Advanced Digestion Technology Blog

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Somerset food waste to provide energy for homes.

http://www.itv.com/news/westcountry/2012-05-08/somerset-food-waste-to-provide-energy-for-homes

Somerset AD plant gets the Monsal treatment

Waste management company Viridor has begun construction on a state-of-the-art anaerobic digestion facility near Bridgwater in Somerset. The £10m project is being developed by Viridor where Monsal are providing the technology which will convert food waste into renewable energy via their Advanced Digestion process.

The plant will be Viridor’s first Food waste AD facility and will be located at its Walpole landfill site. The Somerset Waste Board agreed in September 2011 to develop the facility and the plant is expected to be operational by April 2013.

Capacity

Viridor’s Somerset AD facility will be located at the firm’s Walpole landfill site (pictured)

The facility- which will cost around £10 million – will have the capacity to process up to 30,000 tonnes of food waste per year, 20,000 tonnes of which will be provided by the Somerset Waste Partnership, which includes all six of Somerset’s councils. The remaining 10,000 tonnes of capacity will be used to process waste from restaurants, supermarkets, catering firms, pubs, shops and other businesses in the local area.

The plant will also produce over one megawatt of power, enough to supply more than 1,700 homes.

Patrick Murray, Viridor’s regional manager, said: “This is a fantastic development for Somerset that will help divert even more waste from landfill and increase recycling rates.

Working with Somerset Waste Partnership we will process 20,000 tonnes of food waste collected from residents across the county. The remaining capacity will be filled from food waste we collect from local businesses.”

“The plant will also provide some excellent employment opportunities with 20 jobs during the construction phase and six full-time positions when the plant starts operating in April 2013.” 

Benefits

Viridor committed to build the anaerobic digestion (AD) facility under part of its long-term contract to manage Somerset’s waste, which began in 2006 and runs until March 31 2022

Somerset Waste Board chairman Councillor Derek Yeomans said: “Somerset residents are working hard with us maximise the weekly food collections and keep this valuable resource out of landfill. The next step, working with our partner Viridor, is to create clean, green renewable power right here in Somerset for the local grid.”

“The new AD facility will also save taxpayers around £1 million over the next five years so it’s a genuine win on both environmental and economic grounds. We’d like to encourage all residents to use the scheme if they are not already, as the more we can process, the bigger the benefits.”

Technology

Monsal , the UKs leading biogas to energy specialist, will provide the technology platform. Monsals Managing Director Aidan Cumiskey said “We are delighted to be working with Viridor on their first food waste recycling and energy plant.  This project will be state-of-the-art using the latest innovations to convert food waste to energy and will build on the considerable track record we now have in the UK”

The plant is the 4th Advanced Digestion plant Monsal will construct in the UK for treatment of Food waste based on its class leading Advanced Digestion system.

Monsal Managing Director Aidan Cumiskey said “Our track record now speaks for itself in the UK with established operational plants at Deerdykes and Westry and construction of two additional advanced facilities now underway.”

“ Viridor is a major player in the sector and the fact that they have chosen our technology for their first food waste plant speaks volumes about the confidence they have in our offering to deal with multiple waste streams. We have worked hard to develop a solution and supply chain that can service this new Cleantech market. In particular we are taking a lead position in the treatment of food waste.”

Introduction

A state of the art food waste processing facility that will have the capacity to receive up to 40,000 tonnes of food waste per year is now under construction at the Bristol Sewage Treatment works in Avonmouth.

GENeco’s food waste anaerobic digestion treatment facility will transform solid and liquid food waste into renewable energy and nutrient rich fertiliser. At full capacity the plant will be capable of supplying the energy needs for around 3,000 homes.

This exciting new development will be the first large scale food waste treatment facility in the Bristol and surrounding area. It will offer supermarkets, local authorities, food manufacturing organisations, hospitals universities, catering establishments and waste management companies a cost effective and sustainable solution for treating their packaged and unpackaged food and catering waste.

The plant will begin accepting food waste deliveries from autumn 2012.

Mohammed Saddiq, GENeco’s General Manager, said “Since the creation of GENeco we have been working very hard to respond to our customer’s needs for a local solution that offers a cost effective, robust and sustainable alternative to landfill. Our parent company Wessex Water has been digesting sewage sludge for over 40 years and this plant builds on the group’s considerable wealth of expertise in harnessing renewable energy through anaerobic digestion. It follows in the footsteps of the launch last year of our incredibly successful Bio-Bug “poo-powered” car; which attracted international interest in our use of anaerobic digestion as a means of delivering renewable energy and transport solutions.”

