The minister visited the Shanks East London Frog Island facility on the north bank of the River Thames, near Rainham. The site houses a mechanical biological treatment (MBT) plant and adjacent materials recycling facility to handle waste from the four London boroughs that have their waste handled through the East London Waste Authority.
 Ben Bradshaw (left) learns more about the Shanks East London MBT plant from Shanks chief executive Mike Averill yesterday |
The MBT process was explained to Mr Bradshaw by Shanks chief executive Mike Averill, who noted that part of the facility was already operational with the full drying system coming online during June.
Mr Averill emphasised what he saw as the advantages of MBT over incineration. “Classical mass burn is inefficient for two reasons. You have to use fuel to drive off the water and mass burn is oversized because you have to take glass and metals through the plant, giving them a free ride through the process. Here we are separating the non-burnables out.”
He explained that the MBT process handled “the contents of a dustbin” and was “a good advanced technology which promotes maximum recovery – nothing goes into the burning process until you take everything out that can be recycled.”
The burning process for the MBT plant comes into play for the residue, which is used to form a refused derived fuel. Shanks is still looking to confirm outlets for this material, but Mr Averill said he was very pleased that even without seeing the final product, one cement kiln had agreed to accept it as an energy source.
Costs
Pressed by Mr Bradshaw over the costs of the process, Mr Averill said that with regard to sending material to the cement kiln: “We pay them vastly less than we would to send it to landfill.”
Asked whether he anticipated a day when there would be a positive value to the fuel, Mr Averill said that he would like the government to look again at granting ROC – renewable obligation certificate – status to RDF derived from the plants, as this would encourage greater use by the power generation industry.
To get the material used by power generators additional processing would be needed, ideally alongside the power station, explained Mr Averill.
Minister
Mr Bradshaw said that he was pleased to visit the plant to gain a picture of MBT as one of the technologies available. However, he would make no direct recommendations to authorities on choosing MBT: “It is not for the national government to take to local communities the particular technology they could use,” he said, adding: “It is the local authority's interests to consider technologies and it is good to have competition which can help generate efficiencies.”
The Frog Island facility consists of two large industrial-style buildings with odours contained and filtered. The main building houses the MBT process with a large number of conveyors, a shredder and cranes. It handles residual waste, which is shredded and then filtered into various fractions with the final material – largely organic – dried and then used as RDF.
MRF
The MBT building is close to a materials recycling facility, which takes in orange bags containing recyclables from three of the four ELWA boroughs.
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Collection of the bags in some of the boroughs is carried out at the same time as collection of black sack residual waste. To sort this material, the bags are tipped onto an entrance floor and travel along one of four conveyors to pass through an optical sorter. Orange bags are then diverted for removal to the MRF.
A decision is expected soon over whether or not the proposed new MRF at Jenkins Lane in the ELWA area will be built. One option under consideration is extending and modifying the MRF at Frog Island to handle more recyclables.
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