Turning city waste into clean, dispatchable power for America's data centers
SMSM Global Services builds standardized, modular waste-to-energy steam-turbine plants that can be built faster and more predictably than one-off plants.
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Why waste-to-power, and why now
America is building data centers faster than its grid can power them. Driven by AI, U.S. data-center electricity demand has already tripled in a decade and is projected to reach 325–580 TWh by 2028, as much as 12% of the nation's electricity. More than 40% of that power comes from natural gas today, which ties critical digital infrastructure to a fuel that is both carbon-emitting and price-volatile.
At the same time, American cities generate roughly 292 million tons of municipal waste every year and pay billions to bury it, and landfills remain the third-largest source of U.S. methane emissions. The hard part is no longer the demand for compute. It is speed-to-power: getting reliable, dispatchable generation built next to the load, and getting it built fast. Conventional power plants take years to permit and construct. That gap is where this project sits.
Our solution: SMSM Global Services designs standardized, pre-engineered waste-to-energy steam-turbine modules that turn municipal waste into on-site electricity. The waste is burned to raise high-pressure steam, the steam drives a turbine and generator, and the water recirculates in a closed loop. A disposal cost becomes 24/7 baseload power. Because the modules are standardized and plug-and-play, they go up in months rather than years, sit next to data-center campuses, and can run in combined-heat-and-power mode at up to 80% total efficiency. They can also run islanded as backup power for hospitals, communications, and other critical infrastructure.
The result is a closed loop: waste that cities already pay to get rid of becomes clean, dispatchable power for the digital economy. It keeps garbage out of landfills, cuts methane, eases strain on the grid, and lowers the carbon intensity of AI infrastructure.
Demand is outrunning the grid
AI-driven data-center demand is surging against a fossil-heavy grid, while cities pay to bury ~292M tons of waste a year.
Speed-to-power is the bottleneck
The constraint isn't compute. It's building reliable, dispatchable generation beside the load in months rather than years.
Plug-and-play waste-to-power
Standardized modular steam-turbine units turn municipal waste into clean, on-site baseload power for data centers.
Waste becomes heat, heat becomes steam, and steam becomes electricity, while the water runs on a closed loop the whole time.
Waste Incineration
Municipal waste is fed from a sealed bunker and burned at ~1,000°C, cutting its volume ~90% and releasing intense heat. Bottom ash is recovered for metals and aggregate.
Heat Recovery & Steam
Hot flue gas passes through a heat-recovery boiler (economizer → drum → superheater), boiling water into high-pressure superheated steam.
Power Generation
Steam spins the turbine, the generator makes electricity, and a transformer delivers clean power on-site to the data center or grid.
A repeatable, standardized path from engineering to a running plant.
Standardize the blueprint
Pre-engineer the turbine module once, covering layouts, heat-recovery integration, piping and stress, so every deployment starts from a validated design.
Find the right site
Screen and rank locations with geospatial data: proximity to waste, grid, water, and data-center demand.
Deploy the module
Hand developers and EPC contractors bankable engineering packages that cut lead time and construction risk.
Operate & support
Commissioning oversight and reliability-centered design deliver high availability from day one.
Where the project stands today
A standardized, three-phase program taking the model from validated engineering blueprints to a first reference deployment.
System model & validation
Interactive nine-stage process model, technical walkthrough, and engineering business plan completed.
Phase 1: Blueprint standardization
The SMSM-WTP-20 module defined to FEED level: 29 controlled deliverables, a drawing set, a preliminary HAZOP and a Class-5 cost estimate, all tied to one design basis.
Phase 2: Site suitability
The W2W-COM national siting model completed, hardened for permitting and water, and grounded on the EPA LMOP landfill inventory; leading corridors ranked and documented (Rev D).
Phase 3: Deployment
Design-distinction and data-center integration architecture defined; ten-year business plan issued; next is partner engagement and a first reference deployment.
An engineering foundation, already underway
Phase 1 is backed by a preliminary engineering package for the standardized SMSM-WTP-20 module (~20 MWe). This is the design-definition work that comes before detailed CAD and analysis, and it shows the technical depth behind the concept.
Figures are representative of typical municipal waste-to-energy plants (U.S. EPA, DOE). Actual output depends on site scale and configuration.
Built by an engineer who has commissioned the real thing
This endeavor is led by a mechanical engineer who has spent his career designing, stress-engineering, and commissioning the exact systems it depends on, from the drawing board to the running plant.
B.Sc. Mechanical Engineering · PMP
Katy, Texas
Oluwaseun Ajayi is a mechanical engineer whose career spans the full life of heavy energy assets: thermodynamic and mechanical design, high-pressure and cryogenic piping, pipe-stress analysis, and the installation, commissioning, and reliability of gas-turbine power packages in the field. He has taken major oil, gas, LNG, and power projects from concept design through to the running plant, across the United States, South Korea, and Nigeria.
That range is deliberate. Most engineers either design or operate; he does both. He has stress-engineered critical steam and cryogenic systems, modeled entire plants in 3D, commissioned Solar Turbines (Caterpillar) machinery on live sites, and standardized engineering practice in ways that shortened review cycles and cut out costly rework. Early in his career he was one of only 36 engineers selected nationwide for a flagship national program, an early sign of the caliber he has carried since.
