ADAS has helped secure planning permission for the country’s first power plant that runs on a mixed feedstock of wood waste and biosolids from wastewater treatment facilities.
ADAS provided JHG Planning Consultants (planning agents acting for joint applicants Alternative Use Group and Alchemy Farms) with a detailed odour emissions impact assessment for a pioneering and potentially controversial, 12MW gasification plant at the Riverside Industrial Estate, Boston, Lincolnshire.
The approval helps set a precedent for councils to approve energy from biosolids using gasifiers – as long as stringent environmental constraints are observed. The development is also a boon for water companies who are likely to be further controlled in their recycling of biosolids to farmland in future.
The power plant – expected to be operational by late 2012 – will produce enough electricity to power 10,000 homes. It is also expected to directly create 27 new jobs.
Based on ADAS’s track record of modelling odour concentration patterns, the team, led by Steve Peirson, used sophisticated software to map how odours would disperse from the site. The data was used to develop a robust series of measures designed to reduce the impact on local homes and businesses.
Principal Odour Consultant, Steve, said the mitigation strategy would mean odour from the plant would be very effectively controlled to avoid any impact on residents living nearby.
“We’re really very pleased to have helped JHG Planning secure planning permission for the power plant. Concerns about odours from sites like this have the potential to scupper applications, but a detailed assessment, together with an effective mitigation strategy helped allay concerns about odour at an early stage". This proactive approach helped progress the proposals through to planning consent.
“It is great news because it means useful energy can be extracted from waste, which has its own obvious environmental benefits. It will be done with minimal impact on the lives of people living and working even in very close proximity to the site.”
As part of the assessment, ADAS experts highlighted the beneficial use of extracted air from the biosolids drying and storage facilities as the air supply to combustion chambers where all odours will be “burnt off”. ADAS also proposed that carbon filters should be used as a contingency measure to abate odours when the power plant is not processing the feedstock.
The plant is the first of its kind in the UK to process waste wood and biosolids simultaneously as a feedstock to produce syngas, which will then be used to produce electricity.
Steve added: “We have to increasingly look at novel feedstocks to produce green energy as a replacement for fossil fuels. The beauty of gasification is that it is a very clean technology, beneficially uses waste products and the infrastructure requires a smaller footprint than other comparable technologies".
“As long as impact of the construction and operation of the site is carefully examined and the environmental impact comprehensively mapped, there is no reason why we can’t have more of these sites located close to the sources of feedstocks", added Steve.
The site was chosen partially because of its proximity to supplies of the feedstocks. Wood will come predominantly from old overhead line poles which have been treated with preservative. Biosolids are to be sourced from a nearby treatment works.
The site was granted approval by Lincolnshire County Council at the beginning of September.
For more information please contact Steve Peirson on 01964 551317 or email steve.peirson@adas.co.uk