SINGAPORE — The construction of Singapore’s first integrated water and solid waste treatment plant, known as Tuas Nexus, is now underway. 

The facility, which includes the Tuas Water Reclamation Plant and Integrated Waste Management Facility, was first announced in 2016.

The National Environment Agency and national water agency PUB said in a press release on Tuesday (Sept 8) that the facility will be energy self-sufficient with the by-product of one facility being used as a resource for the other. 

For example, food waste at the waste facility will be converted into food waste slurry, which will then be co-digested with used water sludge from the water reclamation plant to create biogas.

Biogas, which is rich in methane, can be converted to electricity to sustain the operations of Tuas Nexus. 

Efforts to keep Tuas Nexus energy-sufficient are expected to reduce more than 200,000 tonnes in carbon emissions in a year — the equivalent of taking 42,500 cars off the roads in the same period.

Integrating the two plants has also saved 2.6 hectares of land, the equivalent of four football fields. 

TUAS WATER RECLAMATION PLANT

Furnishing details of the facility, the agencies said that unlike other water treatment plants, the Tuas Water Reclamation Plant will be able to receive both domestic and industrial used water for treatment from two separate deep tunnels.

These two water sources will be treated separately, with 650,000 cubic metres of used domestic water and 150,000 cubic metres of used industrial water to be treated daily.

The treated domestic water will be purified further to NEWater while the treated industrial water can be sent back to industries to be reused.

The Tuas Water Reclamation Plant will be the first plant in Singapore that can treat used industrial water to a standard that is high enough to be reused by industries, the agencies added.

INTEGRATED WASTE MANAGEMENT FACILITY

As for the Integrated Waste Management Facility, it will be Singapore’s largest waste incineration plant when fully completed.

There are now four waste-to-energy incineration plants in Singapore. 

However, unlike these plants that only incinerate waste, this facility will process multiple waste streams including incinerable waste, household recyclables collected under the national recycling programme, food waste and de-watered sludge from the Tuas Water Reclamation Plant.

The waste facility will be developed in phases with the first phase done by 2025 and the whole facility likely completed by 2028.

Once it is in operation, it will have an incineration capacity of 5,800 tonnes a day.