Siemens IPS Composting System to Boost Performance at Canadian Facility

Siemens IPS composting system 5 November 2010 Laflèche Environmental, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Montreal-based TransForce, Inc., has awarded Siemens with a contract to supply a 100-horsepower IPS composting system for the Moose Creek, Ontario, composting facility. The 52,000 square foot (4,831 square metre) enclosed plant, built in 2009, is designed to receive up to 50,000 tonnes of source separated organics (SSO), including food residuals, paper, leaf and yard waste and other organic materials. The Siemens IPS composting system from Siemens will allow the Moose Creek facility to efficiently and economically meet its compost production goals. The system is scheduled for delivery in December 2010. The company said that the existing composting system at the Moose Creek plant, was unable to meet the performance criteria required for the plant to achieve its design capacity. The IPS Composting System is an enclosed in-vessel, agitated, aerated, automated composting process with effective biofiltration odor control. Siemens say that the system transforms dewatered biosolids, MSW and SSO into high quality compost products, as well as stabilizing residual waste in Mechanical Biological Treatment. In May the plant extended its operating hours from 10 to 24 hours a day to allow sufficient time for the machine to process all of the compost bays. When this proved inadequate, the company contacted Siemens for help in exploring several alternatives for modifying the existing compost operation. Lafleche selected an option that involved a combination of structural and mechanical modifications that would best meet the plant's economic and operational goals. "Our options were to either drastically modify our plant structure to accommodate the new IPS system, or have Siemens modify their machine to fit our existing structure," said Don MacDonnell, operations manager at Laflèche. "We worked out a solution where we will modify our plant slightly, and they will modify their system slightly." Siemens claim that once the IPS composting system is installed and operating, it will process the required number of bays in the original 10-hour workday, and ensure that Laflèche meets its production schedule, achieves the compost plant design capacity and delivers a quality compost product to its end users. Brian King, president of Laflèche, said, "What sold me on Siemens was their engineering and fabrication capacities built from a strong foundation of experience and knowledge in designing and building proven solutions. We are excited about being true team members on this project with Siemens, where we work together toward a real win-win result for all of us."