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Comprehensive Review of S olid W aste Collection and Disposal Options v2.1 175 10/22/12 12.6.2 M inimum Waste Throughput Processing Capacity 12.6.2.1 Waste-to-Energy As depicted in Exhibit 12-2 in Section 12.3.3 above, WTE facilities require significant waste throughput to be economically viable. For traditional WTE technologies, SCS typically projects a daily throughput capacity of at least 100 to 300 tons per day required to substantiate siting a new WTE facility. Such a facility would most likely consist of multiple, smaller capacity modules, on the order of 250 to 100 tons per day or, several smaller facilities located in different areas, and in both cases providing an aggregate capacity. Collaboration and regionalization is a must to support such technologies. 12.6.2.2 Waste Conversion Based on SCS experience, typical WC technologies, including thermal, biological, and bio-chemical are represented to operate on a comparatively smaller scale. Between these types, generally, thermal technologies require more significant waste throughput to be economically viable. Due to lesser equipment and energy requirements, biological technologies can generally support smaller waste throughput. 12.6.2.2.1 Thermal By a wide margin, the greatest amount of recent activity in WC technology is with the thermal technologies, dominated by the plasma arc conversion process. This is mainly due to its potential for large power production and overall reduced air emissions. The lack of an operational track record for both large-scale and small-scale WC technologies suggests to SCS that a WC technology plant should more likely be planned initially as a small pilot-plant. A pilot plant, in SCS’s opinion, based on proven laboratory and mini-pilot scale technology, would be no more than about 100 tons per day with the potential for scale-up should the technology be proven at the pilot stage and with regional collaboration. The point here being, based on SCS’s experience, the scalability of thermal WC technologies may never exceed pilot scale without regional collaboration and population growth in Chapel Hill. 12.6.2.2.2 Anaerobic Facilities In Europe, the anaerobic process has been used successfully to process MSW. The sizes of these plants reportedly range from 3,000 tons per year (TPY) to 182,000 TPY. Converted to a daily capacity, and assuming a 6-day per week processing schedule, these capacities range from 10 tons per day to 580 tons per day. As noted in the paragraphs above, there are several operating AD facilities in North America in the size range potentially generated by the Town. These facilities are successfully processing from about 15 to 250 tons per day of food and yard wastes diverted from residences, restaurants and businesses and converted into methane that is used to produce power.