Case Study: Lucas Heights Resource Recovery Park

Located in Lucas Heights, Sydney, NSW, the Lucas Heights Resource Recovery Park is one of Australia’s largest operating waste processing facilities, with its Renewable Energy Smart Cell® technology and additional ORRF organics facility processing over 625,000 tonnes of waste per year.

The Problem

As the facility expanded and increased capacity the surrounding suburbs also became larger and the facility has begun to encroach on densely populated residential and industrial zones.

By 2018, complaints had become a regular occurrence, and regulatory authorities had issued the site with notices requiring them to take action and reduce the amount of diffuse odours that were being released by the facility.

The brief was to find a way to reduce odours and improve air quality. 

Quite rapidly the situation escalated and the facility operators engaged CleanaWater’s Odour Control Department to assist in coming up with a solution to ensure the facility could continue to operate while mitigating complaints from surrounding residents and businesses.

The Solution

Initial enquiries from landfill management were for traditional misting systems that atomise diluted odour neutralisers into the air, although these systems can sometimes still be useful, due to the size of the operation and the importance of Select Civil, who manage the SUEZ owned facility, getting a comprehensive solution, CleanaWater recommended the facility managers take a different approach.

That approach is a new technology rapidly gaining popularity in the US and Europe using vapour based neutralisers rather than atomised water-based solutions. Cleanawater installed two VapourGard™ VG 500 systems around the boundary of the active waste cells, using our QuikAir® 0900V vapourising odour neutralising solution.

Since installation, complaints all but ceased, and reports from operations have confirmed that odours are now minimal, noticing a substantial improvement in the air quality, even within the site premises.

Benefits

• Improved air quality
• Expert management of odour emissions
• Elimination of business and resident complaints
• Environmental regulation compliance
• Increased community approval