Dubai's WtE Plant Turns 5,500 Tonnes of Waste into Renewable Energy Every Day
The plant reduces landfilled waste by 45% and in doing so it also significantly reduces Dubai’s methane emissions. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has repositioned itself in the areas of sustainability and environmental protection.
Kanadevia Inova
The Warsan Waste Management Centre, which went into operation in the Warsan region of Dubai in 2024, is a superlative facility in many respects. On average, it converts 5,566 (CHECK Stat with Roni, but 5,666 is listed on the client’s website) tonnes of waste into renewable energy every day. This means that the plant can treat the municipal waste generated on site and thus significantly relieve the pressure on Dubai’s landfill sites . The 193 MW of electricity generated by the Warsan Waste Management Centre is fed into the local electricity grid as grid energy and powers around 120,000 households with electricity. In addition to its size, above all it is the plant’s overall operational efficiency that makes this WtE plant so unique. With a net energy efficiency of over 30 %, the Dubai Waste to Energy (WtE) plant is one of the most efficient in the world.
Image 2: Waste-to-Energy plant in Dubai - view of the crane control room and waste bunker (Courtesy of Kanadevia Inova)
Partly because of the special climatic conditions at the site, there were a number of challenges during the construction of the plant, and also in the course of commissioning and operation.
Technical solutions like much larger air coolers have been found to meet and control the high temperatures in the UAE.
Although the temperatures in the boiler house can rise to 55 degrees Celsius during the summer, the system works very well and is making a valuable contribution to waste treatment security in the region.
Project description
With the Dubai Strategic Plan 2021, part of the United Arab Emirates' National Agenda 2021, the UAE aims to reposition itself in the areas of sustainability and environmental protection. The aim is to massively reduce the volume of non-recyclable municipal waste that ends up in landfill sites, by promoting the construction of next generation renewable energy infrastructure and reduce the production of climate-impacting gases from landfills, such as methane, as efficiently as possible. Among other things, this includes the development and implementation of a modern, well-regulated waste management facility - the new WtE plant is therefore an important building block for the implementation and delivery of Dubai's sustainability strategy.
At the heart of the system is an air-cooled R-series feed grate - albeit in extraordinary dimensions. Measuring 12 x 15 meters, it is the largest model ever built in-house and it can handle a nominal waste throughput of 47 t/h per line across all five lines within the huge plant. The heat released in the treatment process is used to generate superheated steam (77 bar, 432 °C) in a four-pass boiler, which is fed to the condensing turbine. The electricity generated in this way is fed into the local electricity grid to power homes and houses. The bottom ash produced after thermal treatment is then processed on site, with ferrous and non-ferrous metals recovered for onward recycling
In order to reliably operate a plant of this size, which also has to cope with an extremely heterogeneous waste composition, a CCS+ advanced combustion control system is used. This automatically adjusts the firing to the respective waste composition, and also ensures optimum burnout of the waste. In combination with the XEROSORP® dry flue gas cleaning system, the emission limits not only comply and align with the European limit values, but even undercut these regulation requirements.
Image
3: Longitudinal section of the waste-to-energy plant in Dubai (Courtesy
of Kanadevia Inova)
To avoid having to use the city's scarce water supplies, the WtE plant obtains the raw water for the process from a neighboring wastewater treatment plant in Al Aweer. This treated wastewater is processed at the WtE plant in a multi-stage water treatment process to produce softened water and demineralized water. The softened water is used for all water consumers in the process technology (e.g. feed hopper cooling, wet cleaning, LuKo cleaning and lime slaking), while the demineralized water is used to feed the water-steam cycle. The waste water from this WtE-internal water treatment is reused for slag discharge, while the boiler blowdown is completely recirculated to the water treatment inlet basin to ensure a waste water-free system.
Image
4: The largest grate that the plant manufacturer has ever built is
installed in the plant (Courtesy of Kanadevia Inova)
The new WtE plant is new and iconic infrastructure for the city of Dubai - the need for information among the population was correspondingly high, which was met from the outset in the form of face-to-face events and multimedia information materials. In addition, the construction of a dedicated visitor centre on the site allows visitors to find out more how the plant operates safely, view a scale model of the facility and understand the environmental benefits it brings to the UAE.. This helps to take away visitor concerns and at the same time emphasizes the relevance of the plant to Dubai’s environmental and waste management goals over the long-term.
General Project Data
Table 1: General project data of the Warsan Waste Management Center
Image
5: The facility in Dubai has been in 2024 in official operation (Courtesy of
Kanadevia Inova)
Commissioning of the Plant
A consortium consisting of Kanadevia Inova (formerly Hitachi Zosen Inova), Dubai Holding, Dubal Holding, Tech Group, ITOCHU Corporation and BESIX Group, the largest construction company in Belgium, was commissioned to realize and deliver this extraordinary project. Kanadevia Inova and BESIX also served as the general contractors for the turnkey plant on behalf of the city of Dubai, and they are also the operator and shareholder of the project company for the next 35 years. This public-private partnership was one of the most significant investments in renewable energy made by the UAE when the contract was signed.
