The Oxfordshire-based company is currently in the process of building a 30,000 tonne-capacity in-vessel composting plant for LondonWaste in Edmonton, using the recycled sealed surface material.
” It is actually a very cost-effective process, and for something like the London facility means we can recycle materials from the building of the facility itself.“
– Harry Waters, Agrivert Ltd.
The plant is expected to be completed in just a few weeks so that green waste and food waste from households under LondonWaste's contract with the North London Waste Authority.
Harry Waters, sales and marketing director at Agrivert, told letsrecycle.com: “In the past people have been putting hardcore in surfaces for composting facilities – not only is that illegal, but it can allow leachate to seep through and cause smell problems.
“We have been supplying composters for a while, and we have found you need to put a lot of concrete down. But, we have developed a process where we are using recycled hardcore, grinding it into an aggregate and mixing it with cement.
“It is actually a very cost-effective process, and for something like the London facility means we can recycle materials from the building of the facility itself,” Mr Waters added.
Tunnels
The London plant will be the first such plant Agrivert has built in the UK, although similar systems are in operation in Europe. The plant uses 215-tonne capacity in-vessel “tunnels” to accommodate material for about four to six weeks, with material then left to mature in open windrows for a further eight weeks.
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Mr Water said that the construction is progressing well, despite the narrow time-frame given to the company for setting it up – the plant construction began in Febrary.
Agrivert is also constructing a windrow composting site in Wallingford for South Oxfordshire council at the moment, and is also looking into the possibilities of adding its in-vessel and composting technologies to physical separation techniques to develop into MBT systems.
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