Construction

A contract has now been placed with Finning for delivery of the food waste plant with construction starting on site in earnest in December 2011. Plant design and process engineering technology will be provided by Monsal with Civil Engineering provided by Damar.

The GENeco food waste plant is based on the Monsal plant design in Deerdykes Scotland which is one of only two plants in the UK to have successfully obtained the PAS 110 certification for the digestate end product. This certification serves as a quality hallmark for the fertiliser produced at the end of the process and offers farmers independent reassurance that the digestate has been converted from a waste into a soil conditioning product.

GENeco engineers spent a considerable amount of time evaluating technology solutions on offer across Europe. The Monsal solution was chosen for its robust design and successful proven operation in the UK on a diverse range of feedstock. Monsal has a longstanding track record of producing anaerobic digestion solutions in the UK and has recently completed the construction of an advanced acid phase enzymic hydrolysis digestion plant for sewage sludge at Bristol Sewage Treatment Works. The process optimises the conditions for sewage sludge digestion in two separate vessels; thereby optimising gas production and making it one of the most efficient digesters in the country.

Aidan Cumiskey, Monsal Managing Director said “ We have worked with Wessex Water to optimise the digestion plant on site which now reliably delivers about 4 MWe from Biogas using our Advanced Digestion solution. The additional food waste digestion infrastructure that we will deliver is now going to expand the site capabilities for treatment of commercial food waste. This is a major innovation for the water industry and represents a glimpse of the future with water utilities taking a more prominent role in food waste recycling, building on their track record of renewable energy generation. “

The combination of Advanced Anaerobic Digestion (AAD) for sewage sludge and food waste digestion solutions at these super AD centres represents a clear business synergy and optimal use of infrastructure. We expect other water companies now to adopt this approach and create significant non-regulated business growth. Monsal will play a lead role in implementing this in the UK.”

Julian Okoye, GENeco’s Business development Manager, said “We are really excited about the construction of our food waste treatment facility. Our Avonmouth site is an excellent location for our customers with easy access from Bristol as well as the M4 and M5 motorway network. The site has a longstanding track record of offering competitive treatment services for commercial liquid organic waste to some of the best customer service standards in the industry. We have seen significant interest in the GENeco food waste development from across the South West region and even into Wales.”

For further details on the Avonmouth Food Waste Treatment Plant please visit:

GENeco: www.geneco.uk.com or contact GENeco at 01225 524 560

Monsal: www.Monsal.co.uk or contact Monsal at 01623 412125

De-packaging Food Waste in the UK

Anaerobic Digestion plants being built in the UK to treat food waste are all facing the same key challenge when it comes to dealing with the waste. The levels of packaging are proving to be far higher than those seen in other parts of Europe; in fact the levels can be up to 20% by weight of plastic, card, glass and cans. Similar food waste in Germany for example has packaging contamination of around 5-10%.

Supermarket waste generally contains the most packaging contamination; this is due to a number of factors. Firstly, food manufacturers are competing for shelf space and therefore making their product more attractive to the eye than competitors, this often results in higher levels of packaging. If you consider the packaging on some well known brands where there is a tin foil tray inside a plastic try inside a cellophane wrapper inside a card box. Secondly, most supermarkets backhaul out of date food waste back to distribution centres, this involves placing the out of date stock into as many as three plastic bags in some cases.

The reality at some waste producer sites is segregated waste streams  quite often end up contaminated with items such a stones, batteries, concrete blocks and other general waste; as experienced at  a Monsal built anaerobic digestion facility in Cumbernauld, Scotland.

When the food waste is delivered to an anaerobic digestion plant it requires some form of mechanical treatment to remove the packaging and other contamination prior to the anaerobic digestion process. The de-packaging equipment is one of the most important components of an anaerobic digestion facility; an insufficient facility will lead to downstream issues within the anaerobic digestion process. Most food waste de-packaging systems have been developed in Europe to deal with lower levels of packaging contamination, and this has led to issues at some UK anaerobic digestion plants. The high levels of packaging can cause de-packaging equipment to have blockages and for screens to be blinded leading to downtime of the equipment, as well as carryover of the packaging into digesters and even into the final digestate product  which will affect the operator obtaining the PAS110 accreditation.

