The Durham county council-owned company is working with CiViC Environmental Systems on the new mechanical biological treatment (MBT) technology, being branded as the “Parc System”.
” We will be choosing very carefully which contracts to bid for, but we will be looking to bid for major local authority contracts. “
– Dr Les Grant, Premier Waste Management
Premier Wastes's chief executive, Dr Les Grant, said the process is capable of diverting more than 70% of waste from landfill, while producing fewer carbon emissions than incineration.
The technology has been trialled by Premier with researchers from Durham University over the last five years, with two towers running at Premier Waste's County Durham plant currently handling around 37,000 tonnes of waste each year.
Premier Waste will now be looking to exploit the process elsewhere, and Dr Grant told letsrecycle.com that this would include bids for upcoming local authority waste contracts.
Dr Grant said: “We will be choosing very carefully which contracts to bid for, but we will be looking to bid for major local authority contracts. We see this technology as a design/build/operate option rather than us building a plant for someone else.”
Carbon
With rising interest in global warming, Mr Grant believes that over the coming years the carbon footprints of waste treatment plants will be a significant issue, something he said would be an advantage for the Parc System over traditional energy-from-waste plants.
He claimed that Premier's MBT process allowed the capture of around 40% of the carbon within waste, “thus reducing emissions”.
The process sees material shredded and ferrous metal extracted, before remaining material enters a tower, in which it goes through three stages of aerobic composting at gradually higher temperatures.
After six to nine days in the compost process, the materials undergo various other degrees of separation – removing materials such as hard plastic, glass and stone.
Plastic film
The technology also includes the separation of plastic film, which is sold to a local plastic reprocessor. Mr Grant said the removal of this material was “crucial” to the importance of the process.
He said: “This system is about maximising recycling rates, there is a huge amount of plastic film in the waste bin and it is hard to get hold of – but it is also one of the worst things to burn.
“Our technology can get the plastic film fraction out of the waste and do something useful with it,” Dr Grant added.
Premier Waste is currently constructing a third, larger tower that will be operational from Spring 2007. The plant forms part of Defra's Demonstrator Programme, and although it will have a capacity of 25,000 tonnes, initially Dr Grant believes that only around 10,000 tonnes capacity will be used.
He explained: “We will be experimenting with different materials being collected separately to see how that will affect the efficiency of the plant. We will be particularly looking at kerbside collections that separate plastic bottles.
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