Phuket’s new incinerator online “by May’

PHUKET’s second trash incinerator at the Saphan Hin facility is almost fully complete and is expected to be operational by May.

Prachum Suriya, chief of the Phuket City Municipality Environment Office, told the Gazette that construction of the second waste incinerator is now 95 per cent complete.

“The remaining five percent includes office accommodation and surrounding environment. At present, the staff is checking the new incinerator system and will begin a burn test in a few days,” he said.

“Right now the incinerator burner is running, but we haven’t loaded trash into it yet. It needs time to heat it up to 400ºC, after which we will start loading trash for the test. The new incinerator will be tested for about a month, then we will start using it for real,” said Mr Prachum.

Project contractor PJT Technology spent 960 million baht on construction of the new burner and the Environment Office applied to Cabinet at the meeting in Phuket earlier this month to approve 89mn baht for back-burning the landfill and renovating the area for the future use, Mr Prachum explained.

“When the new incinerator is operational, the old incinerator will be shut down for renovations. That should take about 20 months. We are just waiting for the budget allocation,” he added.

The current landfill at the site is full and there is currently more than 600 tons of trash arriving each day to be burned.

Completion of Klong Koh Pee overpass, which was recently approved by Cabinet, will facilitate the faster delivery of waste as most trash delivered comes from the western route, he added.

“We will start burning off the landfill as soon as the new incinerator is fully operational,” Mr Prachum said.

— Orawin Narabal