Despite all these issues in dealing with the UK’s contaminated food waste, Monsal has installed its fully automated state of the art separation technology at a 30,000 tonne anaerobic digestion food waste plant in Cumbernauld, Scotland within the last 12 months. The separation technology can achieve high levels of organic removal where conventional waste processing plants with manual or semi-automatic screening/sorting can only achieve low separation of organic components.

The plant now successfully deals with over 20 different waste streams from supermarkets and food processors, of which some can contain as much as 20% packaging by weight. The plant in fact has been able to treat all waste delivered to the site, as the Monsal separation equipment has the capacity to process the most difficult of contaminated food wastes.

In an ideal world food waste would be de-packaged at source and arrive at anaerobic digestion facilities with no contamination; however in reality this is unlikely to ever happen so the UK needs to adopt more advanced separation technology in order to deal with higher levels of contamination in UK food waste.

Due the success of the advanced separation technology at the Cumbernauld plant, Monsal is now in receipt of further orders which are currently in design and construction.

Written by: Shaun Flynn, Monsal Ltd

Article featured in LAWR April issue:

http://content.yudu.com/A1rw9k/LawrApril2011/

Edinburgh kerbs food waste collection trials

13 April 2011 The City of Edinburgh council has launched a pilot scheme for kerbside food waste collections from households in the Scottish capital with a view to rolling out the service to all homes by late 2013. 

The local authority has this week (April 12) initiated a weekly collection for 20,000 households, including 15,000 residential and 5,000 tenement properties.

Participating residents have been supplied with a sealed, lockable food waste collection caddy. It is expected that the scheme will collect 750 tonnes of food waste in its first year, rising to 2,000 tonnes by the end of the two-year pilot period.

Material collected under the pilot scheme will be sent to the Deerdykes anaerobic digestion and in-vessel composting facility at Cumbernauld, which is operated by Scottish Water Horizons.

The service is intended to be rolled out to all 235,000 households in the Scottish capital once the pilot has been completed. The city council aims to have completed the pilot by late 2013.

The pilot is intended to help lay the foundations for an interim food waste treatment contract currently being introduced by the city council.

This interim treatment measure is set to cover disposal of material as Edinburgh continues procuring long-term anaerobic digestion treatment capacity in partnership with neighbouring Midlothian council (see letsrecycle.com story).

The service also helps Edinburgh to align itself with the ambitions of the Scottish Government’s Zero Waste Plan, which requires all Scottish local authorities to introduce separate food waste collections by 2013.

A spokeswoman for the council was unable to give an exact figure of how much the two-year pilot would cost the council but told letsrecycle.com: “We are confident the service will at worse cost no more than the collection and disposal of residual waste, and is likely to prove cheaper.”

Pilot

Commenting on the pilot, councillor Robert Aldridge, environmental leader at Edinburgh, said: “This is a pioneering service for local residents in Edinburgh. I’m glad to see the pilot begin. Food waste will be collected weekly and there will be more opportunity to recycle other household items.”

Cllr Aldridge said the pilot scheme represented “real potential for behavioural change” and he added that it was important for residents to be aware of environmental and economic impact of their recycling performance.

He said: “Lowering the amount of rubbish we send to landfill is everyone’s responsibility. We want Edinburgh to be a great place to live in and visit and these pilots are part of that.”

The council said that if it does not address food waste – alongside dry recycling – the cost of landfill and Landfill Tax will increase from £10.37 million in 2011 to £16.24 million by 2014. However, the city council is introducing measures to reduce this figure to £11.85 million.

Interim

Treatment of food waste in the city is set to be subject to a four year framework agreement, which was discussed at a meeting of the council’s finance and resources committee on March 29.

The framework agreement involves a total of five waste management and recycling companies being charged with treating and recycling organic waste in the city, however their exact roles within the framework agreement have not been revealed.

Related Links

Edinburgh city council

The five companies are: the aforementioned Scottish Water Horizons; West Lothian-based Levenseat; organics recycling firm TEG Environmental; Paisley-based William Tracey Group; and, waste management firm Viridor.

It was estimated that the total value of the framework agreement – known as the Framework Agreement for Food Waste Treatment (Interim Measure) – is set to be £2.75 million over the course of the four-year contract period.

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Food waste from 26,000 homes in the Stirling area of Scotland will be processed at Horizons Environment’s anaerobic digestion (AD) plant at Deerdykes, near Cumbernauld, following an agreement with Stirling Council.

Previously food waste has been sent to landfill, but the decision to recycle it will save the council money by avoiding increased landfill charges, as well as helping the environment.

