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Ellington Anaerobic Digestion Facility

SUEZ is developing a food waste anaerobic digestion (AD) plant in Northumberland as part of a network of proposed facilities to generate more green energy. The project is designed to replace a legacy facility at the Ellington Road Recycling and Recovery site, and they reached out to our team to help.

We performed pre-front end engineering design (PRE-FEED) and FEED studies for the project, creating technical datasheets and specifications that allowed the process and physical interfaces to be defined across ten work packages. We also evaluated recommended suppliers for each package.

The designed plant offers greater added value than the existing in-vessel composting, pre-treating the food waste before it undergoes hydrolysis and is fed to the anaerobic digesters. The resulting biogas will be upgraded and then passed to the grid, making the project eligible for the Green Gas Levy under the UK governments Green Gas Support Scheme. Heat for the process is provided by combined heat and power (CHP) engines, initially using biogas from the adjacent landfill site, but ultimately using biogas from the process. A pasteurisation step also means the digestate will be available for use as fertiliser.

AD facilities like Ellington will play an important role in making the most of separately collected food waste, converting it into renewable biogas and creating a nutrient-rich, compost-like digestate that can enhance soil health. The Ellington plant is expected to treat up to 50,000 tonnes of food waste per year.