Villaservice Industrial Site Visit and Commentary

Today we drove up to the Villaservice Plant, located just outside of Villacidro. After some confusion over parking, we disembarked and wandered inside for a presentation and video about the plant. Villaservice is a four part operation: landfilling, anaerobic digestion, composting, and waste water treatment.

It was originally a landfill. The first landfill was opened in 1993, and closed in 2006, this landfill accepted all of the municipal solid waste (MSW), as it was developed before the new laws were enforced. Once it was closed, a new landfill was opened. It currently only accepts the non-organic fraction of the waste, as well as the sludge from the anaerobic digestion plant. It is due to close in the next year, so a new one is currently under construction. The biogas is collected from the landfills, but because less organic fraction reaches the landfill, this is expected to decrease over time.

The anaerobic digestion plant began its service in 2002, and until 2009 accepted unsorted household waste. Once the regulations called for the separation of municipal solid waste, only the organic fraction was accepted. As of 2013, it was operating at an annual 12.3 Gg under capacity. Before the separation laws, the MSW was put through a rotating trammel screen and exposed to an electromagnet. This sorted the organic from the inorganic. Next, the waste went through wet mechanical treatment, which included the use of a hydro-pulper and a hydro-cyclone to create the organic slurry. From there, the slurry went through several centrifuges in order to produce biogas, liquid discharge (which is then sent to the wastewater treatment plant), and solid discharge (which is sent to the landfill).

The composting plant was functional in 2010, with a capacity of 51.3 Gg/yr. Its components are kitchen waste, green waste, sewage sludge, and digestate. As of 2013, it was operating 38 Gg/yr under capacity.   

This visit has left me with some questions:

Why are some parts of the plant operating under capacity? Is this a problem of collection? What is happening?

The total consumption of the plant is 3.7 million kWh of electricity, but the plant only produces 2.3 million kWh of electricity. Of that production, 639,000 kWh is transferred to the grid. How does the plant operate when it requires an additional 2 million kWh of electricity to function? Why do they sell their power, when their operation seems unsustainable?

The speaker mentioned problems heating the anaerobic digestion tanks, but if both the landfill and the digestion plant create biogas, why are their problems heating the tanks? Couldn’t the heat be collected and used to ensure optimum biogas production?  

Why does Villaservice landfill their mixed municipal solid waste, when it could otherwise be incinerated for energy recovery? Why did they stop placing the bails in distinct areas of the landfill, for ease of mining later?  

In terms of the composting plant, what sort of losses do they take per ton of compost? If the first composting plant took a loss of 118 euro per ton, what sort of loss does Villaservice take? Do they have plans for future profitability, in the event of the cancellation of government subsidies? Once the landfilling process is discontinued (either by reaching the third landfill’s capacity or by their illegalization), how does Villaservice plan to use its batches of compost?

Maybe I didn’t quite understand some of the points the speaker made, but there seems to be a lot going on at this plant. The potential for inefficiencies got my industrial engineering brain turning, and I came up with a scenario…

I think if I were to implement a system in the United States, I would create a waste management plant based on the layout of Disneyland. Walt Disney designed Disneyland with what has come to be known as a “hub and spoke” method. Given that the United States collects all of its MSW together (except in some places where they collect recyclables separately), I would place a receiving and sorting building in the middle as the hub, and place the managing plants around it. I would then decide the location of each of the separate managing facilities. I would plan to have composting, anaerobic digestion, landfilling, waste to energy, wastewater treatment, and recycling. Some things clearly need to be placed together, for this I made an activity relationship chart, and then a finalized suggested layout:

Hindsight and Pride

Friday, May 29, 2015 9:37 am

Cramped /krampt/

adjective

Uncomfortably small or restricted.

With my elbows pressed against the seat and window, my legs jammed up on the seat in front of me, and my laptop bent almost closed due the angle, I was feeling rather cramped as I typed my paper on the bus.

Some humor in the early morning hours.

We’re leaving Cagliari, heading to the east to the high mountains and the most rural villages. It is shaping up to be a packed weekend, and my head spins whenever I try to comprehend the distances we’ve traveled.

Maybe I should stop typing (trying), I’m getting carsick.

Saturday, May 30, 2015. 2:49 am

I can’t write. I’m trying: my fingers ache and tremble, gnarled with an arthritis that spreads slowly through my knuckles and up my wrists. My heart is clumsy, and no helmet protects it when it stumbles and stutters, when it trips and falls. So maybe I won't write tonight, maybe I'll open my window and lean out into my cinderblock and colored plaster city, and watch the moon rise. 

