be raised, for what people do today affects everyone tomorrow.
Mindanao was once titled as The Land of Promise. Where are these promises now?
What is you Suggestion or prospect solution to this Power Crisis? Share it here!
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