Ghana to build integrated waste management plant

Armech Africa Limited has entered into discussion with the Government through the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development for the construction of a modern integrated waste management plant for Accra.

The Accra Integrated Waste Management System would receive all the waste generated daily in Accra and, after extracting valuable recyclable goods, convert the remaining waste to electricity for the national grid.

Armech Africa is a Joint Venture between a Ghanaian Company; Doxa Worldwide and the Armech Group from New Zealand, in association with Clarke Energy (GE) from the United Kingdom.

Speaking to the Ghana News Agency in Accra after a stakeholder's engagement, Mr Rex Michau, Chief Executive Officer of Armech Africa, said the company would build six modern transfer stations around Accra to receive waste from independent upstream collectors.

"This waste will then be transferred to the Tunnel Bio-Reactor using a containerisation transport model based on the logistics designed and built by Armech for Veolia in Sydney, Australia," he said.

Armech Africa has exclusive rights in Africa to the patented Tunnel Bio-Reactor, an innovative but simple adaption to existing technology which converts organic waste into electricity through Anaerobic Digestion.

The Tunnel Bio-Reactor is a modularised above-ground landfill which transforms outdated waste management by doing away with landfills and creating the cleanest bio-energy from waste.

Mr Michau said due to its modular nature, the Tunnel Bio- Reactor was ideal for Ghana and Africa adding; "it is rapid-build, mobile, easily-scaled, simple to maintain and operate, and long outlasts landfills".

He said one recycling plant and tunnel bio-reactor could replace 10 landfills over a 50-year period.

The Tunnel Bio-reactor would be built, shipped and installed by Armech's long-term business partner, Singamas - the world's second largest container manufacturer.

Mr Emmanuel Agyekum, Deputy Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, who chaired the stakeholders' engagement on behalf of the sector Minister, said the revolutionary project would process up to 3000 metric tonnes of Accra's waste into a credible 57 MW of electricity.

"That's the handling of four million people's household waste. The system will be expanded to other cities to solve much of Ghana's waste problem that is created by population growth and the lack of downstream waste management," he said.

Mr Andrew Quainoo, the Director, Armech Africa, said the patented Tunnel Bio-Reactor was an innovative above-ground, containerised land-fill.

He said it comprised rows of ship-container shells joined together and stacked on top of each other. The tunnels have sealable doors on each end and rails on the floors onto which bins are filled with macerated organic waste and then rolled, as rolling-stock, into the tunnels.

The tunnels are then sealed, and 100 per cent of the gas is extracted over a 45-day process through a simple methane gas draw- off pipeline with valves.

The gas is fed into GE gas engines and then transmitted to a nearby sub-station for feeding to the national grid. The GE gas conversion process would be operated by Clarke Energy (UK) under a long-term O&M contract.

The meeting was organised by the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development and attended by the chief executive officers of the Accra Metropolitan, Tema Metropolitan, Ga East Municipal, Ga South Municipal, La Dade Kotopon Municipal and Awutu Senya East Municipal assemblies.