Plans submitted for large-scale Salford waste plant

Plans to build a large-scale waste facility in Salford, Greater Manchester, which would involve developing a materials recycling facility and both anaerobic digestion and gasification technologies to treat up to 240,000 tonnes of commercial waste a year have been submitted to Salford city council.

The ‘Green Lane Eco Park' proposals have been drawn up by the site's landowners, Manchester-based Sky Properties, and would involve the gasification facility being developed by specialists Energos, who are part of Manchester-based renewable energy company ENER-G.

Within the total capacity of the proposed plant, up to 100,000 tonnes-a-year of the waste would be sorted at the materials recycling facility (MRF) for sale on to reprocessors, while the anaerobic digestion (AD) facility would have the capacity to treat up to 60,000 tonnes of food and other bio-waste per annum.

And, the Energos gasification plant would have the capacity to treat up to 80,000 tonnes of residual waste a year, producing both heat and power. The planning documents also reveal that, together, the AD and gasification plants are expected to be able to generate between eight to 10 megawatts of electricity for export to the National Grid.

A planning statement, drawn up by environmental consultants Entec to accompany the full application for the gasification facility aspect of the plans, claims that the North West region creates an estimated 7.5 million tonnes of commercial and industrial waste a year, of which two million tonnes is suitable for energy recovery.

It also claims that Greater Manchester alone accounts for 2.7 million tonnes a year of this total, and, while over one million tonnes is recycled, “there is limited capacity for further recovery and there is therefore a need to develop new waste infrastructure to maximise the value we can obtain from the waste we produce.”

Both the full application for the gasification plant and an outline planning application for the AD facility and MRF were submitted earlier this month (July 9) – although a spokeswoman for the developers stressed that the two aspects of the project could be implemented separately and, as such, were not dependent on the success of the other.

Synergies

The planning statement also claims that there will be synergies between the various parts of the facility, in particular by using the refuse-derived fuel produced by the AD process to fuel the gasification process and by sorting non-combustible metals from the material for the gasification and sending them for recycling.

The environmental statement for the planning application also notes that, while C&I waste is expected to be the main fuel for the gasification plant, it could also deal with municipal solid waste, material rejected from the recycling process and residual wastes from other processes such as mechanical biological treatment.

But, it stresses that: “The facility will not accept hazardous or clinical waste and it is anticipated that the vast majority of waste arriving at the site would come from across the Greater Manchester area.”

Consultation

Sky Properties acquired the Green Lane site, which is the former home of the Mitchell & Shackleton engineering company, in 2003, and has already held public consultations on the ‘Eco Park' proposals.

Anthony Hirsch, of Sky Properties, commented: “Our engagement has been full and transparent. It's been a very open process and right from the start our team of experienced professionals have been made available to answer any questions.

“The Green Lane Eco Park offers the opportunity to regenerate disused employment land through an investment of £70 million in the local community, creating jobs and training placements and supporting local businesses by offering a more cost-effective and environmentally friendly way of managing local business waste,” he added.

Salford city council's formal consultation on the full planning application ends on August 10, and the application has a target determination date of October 11.

If successful, Sky Properties aims to start construction of the Eco Park in 2011, with construction expected to take two years to complete.