January 9, 2004—The Carpet America Recovery Effort (CARE)—the voluntary initiative of the carpet industry and government to reduce the amount of carpet burdening our nation’s landfills—received a boost recently when Congress appropriated a $300,000 grant for the study of carpet as an alternative, clean fuel source for cement kilns.
Currently 4.7 billion pounds of carpet go into landfills annually across the US, with a BTU value of between 8,500-10,000 per pound, says CARE. It has been estimated that by using 65% of all spent carpet as a fuel source, cement kilns can extract on an annual basis approximately 31.2 million million BTUs of energy.
In addition to the energy savings, burning carpet can be cleaner and less expensive than burning coal. Carpet also contains calcium carbonate, an ingredient in cement that kiln operators otherwise have to buy.
A key factor in the use of cement kilns as a resource is to jump start the collection infrastructure for spent carpet. Without high volume outlets that can take a wide variety of carpet material, it is difficult for waste collectors to justify collection processes for particular types of carpet or for small volumes. Cement kilns offer a stable and robust option for diverting carpet from the waste stream.
Experts have calculated that a cement kiln could burn at least 48 tons of carpet a day, replacing up to 15% of the coal burned as fuel. If only 10 kilns in the US adopted carpet as an alternative fuel, CARE says that this effort would help the organization reach its goal of diverting 40% of carpet from landfills by 2012.