Sunday, May 31, 2015 3:11 pm

Hindsight is 20/20, or so they say. For me it’s still 20/300 no matter which way I’m looking, even when my eyes are seeing straight back through my skull.

And that’s why I wear contacts. I correct the blurred tints and darks into mountains and valleys that grew as we left the bread basket plains and headed to the Province of Nuoro.

Sometimes it builds inside me. Sometimes I itch with a restlessness rooted so deep within my bones that they contort from the pressure. Suddenly my bright flares up like a kiln and the glass in my eyes melts under the sparks; the fear vaporizes: gone without glancing back.

In the last two days, I was privledged with the culture of a people who wear their spirituality and their pride in their clothes and traditions.

In the last two days, I spoke my thoughts, without fear of consequence or retribution, with a voice that sounded like someone I once saw in my smile.

In the last two days, I climbed a mountain to the edge of the timber line, and gazed upon a wooded horizon, wearing arch-less shoes that have wandered many a mile. 

In the last two days, I saw the stars in all their bright, and wondered if they could see me too.

In the last two days, I wandered the path and witnessed the two million year struggle of a river dreaming of finding the ocean

.

In the last two days, I boarded a vessel and sailed on the sea and, wind stinging my eyes and a shy sun peeking out from the clouds, I saw what fear made me miss.

In the last two days, I dove off a cliff into a crystal clear, salty green sea, and swam with friendly fish and fishy friends.

Are you proud of me? Can you see me? Can you see my pride, my bliss?

I am. I can. I do. 

Landfilling 101 (Ew. Gross..)

There is nothing quite like off-roading in a bus. I highly recommend it. Today we traveled to Ecoserdiana Landfill, to the north of Cagliari. The gates were nestled between two hillsides, rising well above the road. Shrubs and wildflowers and dried grass covered them, and they were framed by the surrounding countryside.

The two female engineers get on the bus, and immediately point out that the two hills are closed landfills, one from 2000 and the other from 2012. The first was opened in 1980 as one of the first sanitary landfills in the area. Originally it was not fitted with pipes to collect the methane gas produced by the organic components of the municipal solid waste, so in the 1990s it was retrofitted with the necessary requirement to collect the biogas.

This landfill is currently equipped to handle industrial waste, some types of hazardous waste, and bottom ash from waste to energy incinerators. Most landfills in Sardinia are no longer allowed to accept municipal solid waste. Because of this, Ecoserdiana faces a challenge in their future. Without organic waste, new landfills will not produce near enough biogas to keep their biogas combustion to energy plants running. As a result, Ecoserdiana has begun research into implementing an anaerobic digestion plant on site, and has already installed a small solar farm.

 

The current functioning landfill takes up a relatively vast area. Because of the composition of the waste the landfill accepts, the waste was almost entirely soot, ash, and chunks of construction waste. Surprisingly not much of a smell. This particular landfill is built over an old MSW landfill, and as such the top vents have to be built up with the rising waste. They are closed now, so only the biogas from the bottom vents makes it to the energy plant.

Sometimes this dialogue surprises me. This subject is not my forte; in fact it is so far our of my wheelhouse sometimes I feel as if I am swinging at air. However, every once in a while, if I squint, or look down, I find something you don't get to see everyday: hope.

Following the River, Wandering to the Sea

The bus rocked me out of another nap, the lurch sent me flying into the window pane, and I knocked my head into the glass. 

It's another overcasted day, and the cumulus clouds (nuvole, in Italian, as I've been told) drag race across the sky. The bus tilts again as we round another corner on a switchback, the railing disappears, and suddenly I'm hanging over a gorge: suspended over half a mountainside. That's one heck of a wakeup call. I catch snatches of a stream: white and furious at some instances, others a small moment of tranquility before the engine shifts and we lumber around the bend. The mountain path followed the little river for over a half hour, and I sat with my eyes glued to the window, following it like a starving paparazzi, waiting for the perfect snapshot. 

