Waste-to-Fuel Process Is an Innovative Win-Win

Collaboration and smart engineering are turning one industry’s waste into another’s fuel.

CIRCON Environmental takes waste from oil refinery tanks and delivers it to cement makers, where it’s used in place of coal to power kilns.

Senior VP of Business Development Gary Higginbotham says CIRCON collects over 120 million pounds of waste annually from refiners like Phillips 66, Marathon Oil, Valero and ExxonMobil. If that went to an incinerator, 50% would go into the dump as ash.

Because cement manufacturers’ kilns operate at 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit, everything burns completely, with no residual ash. That means nothing goes to a landfill.

– Katherine Brennecke, The Engineering 100