New Earth to build its first AD plant

Bristol city council last week approved plans for the AD facility to be developed at the companys site at Willow Farm, Avonmouth. The plant is expected to be commissioned by autumn 2013.

New Earth Solutions had originally planned to build an in-vessel composting (IVC) facility at the site to treat green and food waste. However, the company changed its plans as more councils began to collect food separately.

Once complete, the anaerobic digestion facility will have the capacity to process up to 50,000 tonnes of food waste every year from households and businesses. It will also produce up to three megawatts of electricity, enough to power up to 5,000 homes in the area.

Feedstock for the plant will come from New Earth Solutions existing food waste treatment contracts with a number of councils, including: Bristol city, Bath, North East Somerset, Cardiff and Newport.

Facility

Commenting on the facility, Robert Asquith, planning director at New Earth, said: The Willow AD plant responds to the increasing interest in separate collections of food waste throughout the West of England and in neighbouring regions including South Wales. AD is a highly appropriate technique to recycle this bio-waste back to the soil and offers the added benefit of producing renewable heat and power.

Alongside our existing IVC and MBT, and the pyrolysis and gasification plant we are currently building at Avonmouth, Willow AD will enable us to offer the widest possible range of waste management options to local authorities and other waste producers near the M4 and M5 corridors.

Region

New Earth Solutions said the AD plant would complement its existing facilities in the region, which include a mechanical biological treatment (MBT) plant, based just down the road from the Willow Farm site. The MBT plant was opened in September 2011 by Olympian Sir Steve Redgrave (see letsrecycle.com story) and New Earth is currently building a gasification and pyrolysis plant next to it.

In total, New Earth currently operates two IVC facilities and three MBT plants in the UK.