I am fascinated by water. It's ebbs, eddies, waves, and ripples stun and awe me. I suck it dry from my camelback, from the carafes and decanters at the restaurants, even the garden hose. Man craves water like a lover. We write songs to praise her. We dance to entice her to fall upon us. We build temples to her. We came upon a Roman temple, built to the god Antas. It is believed that there was once a spring that was believed to heal and cleanse its worshipers. In typical Roman (human) style, they built the hulking mass in the stolen style of the Greeks, and directly on top of a Nuragic shrine. For thousands of years, how many people prayed and begged for a miracle, for guidance? How many stood where I dumbly stood - yawning from my afternoon nap - with a motive and a purpose? How can I even begin to comprehend their humanity, when their lives we so unlike my own? 

The human body is comprised of 60% water. I guess that’s something in common, but I drink so little you can just subtract 15% or so.

The water moves mountains. It cuts away at the hills and shapes ridges and valleys. Every crevice of the mountains has its own river bed, now dry from the early summer heat. How old the stone is here? At Porto Flavia the shale practically crumbled to my touch, like compressed wood or shards of sand. Imagine mining through that. You’d be 15 kinds of dead under the mountain, trapped under the tons of collapsed rock. Luckily the port is carved of clay and limestone. Unluckily for the creators of the port, hydraulic mining wasn’t invented until the 1850s during the California gold rush. Yay chisels and mallets.

An ant moves 50 times its own weight all by itself; the current world record for a dead lift is 1155 lbs, only 4 times that particular human weight. I think of the time it took to create this port, to quarry in to the mountains in search of silver, gold, zinc, and iron. Humanity has moved mountains, in both the good sense and the bad. The abandon town on Ingurtosu sits crumbling atop the mountain, despite an inhabitance of over a thousand a mere 40 years ago. How odd is it to think our stones may still stand, even when we move on and others replace us. I can imagine it now: a valley oak, gnarled and blue-gray, growing skyward in my living room: its brown autumn leaves covering the stained oak floorboards, its roots twisted into our rotting plumbing. I wonder, if you turned down the hall and stumbled over the foliage into my old bedroom, if my stuffed bunny Oswald would still be sitting on my bed.

Maybe the force of the blow to my head was enough, or perhaps the engine's rumbling din knocked enough to my nerves cells senseless, and I'm still dreaming. It's hard to believe that everything, between the shallow, turbulent stream to the cavernous boreholes drilled into stone so old it crumbles to touch, exists. 

In a different time, I used to watch Ted Talks. I would sit for hours on the edge of my top bunk in my sketch-covered room, and scarf down information like a starving wolf descending on the kill. I would watch a video, then research the topic until I completely understood its nuances and corners: its nooks and crannies.

High school ended, a flawless past summer, and I moved to Boston. I would still watch the talks, but I never Seemed to have the time to fully research and explore the videos. One of the videos I watched in the first months at Northeastern was an eight minute TedCity talk by Robin Nagle. It was entitled What I Discovered in New York City Trash . It fascinated me. I never considered the fate of what I threw away, until I began this dialogue.

Today we visited three waste management plants to the west of Cagliari, near Pula. The first was a paper recycling plant. There we learned how different types of waste paper were sorted, shredded, cleaned, mixed, and then formed into new paper for use. Only about 5% is lost in each recycle process. Not too bad, right? That especially given a single fiber of paper can be recycled up to eight times before the proteins in the fibers denature with age and it begins to decompose.

As walked into the open warehouse, and stared up at the skyscrapers of stacked and packed cardboard and paper, I halted with a jolt. The plant had office and notebook paper strewn about over the concrete; It seemed it to climb the walls in the wind. I looked down past my converse covered toes and my eyes landed on a small piece of notebook paper. In neat, feminine navy ink, her notes stood out in a personal way That I had not expected from such an industrialized location. Robin Nadle's voice echoed in my head, and the intimacy stuck me by surprise. I knew the ink navy woman's birth date. I knew her address. I could read her thoughts and wishes. Here they recycled possessions: thoughts, birthday cards, songs written and accidentally discarded. Here these physical representations of ourselves came to be made ​​new, made ​​clean, like some sanitation baptism in the industrial zone outside Cagliari.

Between the personal existed amounts of vast impersonal. Shredded cereal boxes, fruit containers, newspapers, flyers and glossy colored littered the ground. The waste surprised me. The extent of the waste in our packaging surprised me. Why must we place in cereal boxes, When the physical food resides in a food-grade, sealed plastic bag? Advertising? Shipping? Where did the practice start?

