Energos granted planning permission for UK AD plant

Clean energy recovery from waste specialist Energos is preparing to build its ninth conversion facility featuring an anaerobic digestion plant after it received planning approval earlier this month.

Based at AmeyCepsa's Milton Keynes Waste Recovery Park in the UK, the facility will convert 90,000 tonnes of non-recyclable household waste into 7MW of electricity – sufficient to power approximately 11,000 homes.

Construction on the Waste Recovery Park is scheduled to begin in 2014, with operations due to commence in 2016.

Energos was the first UK company to be awarded double Renewable Obligation Certificates. The company's gasification process converts residual, non-recyclable waste into a syngas by using the heat of partial combustion to free hydrogen and carbon in waste. The syngas produces high temperature steam that can then be converted into electricity in a turbine.

The project was approved unanimously by Milton Keynes Council's Development Control Committee.

Andrew Cousins, project manager for AmeyCespa, says: 'This facility will utilise technologies to deal with the borough's waste. It will make the most of people's everyday rubbish, ensuring as much is recycled as economically possible as well as generating renewable energy and creating electricity from waste which would other have gone to landfill. This in turn creates a saving for the council and ultimately Milton Keynes taxpayers.'

Energos has developed seven waste-fuelled thermal conversion facilities across Europe and is currently building its second UK-based plant at the Glasgow Recycling and Renewable Energy Centre in Scotland. It has also received planning permission for a third facility in Lisburn, Northern Ireland.