This is exactly the skill set the endeavor requires. Turning a standardized waste-to-energy turbine module into a running plant takes an engineer who understands the thermodynamics, the mechanical design, the piping and stress, and the practical realities of commissioning. That is the work he has done for more than fourteen years, and the reason he is positioned to design it, prove it, and lead it into the field.
Let's build the power layer for America's digital infrastructure
We're working with energy developers, data-center operators, EPC contractors, and public agencies to deploy the first modules, and welcoming investors who want in early.
Energy developers & IPPs
License standardized module blueprints to accelerate speed-to-power for data-center offtake.
Data-center operators
Co-develop on-site, dispatchable generation and combined-heat-and-power cooling beside your campus.
Public agencies
Align siting and design with federal AI-infrastructure and clean-energy programs.
Investors
Back an asset-light engineering venture positioned at the center of the AI-power bottleneck.
Start a conversation
For partnership, investment, or technical collaboration, reach out and we'll share the technical brief and business plan.
Request the technical briefEngineered, standardized, built to code
The SMSM-WTP-20 is a pre-engineered modular waste-to-energy plant, not a concept. One validated design, repeated, so speed-to-power is measured in months rather than years.
A closed-loop thermal power plant, standardized end to end.
Combustion & heat recovery
Municipal waste is burned on a moving grate above 850°C with staged combustion air; a heat-recovery boiler (economizer → drum → superheater) raises high-pressure superheated steam.
Power island
The steam drives a single-cylinder condensing turbine and generator for ~20 MW net, and a surface condenser and cooling loop return the water in a closed Rankine cycle.
Emissions control
A full air-pollution-control train (SNCR, dry sorbent injection, activated-carbon injection, and a fabric filter), with continuous emissions monitoring at the stack.
Every module is engineered to the same standards as conventional power and process plants, and sized to meet U.S. and international emission limits.
Backed by a complete FEED engineering package
The SMSM-WTP-20 is defined by a 29-deliverable front-end engineering design (FEED) package, the design-definition work that comes before detailed design on any major energy project. It spans process, mechanical, electrical, controls, safety and cost.
Waste-to-energy earns twice: a gate fee to accept the waste, and a tariff to sell the power. That dual revenue, rather than the electricity price alone, is what drives the returns. Explore it live in the Siting Model →
The work behind the vision
This endeavor is documented rather than asserted. It rests on a body of original engineering and analysis produced by SMSM Global Services.
National Siting Analysis (W2W-COM)
An original application of established spatial-interaction methods that identifies where modular waste-to-energy can co-locate with U.S. data-center demand, hardened with permitting, water and economics, validated against the existing U.S. fleet and, in Revision D, grounded on the EPA's national landfill inventory.
Explore the live model →SMSM-WTP-20 FEED Portfolio
Twenty-nine controlled deliverables: PFD and P&IDs, general arrangements, equipment datasheets, control and safety philosophies, a preliminary HAZOP, and a Class-5 cost estimate.
See the technology →Reference module & business case
The standardized ~20 MW module, its heat-and-mass balance, and a transparent CAPEX / OPEX / LCOE case built on the dual gate-fee-and-power revenue model, carried through a ten-year business plan in which every external figure links to its public source.
How the module differs from the existing U.S. fleet
A standing reference (DF-1003) that compares the SMSM-WTP-20 with all 61 operating U.S. waste-to-energy plants, plant by plant, and explains what is different: a repeatable module instead of a one-off plant, siting where waste and data-center demand coincide, and an integration layer built for data-center loads. It states plainly that the thermal core is proven, not new.
Reviewer & partner access
The full technical white paper, FEED portfolio and cost model are available to serious partners, investors and reviewers on request. We share the technical brief and supporting documentation directly.
Materials reflect front-end (concept / FEED) engineering and screening-grade analysis prepared to inform planning, investment and permitting discussions; they are not construction-issued designs.
Every headline figure traces to an independent, authoritative publication, mapped to the exact claim it supports. Compiled September 2026; each row links to its primary source.
| Claim / figure on this site | Independent source | Link |
|---|---|---|
| U.S. MSW generation (~292M tons/yr), recycling & landfill split, ~90% volume reduction | U.S. EPA · Advancing Sustainable Materials Management: Facts & Figures | epa.gov ↗ |
| Contestable landfilled waste per corridor; waste-supply grounding (GS-1102 Rev D) | U.S. EPA · Landfill Methane Outreach Program (LMOP) Database, Sep 2024 | epa.gov/lmop ↗ |
| CO₂ avoided per year; region-specific grid emission factors | U.S. EPA · eGRID | epa.gov/egrid ↗ |
| Data-center demand growth (176 bn kWh in 2023; 325–580 TWh by 2028) | DOE / Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory · 2024 U.S. Data Center Energy Usage Report | lbl.gov ↗ |
| U.S. electricity generation, capacity & price data | U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) · Electricity | eia.gov ↗ |
| Global electricity-demand & firm-capacity context | International Energy Agency (IEA) · Electricity 2024 | iea.org ↗ |
| Global waste-to-energy market size & growth | Global Market Insights · Waste-to-Energy Market, 2025–2034 | gminsights.com ↗ |
| Metropolitan population estimates (waste & demand catchment) | U.S. Census Bureau · Metropolitan & Micropolitan Statistical Areas | census.gov ↗ |
Eight independent sources; U.S. EPA appears across three distinct datasets (Facts & Figures, eGRID, LMOP). Figures are screening / concept-grade and current as of the compilation date above.