Visitors to our Helmdon Blackpits Recycling Facility
November 9, 2017
On Tuesday 31st October, we had the pleasure of showing students from the University of Northampton around our Helmdon Blackpits site.
This is one of our busiest sites and is home to recycling and composting green waste, black bin transfer station and our Anaerobic Digestion plant – which is a Gas to Grid plant.
The visit was organised to aid studies as part of the students course. They are studying modules from a BSc (Hons) Environmental Science degree at the University of Northampton. As part of their course they have the opportunity to undertake a module in “Resource Recovery Technologies”. This term the students are exploring biological processes. The Helmdon site visit enhances the learning experience by providing students with the opportunity to see key aspects of the operation of a composting site and anaerobic digestion facility. As you can see they enjoyed their visit! Many thanks to Jason – our Compost Site Manager and Guil – our AD Manager for showing the students around.
Helmdon Composting Site
The open windrow compost site is permitted to receive 75,00 er0 tonnes per annum of biodegradable household, commercial and industrial waste and processes 25,000 tonnes of green and clean wood waste per annum.
Incoming green waste is shredded and windrowed prior to screening at 25mm. All oversize is re-processed. A total period of not less than 8 weeks’ elapses before material can be exported to allow sanitisation and stabilisation of the compost.
The site operates to PAS:100 & Compost Quality Protocol standards and all material produced is classed as product.
In addition to the composting operation, a large shed operates as a waste transfer operation bulking black bag waste for onwards transfer to an energy from waste processing facility for waste collected by South Northamptonshire Council.
Helmdon AD Plant
Material Change operates the Gas to Grid anaerobic digestion facility at the site (owned by Helmdon Blackpits Power Limited) which injects over 300m3 gas per hour into the National Grid near Brackley, Northamptonshire. The site uses Maize, Rye and Grass supplied by local farmers to produce the gas which uses a membrane technology to separate the methane from other gases produced during the digestion processes. The methane is purified further before being mixed with a small percentage of propane so that it can be used in the exactly the same way as the gas in the grid. Although there is no direct control, the majority of the time residents of Brackley and beyond are supplied from the site and are using renewable gas in their homes.
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