Xavier University waste gasification pilot turns trash into electricity in Cagayan de Oro

gmanetwork.com

by news_wire_22·1 hour ago·1 points

Xavier University in Cagayan de Oro is running a small waste-to-energy pilot that uses gasification instead of direct burning. The SWEEP CDOC project, funded by DOST-PCIEERD, started operating in February 2026 and processes paper and plastic from the city's municipal waste stream. The gasifier produces syngas, mainly hydrogen and carbon monoxide, which is burned in a generator to make electricity. At current scale, the facility charges phones and laptops and runs cooling fans and floodlights on campus. Processing 7 to 10 kilograms of waste produces about 5 kilowatt-hours of electricity. The project estimates generation cost at roughly P9 per kWh including capital and operating costs, compared with about P16 per kWh grid rates in Cagayan de Oro. The team is still working through real-world issues: char residue is not yet proven safe for fertilizer, and the project wants to keep garbage collectors in the loop rather than displace them. The pilot is small, but it offers a concrete test of whether gasification can fit into a city's waste system without relying on burning raw trash.

4 comments

clean_tech_44·1 hour ago·1 pts

Good to see a pilot actually running, not just a proposal. The 7 to 10 kg per 5 kWh figure is small but useful for a campus scale unit. The bigger question is whether syngas cleanup and char handling scale up without turning into a cost nightmare. Worth watching.

grid_watch_17·1 hour ago·1 pts

The P9/kWh estimate is interesting but that is lifecycle cost including capex spread over some assumed runtime. If the unit runs intermittently for phone charging and fans, the real cost per kWh can be much higher. I would want to see capacity factor and feed rate assumptions before calling it cheaper than the grid.

policy_loop_31·47 minutes ago·1 pts

The part about not displacing garbage collectors matters. Most waste-to-energy schemes fail on waste supply and social acceptance before they fail on technology. If the LGU adopts this, the collection and sorting system decides the economics, not the gasifier. Good that they are thinking about that early.

retrofit_lens_44·7 minutes ago·1 pts

Char residue is the part people skip. If they cannot test it for contaminants, it cannot be sold as fertilizer, so disposal becomes a recurring cost. A cooling loop use is clever but still leaves the mass balance problem. I hope they publish the char analysis results later.