ECOVE Receives Praise from Owner for Upgrading the Efficiency of Gangshan EfW Plant

Writtten by: Huang Ming-Te, the Manager of Gangshan EfW Plant, Environmental Protection Business Operation Center, Taiwan Sugar Corporation.


The Gangshan EfW Plant is an incineration facility owned by the Kaohsiung City Government. The City commissioned the  EfW plant operation to TSC in 2001. The waste disposal capacity of this plant was designed at 1,350 tons/day (three 450-ton-per-day furnaces), but the operating efficiency began to decline in recent years. This is mainly due to the thinning of furnace tubes, wear and tear of furnace bed and furnace wall slagging. The level of waste in the storage pits has persistently remained at high and a vicious cycle of low EfW plant rate began to roll.

The "garbage problem" has become an urgent matter in the Kaohsiung area, but TSC is a business in the state-owned enterprise system and therefore is required to follow the government procurement procedures and regulations for maintenance of the major system equipment and procurement of various supplies. This is a time-consuming process and very often the expected goals cannot be achieved in the most time-efficient manner, especially for urgent repairs. Under the legal restrictions, investment in equipment maintenance often results in latent effects. Therefore, after a team of the professional consultants was brought into the plant for assessment and diagnosis, in 2016, the Kaohsiung City Government finally launched the open tender for "commissioning a technical service supplier to upgrade the efficiency of the Gangshan EfW Plant" based on the expert recommendations. This tender was targeted to seek a competent technical service supplier to upgrade the equipment and operating environment, in expectation to improve the operating rate and equipment efficiency.

In June 2017, the tender was opened and Ecove Environment Service Corp. won the bid. This company, a subsidiary of the ECOVE founded in 1994, has over 20 years of experience in maintenance and annual service of incinerators and a strong technical backup from its parent company, CTCI, an expert in incinerator construction. In addition, ECOVE has also assisted TSC in annual service and overhaul projects at the Kanding Incineration Plant. Therefore, TSC believed that the company's professional background and experience will help the Gangshan EfW plant to enhance its efficiency.

The scope of this project covers an overall upgrade of EfW equipment and the main incineration processes. In the first stage of equipment upgrade (Jul. to Nov. 2017), improvement of the furnace bed and combustion system has been completed. Compared to the condition before the upgrade, the daily processing volume increased by nearly 300 tons, and the operating rate was increased from 73% to now full capacity. This upgrade has effective relieved the City from the pressure of waste treatment and the neighboring counties and cities have began to seek regional cooperation from the Kaohsiung City EPA. In this project, ECOVE demonstrated high-level of professionalism and dedication from the initial manpower arrangement and seamless integration of daily operations and maintenance work to introducing patented technology, intelligent systems and equipment evaluation and improvement. It is indeed not an easy task to achieve such a remarkable improvement in just six months. Our on-site staff observed that ECOVE's field staffs were very focused and that is why they were able to improve equipment efficiency in such scale and significantly ahead of the schedule. We are very please with such results and recommend highly of their services.