SINGAPORE - The National Environment Agency (NEA) has awarded a Keppel-led consortium a $1.5 billion engineering, procurement and construction contract to develop facilities for a new integrated waste management plant in Tuas.
The consortium consists of Keppel Seghers Engineering Singapore, a unit of Keppel Corp; China Harbour (Singapore) Engineering Company; and ST Engineering Marine, the marine arm of Singapore Technologies Engineering. Keppel Seghers, China Harbour and ST Engineering Marine's share of the works under the contract will be 48 per cent, 31 per cent and 21 per cent respectively.
The group will design and build a 2,900 tonnes per day (tpd) waste-to-energy (WTE) facility and a 250 tpd materials recovery facility (MRF) for Phase 1 of the new Tuas Nexus integrated waste management facility (IWMF), the companies said in a joint statement on Wednesday (April 22).
To be located next to PUB's Tuas Water Reclamation Plant at the Tuas View Basin site, the WTE facility and the MRF will be among the largest of such facilities in Singapore upon completion in 2024, the companies said.
Singapore aims to reduce the average daily amount of waste sent to Semakau Landfill by 30 per cent from 0.36 kilograms per capita in 2018 to 0.25 kg/capita by 2030. The IWMF will help Singapore achieve long-term environmental sustainability goals by improving resource and energy recovery from waste, NEA said in its own release on Wednesday.
The IWMF will be equipped with state-of-the-art solid waste treatment technologies to improve energy and resource recovery from waste. It will also be Singapore's first integrated facility to treat incinerable waste, source-segregated food waste and dewatered sludge from PUB's water reclamation plant in Tuas.
Based on Keppel Seghers' proprietary technology, the WTE facility will generate sufficient electricity to sustain the operations of Tuas Nexus Phase 1, as well as the initial phase of the Tuas Water Reclamation Plant, with excess electricity for export to the grid. NEA said the amount of excess electricity exported to the grid by IWMF when it is fully operational will be able to power up to 300,000 four-room HDB apartments.
China Harbour will undertake the civil, structural and landscaping scope of the project, while ST Engineering Marine arm will be responsible for the construction of the MRF, power-island and the balance of plant.
"With advanced technologies to sort metals, paper, cardboard and plastics automatically, the MRF will improve sorting efficiency, contributing towards the overall recycling rate in Singapore," the companies added.
NEA chief executive Tan Meng Dui said: "The concept of the Tuas Nexus has stirred a lot of interest in the global waste management industry, as well as in the used water treatment industry. It is the first greenfield project that involves the development of two mega waste treatment facilities located side-by-side to exploit co-location synergies, and one that will spin off many similar circular economy developments in the years to come."
A separate IWMF contract for a sludge incineration facility and a food waste treatment facility is in the tender phase and will be awarded later this year, said NEA.
