How we do it

While each energypark will be designed to meet the specific needs of the area it will be operating, an energypark will generally included three core processing areas / technologies.

The first, is used to receive and prepare the waste for further processing. Here materials that are suitable for conventional recycling are removed to leave a biomass fraction that has been produced to a fuel standard suitable for energy conversion in the next stage. The energy conversion takes place in combustion units that produce steam which is converted to electricity via steam turbines. The combustion process produces internal residues that are collected and processed in the third phase of the plant – the Plasma units. These represents the parks own re-manufacturing facility and takes residues and other materials and turns them into value added products so that there are no residues required for landfill.

The energypark uses 3 types of technology to sort, separate and process the materials delivered into useable parts.

 The technologies selected work effectively together to remove the need for landfill at the same time as maximising recycling and energy recovery from renewable sources.

1. Advanced Mechanical Recycling Facility
2. Energy Conversion – Biomass Combustion (gasifier)
3. Plasma Enhanced Melter

Advanced Mechanical Recycling Facility: (AMRF)

The advanced materials recycling facility is used to separate mixed materials that are delivered to the energypark. It achieves this by using highly automated sorting systems. This process enables recyclables to be separated and segregated using a variety of machinery including lasers and optical recognition. This specialised technology separates and prepares material for the recycling and energy recovery stages.

 MRF’s are common place in today’s society and are the cornerstone of most councils recycling network. What makes the energypark special is that the technology does not rely on manual sorting and the output from the MRF is recycled and recovered on site, not away from the facility thereby reducing significant pollution, costs and ensuring that the value in the material is realised in Peterborough not in China or elsewhere.

Energy Conversion –
Biomass Combustion (gasifier)

The Energypark will contains a number of independent combustion units supplied by Talbotts a British company. In Peterborough there will be 9. The multiple units allow for maintenance to take place without affecting operation hence ensuring that the facility is available for waste processing and power & material production when needed. The units are designed to meet and exceed the Waste Incineration Directive. The units take the biomass fraction from the AMRF and any other biomass such as farm residues, wood wastes and energy crops and combusts them in an oxygen reduced atmosphere (gasification) to produce gas that is used to heat water to make steam that in turn makes electricity via the steam turbines. Heat produced will be used in the energypark for space heating, and can be used to provide hot water and heat to others in the area of the energypark where appropriate design has taken place.

Each biomass unit include state of the art gas cleaning equipment ensuring clean operations. The biomass feed (over 90% by weight) to the units produces a beneficial ash that can be used as a fertiliser on farms and used within carbon sequestration technologies being developed by the company.

Each combustion unit is linked to a steam generator that produces electricity for sale to the national grid or for use on a Private Network Grid. The power produced by the energypark is completely green and in combination with the methane saving from avoiding landfill constitutes an annual carbon dioxide saving of around 600,000 tonnes for the Peterborough configuration compared to the same energy produce from a coal fired power station.

Talbott's Ltd is one of the leading UK bio-fuel specialists with over 4000 working installations. Their groundbreaking new systems incorporate some of the most advanced control technologies ever used for this type of heating and power installation.

During combustion there are gases produced that need to be cleaned.

The residue from this cleaning process is known as air pollution control residues (APC’s). With normal biomass or waste to energy plants this material would be landfilled in special sites, but in the energypark we recycle these APC residues to make use of the metals and chemicals that are contained with in them. This is done in the Plasma Enhanced Melter.

Plasma Enhanced Melter:

The energypark contains plasma units. These self-contained units are included in the design to provide a recycling route for glass, batteries, inorganic wastes and importantly the air pollution control residues. A proven technology with installations in the USA, Taiwan and Japan, the technology is not only a solution to difficult materials like clinical and hazardous waste but also offers a real opportunity to deliver clean hydrogen and ethanol for sustainable transport solutions when processing organic wastes. Integrated Environmental Technologies LLC (IET), the developers of the PEMTM plasma unit, are leaders in the field of plasma processing technology.

There are no residues from the plasma that need to be landfilled. The syn gas that is produced will be used back in the combustion chamber as a fuel. If the demand is there this gas can be used as the precursor to clean ethanol and clean hydrogen production to replace road fuels providing a sustainable transport options for the area.

What is Plasma?

On an astronomical scale, plasma is very common. Our sun is composed of plasma, electric arc welding is plasma, fluorescent and neon lights contain plasma. According to plasma physicists, 99.9% of the Universe is made up of plasma. The loosest definition of a plasma is that it is an electrically conducting gas. At normal temperatures and pressures gases are very good electrical insulators. This is because the electrons in the gas are tightly bound inside gas atoms and are not free to move in response to externally applied electric or magnetic fields.