Following the start of construction in 2020, construction and commissioning of the plant largely went according to plan:
- First Waste Fire Line 1: 04.05.2023,
- First Waste Fire Line 2: 01.06.2023,
- First Waste Fire Line 3: 30.08.2023,
- First Waste Fire Line 4: 15.09.2023,
- First Waste Fire Line 5: 25.10.2023.
In August 2023, unit one with lines 1 and 2 including the water-steam cycle entered the pre-commercial operating phase, followed by unit two with lines 3, 4 and 5 in October 2023. During the construction and commissioning phases, the plant constructors achieved the impressive feat of 16 million hours of work on site without an LTI (Lost Time Incident) - one of the most important key figures in occupational safety. This serves as a performance indicator that provides information on the frequency and severity of work-related incidents that lead to lost working days.
The plant has been in commercial operation since summer 2024.
Initial Operating Experience
Since commissioning, the plant has been in continuous operations and is delivering the expected output. Operation and maintenance is carried out by the specialist company Shou'alah, Waste Treatment FZCO a joint venture founded by BESIX and Kanadevia Inova. Today, the 128 employees from numerous nations enable the plant to safely and securely operate around the clock.
Waste management
The Warsan Waste Management Centre is the first facility of its kind in Dubai and the concept of special waste management is also new to the city. Collection and delivery is carried out by municipal and private haulage operators, which first take the waste to the entrance area of the facility, where the vehicle loads are checked for radioactive content. In most cases, the trucks are open vehicles with a net over the loading area, which is only removed shortly before weighing. After weighing, the drivers carefully approach and manoeuvre to deliver their waste loads into one of 29 bunker bays.
Ambient
temperature
The location in the Dubai desert poses numerous challenges. For example, when designing the system, it had to be taken into account that the outside temperatures only allows limited air cooling of the steam – with the air condensers were designed larger accordingly. In contrast to other systems, the condensers also has to be cleaned more frequently and completely, as the desert sand could clog the surfaces and block the passage of the air flows.
Image 6: The climatic conditions in Dubai pose particular challenges (Courtesy of Kanadevia Inova)
The temperature poses further challenges in the daily operation of the system. The temperature level in the system's boiler house is usually around 15 °C higher than the outside temperature. The higher the outside temperature, the higher the temperatures inside the system. With summer temperatures of up to 45 °C, the boiler house regularly reaches up to 55 °C. A ventilation concept was developed for this when the system was designed, to ensure safe working conditions for the plants operations and maintenance teams.
Composition of waste
When the plant was designed, a waste composition study was defined in partnership with the client. This allow the plant’s operation teams, for example, to detect bulky deliveries within the waste stream - such as palm trunks. More recently, the operators are testing AI-based software solutions and manual detection in the bunker hall.
Image
7: The large-scale waste bunker at the Warsan Waste Management Centre (Courtesy
of Kanadevia Inova)
Summary and the future growth in Waste to Energy facilities in the UAE. It is always challenging when you build a WtE plant for the first time in places with special climatic conditions, which require tailored technical solutions. The Warsan Waste Management Centre was built and commissioned according to plan and was delivered on-schedule. All of the challenges that currently arise during operation will be overcome with individual solutions. For the general contractor, such challenges and the solutions are welcomed as a learning process that allows the company to innovate and grow.
This learning process is also required for the implementation of the next project in the UAE, which has already begun in Abu Dhabi. A consortium led by Marubeni Corporation, including Kanadevia Inova and the Japan Overseas Infrastructure Investment Corporation for Transport & Urban Development, has been commissioned by the Emirates Water & Electricity Company and the Tadweer Group to design, build and operate the new waste-to-energy plant. This first WtE plant which will serve the capital of the UAE will be built near the Al-Dhafra landfill on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi and will process an annual volume of 900,000 tonnes of non-recyclable waste over the next 30 years.
The project includes the financing, construction, operation and maintenance of the new WtE plant. In design and technical terms, this new plant will be similar to the Dubai facility and will also be equipped with Ultra Large Combustion technologies. Visually, the plant will look slightly different and will be constructed without a building envelope. However, the future operations teams will benefit greatly from the experience gained at the Warsan Waste Management Centre, which will be applied from the very first hour of construction, commissioning and operation of the new plant in Abu Dhabi.
Hardturmstrasse 127
CH - 8005 Zurich
phone:+41 44 277 11 11
The Las Vacas River Project by Biosfera Gt in Guatemala
E[co]work Enabling Safe, Inclusive and Circular Solutions for E-Waste Management in India
Management of Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment in Finland
Assisting Eurostat in the production and publication of waste statistics and in the development and application of methods to obtain robust data and information on the environmental impact of waste management.
Latvia's deposit return scheme achieves 80% return rate at two-year anniversary
Energy from Waste: Istanbul’s Contribution to Reducing Global CO₂ Emissions
Kolics Converts Waste Textiles into Shoes and Bags, Ghana
The Kompogas®dry fermentation system in Nanjing, China
"Save Your Wardrobe" – How a UK Start-Up Is Making the Fashion Industry More Sustainable