AEB finalizes overhaul

AEB successfully completed planned major maintenance work on the waste-to-energy plant (AEC) last weekend.

The work took place on incineration lines 23 and 24 or 'block 20' of one of the installations. The hoppers, which dispense waste into the incinerator, have been completely renewed, as has the associated cooling system. New slag shafts were also installed. These ensure the disposal of bottom ash, the residual product of the incineration.

A number of important improvements have been made in flue gas cleaning. For example, the absorber, an installation that removes acids from the flue gases, has been overhauled. In addition, more than 3 kilometres of piping in the washing stairs have been replaced - for the first time since the delivery of the AEC in 1993. Thanks to these improvements, AEB can extract contamination from the fumes much more efficiently and the installation has become much safer.

Maintenance work focused on some of the main bottlenecks which led to the decision to shut down four of the six lines in the summer of 2019. At that time, temporary solutions were put in place to overcome the bottlenecks. Structural improvements were made with this overhaul.

The overhaul was carried out coronaproof. The 300 additional temporary staff, many of whom were from Germany, were subject to strict precautionary measures. By observing these, no outbreak cluster arose around the overhaul. 

The overhaul was carried out on time and within budget. "This is an enormous achievement of the revision team," says Albert den Hartog, COO of AEB Amsterdam. "The team managed to maintain a high level of discipline under difficult circumstances. That deserves a big compliment".