Lord Henley opens new AD plant

A brand new £10 million Anaerobic Digestion plant is to be officially opened by Lord Henley today (April 14).


The plant, in Driffield near Hull, has the capacity to produce 2.1 megawatts of clean electricity from waste food.

Enough power will be generated by the plant, built and operated by GWE Biogas, for around 3,200 homes from about 50,000 tonnes of food waste due to be processed every year.

Lord Henley, also known as Oliver Eden 8th Baron Henley, opened the plant in his roles as parliamentary under-secretary of state at DEFRA.

The plant also uses advanced depackaging machine to separate food – such as out-of-date sandwiches from their packaging, allowing the plant to process food waste other AD plants can’t.

The old packaging is also recycled or converted into a combustible fuel, for energy recovery at an approved site.

“Nothing is wasted,” says GWE Biogas managing director, Tom Megginson, “even the heat produced by the generators is re-used to heat the food waste as part of the pasteurisation process.

“The digestate left over once the waste has been digested is used as a rich Biofertiliser on our farm as well.”

The project was supported by £2.4m funding from the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) and £750,000 from CO2Sense, the not-for-profit business development programme supported by Yorkshire Forward.

Luke Walsh

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