Yucatan urban solid waste will be exported to Europe for fuel production

With a financial ceiling of 3,500 million pesos, the German company Alengo Latam is merging with the Yucatan company Ciclo for the construction of the CDR Pellets Waste Transformation Plant, for the production of fuel derived from urban solid waste, guaranteeing the end of the sanitary landfills in Yucatan.

It will be the only one in Latin America that will receive solid waste from the municipalities of the metropolitan area of Merida to convert it into solid biomass, which will be exported to Europe, whose cement and energy companies will use it as biofuel.

Governor Mauricio Vila Dosal led the presentation of this first plant, which is being developed with 100% private resources and will be operational in the year 2024.

With a historic investment of 150 million euros in the environmental sector, the plant will have the capacity to produce more than 500,000 tons of pellets per year that will be exported to Europe.

At the event, Gerhard Pörtl Wandel, CEO of Alengo Latam, acknowledged that the plant will only generate 12 direct jobs, but the most beneficial aspect of all is that it will enable the processing of all the urban solid waste generated in Umán, Kanasín, Tixpéual, Progreso, Ucú, Conkal and Mérida, mainly, so “there would be no need for more landfills”. “Urban solid waste will be transformed into an alternative fuel to replace coal,” he said during the event, held at the International Convention Center.

Vila Dosal pointed out that the CDR Pellets Waste Transformation Plant “is a project that will make Yucatan a more sustainable place, by making use of German technology, which will allow to treat 1,500 tons per day, which is equivalent to removing up to 90,000 vehicles from circulation”.

“This will make Yucatan an exporter of garbage; while many places in the country and the world do not know what to do with their garbage, in Yucatan we are going to export it to Europe in the form of solid biomass, to generate energy and use it as fuel,” said the President of Yucatan.

He added that in four months the work will begin and, in the first quarter of 2024, it will start producing energy. He recalled that one of the first actions regarding solid waste management in the State was to generate personalized Solid Waste Management Programs for each of the 106 municipalities, through technical analysis for a greener Yucatan.

He detailed that each demarcation has one or two solid waste deposits where they dump their waste in the open air, a situation with which “we cannot stand idly by“.

An agreement was signed with the seven town councils to create the Metropolitan Waste Management System, which contemplates closing open-air dumps, establishing transfer stations, promoting differentiated collection, equipping to improve collection and going from having seven final disposal sites to one, in the capital’s Sanitary Landfill.

TYT Newsroom