I've become hypersensitive to the composition of what surrounds me. Who designed the composting plant, the waste to energy incineration plant? What will become of them when their purpose is served? The compost was shocking, and I see now the industrialized composting faces challenges in the United States. In Sardinia, it cost 120 euro to process one ton of compost, but it is only sold for 2 Euros per ton. The government provides the necessary and capital resources, the tax breaks and financial whatnot. When I think of the United States, I wonder how we could possibly pitch this to a nation where the environment is still on the back burner. Do we educate? Where do we start? 

Thoughts From Hours Past

It's been a while. It's been a few days, actually. I keep waiting to round a corner, to be rocked back by the force of the blow. So much for the bear who went over the mountain; I feel more like the guppies who swam across the pond. And I mean by pond ocean.

I remember the last time. On a dreary, gray morning in October of 2013, an idealistic girl freezing in California skin in the wind at the very edge of Long Warf. She Looked out over the harbor, shivering in her heaviest coat California. She turned on her heels, and the weight slammed into her: a freight train to the chest. A city, suddenly hers, bathed in soft light and dawn rising up to the autumn skies. Pale yellows and pinks peaked past the sullen blue shadows in the cracks between the skyline. Suddenly, instantly, the world was hers. In a single moment, she found home: stuffed between the heroic history and throbbing pulse of the T, pressed against the walls of the I-93 tunnel, in the spaces between the notes sung in the T stations.

It took a month for Boston, and I have 25 days for Cagliari.

Maybe I'm looking too hard. Maybe I Have not been looking. I'm afraid, truly afraid That I will not find a home here. I'm afraid I'll miss something. In the precious first days, it's critical to meet and befriend your companions, to find people to eat dinner with, to explore in the safety of packs. When is it okay to venture out alone? To leave the well-lit square, with its cafes and named American men selling phone cases, and take a left turn down a back alley and find somewhere new? I feel so American, so different, like an elephant in a circus Midwest: ogled at by the crowds. I should try harder to pick up English, but I hide behind the safety of my classmates - now friends.

You see, I'm starting to loathe trips to La Piazza Yenne. They know us, they Recognize our flip-flops and too short skirts and loud, guttural voices. It's getting claustrophobic in here. Get me out. North to the safety of the dorm, south to the Mediterranean port and the cruise ships: that leaves the east and west. Time to hang the left or to the right peak. Time to find the Moment When Cagliari's heartbeat and breath shallow syncs with my pants, and I find home.

Be brave. 

A Smallish Recount of My First Two Days in Italy

“This could be the very moment I feel that I’m alive: all these places feel like home.”

Chocolate – Snow Patrol

We’re landing! We just turned now, and I can see the countryside. Oh my goodness it looks like home. Somehow, I’m not afraid anymore. I feel free, alive even: chalk-full of curiosity and read to explore.

-Four Hours Later-

There are six planes in front of us to take off (we’re moving so less now). I haven’t quite been culture shocked, but I guess airports aren’t exactly the best places to dive into a culture. Did you see the Victoria’s Secret in terminal 1? Who wants to try on bras after you’ve had an eight hour red eye and feel gross and grubby? Ew!

The Italy stamp in my passport is a square. A square. It says “Fiumicino” and that’s it. Lame.

-Pause for Takeoff-

Well, we’re airborne and already over the water! All of Italy looks like home to me, and I was a fool to forget that.

 -May 15, 2015 3:30 pm-

The café down the street is perfect. With miss-matching china and almost hipster-esque wall hangings, it stands as a complete mockery of a British café and tea shop. I have great plans for my 5 euro stipend! Their cappuccino is excellent, and there is a fine selection of cupcakes, croissants, and fruit. Maybe I could spend some of my money on a focaccia for lunch during class days. We walked up the hill, almost San Franciscan in pitch, and were stunned by the amazing views. Next we went to University of Cagliari, and if you ever want to put 16 jet-lagged college kids to sleep, place them in a room at 3:00 pm, turn off the air conditioning, and lecture at them. That said, I enjoyed the competition between the other students, and had fun learning Italian phrases from the University of 

Cagliari and University of Padua students.

After class we had a few hours to relax before dinner at a restaurant at the bottom of the hill. Dinner was served in four courses: antipasta, pasta, main, and the coffee. Octopus potato salad, breaded and fried squid, chunks of swordfish, and zesty shrimp were served with clam pasta and fresh vegetables. It was delightful. I tried everything, and enjoyed hearing about the experiences of my fellow classmates. Tomorrow, we will have the morning off and then visit the home of Aldo Muntoni, a professor form UniPA. We will enjoy the beach and share a meal with the students from the University of Padua, I can't wait!