We have covered on the website twice before (June 2004 and Feb 2006) about our trials and plans to expand the water treatment to include Anaerobic digestion alongside our existing Aerobic treatment.
A good web resource on the treatment can be found at Wikipedia.
As detailed previously we are now running phase 2 of this project and in October 2006 the plant will be running 24/7 with full production of Biogas expected in November 2006. The plant is authorised under our IPPC Authorisation issued this year.
We are producing Biogas which in turn contains methane which untreated is a potent greenhouse gas. We have installed a flare that treats the methane as follows:
Burning one molecule of methane in the presence of oxygen releases one molecule of CO2 (carbon dioxide) and two molecules of H2O (water):
CH4 + 2O2 
CO2 + 2H2O
Once we have quantified the amount and quality of gas then we will use the energy in engines or boilers to replace Natural Gas.
At present we are producing around 2 m3 per hour of Biogas and this should increase to over 30 m3 per hour by November 2006. To use a simple analogy the daily production of methane at 30m3 per hour is the equivalent volume of methane that a herd of 1200 cows would produce approximately a day.
The new plant is computer controlled and we plan in late 2006 to have a live web application that can show gas production figures via our website. This is already available to operators on site.
Below are 2 screenshots from the plant
Main Control Screen
Flare Control
.jpg)
.bmp)
.jpg)
