Waste volumes are rising faster than most communities and industries can sustainably manage. While recycling and large-scale energy-from-waste plants are valuable tools, they don’t solve every problem — recycling can’t eliminate all waste streams, and energy recovery projects are often complex, expensive, and can take years to develop. Sometimes what’s needed is simply a fast, clean, and reliable way to dispose of waste on-site, today. That’s exactly the gap the Pyroclast® pyrolysis unit is designed to fill.
What is the Pyroclast?
The Pyroclast is a skid-mounted, containerised pyrolysis system built primarily for final waste disposal. Unlike energy-from-waste installations that can take months or years to plan, permit, and construct, the Pyroclast is engineered for rapid deployment — it ships inside a standard ISO container and can be operational with minimal site works.
The Pyroclast can be transported directly to site and put to work almost immediately, running 24 hours a day to convert waste into clean ash — or, where preferred, valuable carbon char.
Energy recovery is not excluded, though. The system can be paired with an Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) power unit to convert waste heat into electricity, but this sits as an optional add-on rather than a core requirement — keeping the base unit simple, economical, and fast to deploy.
The Problem It Solves
Municipal solid waste, biomass residues, clinical waste, and even material recovered from historic landfill all need somewhere to go. Traditional options each have drawbacks:
- Recycling only addresses a fraction of the waste stream.
- Large-scale energy recovery projects are capital-intensive and slow to bring online.
- Landfill is increasingly restricted, costly, and environmentally undesirable.
The Pyroclast addresses this by offering a modular, relocatable, and rapidly deployable alternative that can be scaled by adding multiple units, rather than requiring one large fixed installation.
How the Technology Works
At the heart of the Pyroclast is a patented Clean Pyrolysis Process. This is fundamentally different from incineration, which relies on controlled flames and burning zones. Pyrolysis instead operates in the near-total absence of oxygen, thermally degrading solid waste into gaseous form — without combustion taking place inside the chamber itself.
A useful analogy from the source technology description: think of ice turning to steam without ever passing through a liquid (water) phase. In the same way, solid waste is converted directly to gas without an intermediate “burning” state.
Process Flow
- Front-end preparation – Raw municipal solid waste typically requires sorting equipment (rotary screens and similar machinery) to prepare feedstock. Waste recovered from landfill generally needs a simpler front end — often just one or two rotary screens.
- Shredding and feeding – Wet biomass feedstocks are shredded to an acceptable size and fed into the pyrolyser via a compacting feed screw.
- Pyrolysis – The waste is thermally degraded within the pyrolyser in the absence of oxygen.
- Gas destruction – Pyrogas and syngas produced during the process are immediately destroyed in a high-temperature thermal oxidiser, ensuring emissions are tightly controlled.
- Output – The process yields ash (or carbon char) and heat. Unused heat can be dumped or, optionally, converted to electricity via an ORC package.
Front-end drying isn’t essential — drying occurs naturally within the pyrolyser — but adding a dedicated dryer can increase a single unit’s throughput capacity.
Clean Emissions by Design
Because pyrolysis avoids open combustion, the Pyroclast achieves clean emissions when processing typical municipal solid waste. For more challenging feedstocks — such as clinical or hazardous waste — a separate emissions control module can be added to meet stringent environmental standards.
With patented technology destroying pyrogas and syngas in a high-temperature thermal oxidiser, the Pyroclast is built for maximum environmental protection, even with difficult waste streams.
Specifications at a Glance
| Parameter | Pyroclast I | Pyroclast II |
|---|---|---|
| Mass flow (wet basis) | 6–20 tonnes/day | 6–40 tonnes/day |
| Mass flow (dry basis) | 4–12 tonnes/day | 4–24 tonnes/day |
| Thermal energy capacity (20% moisture MSW) | ~780 kW (at 6 t/day) | up to 5.18 MW (at 40 t/day) |
| Electrical power potential (max) | 500 kW | 1000 kW |
| Footprint | 40ft high-lift ISO container | 40ft high-lift ISO container |
| Normal operation availability | 85% | 85% |
| Preventative maintenance availability | 90% | 90% |
Design moisture content: The unit is designed around a 20% (wet basis) moisture content, though it can handle higher moisture levels — with a corresponding reduction in available thermal energy.
Accepted waste types:
– Biomass of many varieties
– Sorted municipal solid waste
– Clinical waste
– Thermally degradable hazardous waste
Applications
The Pyroclast’s containerised, mobile format makes it suited to a wide range of scenarios:
- Temporary or emergency waste disposal where speed of deployment matters
- Small communities needing a permanent, in-building primary disposal method
- Mined landfill waste processing, reclaiming space and reducing legacy liabilities
- Hazardous and clinical waste streams, with the optional emissions control module
- Waste-to-energy projects, using the Pyroclast as an economical base unit ahead of adding ORC power generation
Operation is flexible — the unit can run continuously, in extended campaigns, or simply as and when waste needs disposing of.
Energy Recovery Option
While disposal is the primary function, the Pyroclast can be configured for energy production. As illustrated in the process Sankey flow, heat generated during pyrolysis and oxidation can be routed through a boiler and ORC package to generate electricity, with excess heat rejected via cooling. Alternatively, the gasification stage of carbon char can be omitted entirely, yielding a carbon char output that serves as a valuable soil conditioner and a means of long-term carbon sequestration.
Key Takeaways
- The Pyroclast is a skid-mounted pyrolysis system built into a standard ISO container for rapid, low-disruption deployment.
- It uses a patented Clean Pyrolysis Process that thermally degrades waste without combustion, keeping emissions low.
- Available in two capacities — Pyroclast I (6–20 t/day wet) and Pyroclast II (6–40 t/day wet) — with thermal energy capacities ranging from 780 kW to 5.18 MW.
- Outputs are ash or carbon char plus recoverable heat, with optional ORC-based electricity generation up to 1000 kW.
- Suitable for municipal solid waste, biomass, clinical waste, hazardous waste, and mined landfill material.
- Larger throughputs can be achieved simply by deploying multiple modules.
Get in Touch
Whether you’re facing an urgent waste disposal challenge, exploring options for landfill remediation, or considering a scalable path toward waste-to-energy, the Pyroclast offers a proven, rapidly deployable solution. Contact our team today to discuss your feedstock, site requirements, and how a Pyroclast unit — or a multi-module configuration — could work for your project.