On reclaimed land at the southwestern tip of Singapore, the co-location of two major utility infrastructure facilities are set to establish new standards in how we harness water, waste and energy resources. They serve as potential blueprints on how, under the right conditions, utilities can work together to realize and meet advanced sustainability goals.
The two co-located facilities are part of the master planning behind Singapore’s multi-billion dollar Integrated Waste Management Facility and Deep Tunnel Sewerage System (DTSS) Phase 2. National Environment Agency (NEA) and PUB, Singapore’s national water agency are planning a world’s first: never before have two large scale advanced solid waste management and water reclamation facilities been planned from the ground up on a co-located basis.
The design and operation of the Integrated Waste Management Facility (IWMF) and the Tuas Water Reclamation Plant (TWRP) will realize various synergies as compared to building two standalone plants.
For example, sludge generated at the TWRP will be sent next door to the IWMF to be incinerated. In return, the amount of electricity produced at the IWMF will be sufficient to power both the operations of the IWMF as well as the TWRP with excess electricity exported to the grid.
Below are some more details on what’s been planned and what resources will be optimized and shared between the facilities.
IWMF
The IWMF is an integral part of NEA’s long term plan to meet Singapore’s solid waste management needs. The waste-to-energy (WTE) facility within the IWMF will be designed with an incineration capacity of 5,800 tonnes per day (tpd) making it one of the largest in the world (Figure 1). In addition to the treatment of incinerable waste, the IWMF will also process source-segregated food waste, household recyclables collected from the National Recycling Programme (NRP) and dewatered sludge from the adjacent TWRP.
The plan is to develop IWMF in two phases. The first phase comprising a WTE Facility (capacity: 2,900tpd), a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) (capacity: 250tpd), food waste treatment facility (capacity: 400tpd) and a sludge incineration facility (capacity: 800tpd) will be completed in 2024.
The incineration capacity of the IWMF will increase to 5,800tpd when the 2,900tpd WTE facility under the second phase is developed in 2027. The highly energy efficient processes at IWMF will maximise resource recovery and electricity production while meeting stringent environmental standards.
Figure 1
DTSS Phase 2
A superhighway for used water management, the DTSS is a core water infrastructure which provides a cost effective and sustainable solution to support Singapore’s continued growth and meet its long term needs for used water collection, treatment, reclamation and disposal. DTSS uses deep tunnels to convey used water by gravity to centralized water reclamation plants (WRPs) located at the coastal areas in Singapore.
With Phase 1 completed in 2008, the detailed design and construction of Phase 2 is underway and expected to be complete by 2025. Forty kilometers of deep tunnels and 60 kilometers of link sewers will cover the western and southern parts of Singapore.
A highlight of DTSS Phase 2 will be the new TWRP, which will contribute to Singapore’s long-term goal of increasing the NEWater supply to meet up to 55 percent of total water demand, further strengthening water sustainability and resilience for Singapore. In addition, the TWRP will treat 800,000 cubic meters of used water per day, making it the largest membrane bioreactor facility in the world.
