Plans for a 225,000 tonnes-per-year capacity gasification energy from waste plant in Carlisle have been approved today (5 April) by Cumbria county council.
The estimated £80 million plant is being developed by a consortium of companies, Fortum Carlisle Limited – a UK subsidiary of the Finnish energy supplier Fortum – Kingmoor Park Properties and sustainable energy developer Verus Energy Ltd.
An artist’s impression of the proposed £80m EfW plant
The facility, which would initially process around 160,000 tonnes of refuse-derived fuel (RDF) per year sourced from the local area, would be sited at the city’s Kingmoor Park Industrial Estate.
Proposals for the erection of an energy from waste plant including reception and fuel processing hall, boiler house and air cooled condensing building were considered by councils – with the plant to include a 70-metre high flue stack, two fuel storage silos and four silos for the storage of ash went before Cumbria’s planning committee today.
Processing
In planning documents, the developers have revealed that the RDF entering the facility would initially be processed through a fuel preparation facility in order to ‘polish’ the material. This would involve shredding the RDF below 100mm as well as removing inert materials. Metals will be removed by magnetic and eddy-current separators.
The energy recovery line would then use a gasification process to generate electricity and heat. This would see burned at high temperature (> 600oC) in an oxygen deprived environment. The ERF would then combust the synthetic gas (syngas) produced through the process to generate a hot flue gas.
Environmental permits are still being sought for the plant, and construction is due to begin in 2017 with a target for operations to begin in early 2019. Proposals for the plant were initially outlined in April 2016 (see letsrecycle.com story).
Verus
Speaking to letsrecycle.com on behalf of the developers, Tim Jervis, energy project developer at Verus Energy, said: “We are delighted to have been granted planning consent, it is a step forward but only a step. We will now need to continue to go through the development process which will involve getting an operating permit through the Environment Agency and also Contracts for Difference.”
Mr Jervis added that Cumbria has been targeted as a prime area for the development of energy from waste capacity due to its relative lack of existing facilities – and he added that the company had carefully assessed the likely future need for EfW capacity in the UK.
He also said that the company had full confidence in gasification as a potential treatment technology for waste. He said: “We have spent a lot of time doing our due diligence.
“We are confident that this technology is an improvement on mass burn grate incinerators but not too far a step.”
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Source: letsrecycle.com Waste Managment