Kevin Robertson, Stirling Council’s head of planning, regulation and waste and Councillor Jim Thomson visited the Deerdykes site to see the process first hand.

Jim Thomson said: “Stirling Council is among the best in Scotland at recycling and we are delighted to be able to work with Horizons Environment who has invested in the most efficient equipment to convert food waste into renewable energy.”

Stirling Council has one of the highest recycling rates in Scotland at 47.5% and is planning to extend the food waste collection scheme to over 39,500 homes to help it achieve the Scottish Government’s target of recycling 50% of its waste by 2013.

Horizons Environment is Scottish Water’s commercial resource management business. In addition to the Deerdykes site, which is a former wastewater treatment works, it has plans to convert other redundant Scottish Water sites into AD plants.

L to R: Cllr Jim Thomson; Chris Banks, Scottish Water’s commercial director and chairman of Horizons; and Kevin Robertson

Article courtesy of LAWR Magazine March 2011 issue and webpage:  http://www.lawr.co.uk/news/news_story.asp?id=490&title=Stirling+forges+ahead+with+food+scrap+recycling

PRESS RELEASE – 24th January 2011

March Food Waste Anaerobic Digestion plant: Construction underway

Construction has started on the largest food waste digestion plant in the East Anglian region. Monsal, the UKs leading provider of Anaerobic Digestion (AD) technology and services will complete the plant later this year.

Monsal are providing the technology for green energy company Local Generation who are building their first AD plant in March, Cambridgeshire. The plant will transform 30,000 tonnes of both packaged and unpackaged food waste each year into clean, green energy and will be fully operational later in 2011.

Nick Waterman, Director of Local Generation, says “This is an exciting time for the Local Generation business. It is all systems go now to get our first AD plant up and running! We are really looking forward to seeing our plant take shape. I would like to recognise the excellent support and specifically the Capital Grant received from the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP) in helping us to progress this exciting project.

I would also like to thank my Local Generation colleagues, Monsal, Wardell-Armstrong, Firbeck Construction, Authentic Marketing and Boyarsky Murphy teams along with our investors. They have all believed in the project from the start and have helped make it a reality!”

He added that the team are looking forward to establishing a sustainable alternative to landfill that will benefit the region’s economy and its ecology. “We’re genuinely excited about providing an efficient and ethical alternative for dealing with the region’s waste”.

Monsal Managing Director Aidan Cumiskey said, “This plant will provide valuable recycling and renewable energy capacity for the region. We have got the expertise to deal with a large variety of food waste and from our operational experience on other UK sites, we are well positioned to target solid, slurry and liquid food waste with high levels of contamination.

These types of facilities need to be flexible to deal with the high variability in feedstocks found with multi food waste contracts. We remain the only company dedicated to providing a proven solution in this area”

Monsal are now working with leading developers and waste management companies to establish a number of food waste recycling and energy centres across the UK.

Notes to editors

Technology: The project will use the proven technology of anaerobic digestion to break down organic matter to create biogas, which is very similar to methane gas. This provides the fuel for the generators. The Monsal technology is becoming more widely recognised as the technology of choice by developers, utilities, county councils, food producers, waste processors and recycling companies in the UK for this application. The very high organics recovery, renewable energy and thermal efficiency of the Monsal process is achieved by high efficiency de-packaging equipment and state-of-the art Anaerobic Digestion plant and technology.

Monsal. The UK’s leading Advanced Digestion and integrated biogas to energy business.

Local Generation Ltd, Wisbech Road, March, Cambridgeshire, PE15 0BA.

1. WRAP works with businesses and individuals to help them reap the benefits of reducing waste, develop sustainable products and use resources in an efficient way.
2. Established as a not-for-profit company in 2000, WRAP is backed by government funding from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
3. More information on all of WRAP’s programmes can be found on www.wrap.org.uk

Photo – Monsal’s 30,000 t food waste and energy centre in Scotland.

Come along and meet us, and learn about renewable energy solutions for your business.  We will be exhibiting on stand 56.  For more information about the exhibition and how you can register to attend, please click on the link below:

Energy Now Expo 2011

We look forward to seeing you there.

Please click on the link below to find out more about the ADBA National Conference and details on how to register should you wish to visit, which will take place on 15th December 2010, at One Great George Street, Westminster, London. 

ADBA National Conference

We will be available to discuss your AD requirements on stand 8 – we look forward to seeing you there…