Located in Huyton Business Park, the facility is part of Defra's £30 million New Technologies Demonstrator Programme, which was designed to encourage the take up of new technologies in the treatment and diversion of biodegradable municipal waste from landfill.
The facility, developed by Fairport Engineering Ltd, will use a low-temperature heat treatment process to convert non-hazardous household waste into a range of renewable fuel products suitable for power generation off-site.
It will also recover materials such as metals, glass, stone and mixed plastics for recycling and re-use.
When completed the facility will be operated by Fairport Engineering on behalf of MWDA.
The process
The mechanical heat treatment process begins by shredding the household waste that arrives at the site in refuse collection vehicles. Water is added to the waste and it will pass into a large rotating cylinder.
Hot air from a gas burner will pass through the cylinder to dry, sanitise and break the materials down further. The organic waste, such as paper, cardboard and vegetable matter, will be converted into fuel for different industrial uses off-site as a substitute for fossil fuels (such as coal gas and oil).
The process will also recover recyclable materials such as metals, mixed plastics, glass and stone.
MWDA predicts that less than 10,000 tonnes of the original 50,000 tonnes of waste entering the process each year will go to landfill.
The cost
The project is being supported by £2.1 million of funding from the Northwest Regional Development Agency in addition to the funding provided from the new technology project and Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority (MWDA).
MWDA has said that the facility will save the council around £1.5 million a year in waste disposal costs and will create up to 23 jobs in the local area.
The trial facility will operate until April 2009 after which MWDA will assess whether or not it should continue.
Carl Beer ,director of Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority, has said: “This technology will play a crucial role for Merseyside's waste management in the period before we implement our new longer term contracts. If successful the Huyton project may be part of this solution.”
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