JCBE – Huntstown Anaerobic Digestion Facility

Huntstown Anaerobic Digestion Facility

Construction on the Huntstown AD Facility commenced mid-February 2018. The Facility is a complete turnkey project for JCBE,  consisting of  Design, Procurement, Construction, Commissioning and initial start-up/running of the Plant.

The purpose of the project is to utilise the patented JCBE’s Thermal Hydrolysis Technology to process :

1. Source separated organic waste
2. Municipal solid waste for Anaerobic Digestion so that the bio-gas generated can be converted by 2no. CHP Engines into electrical energy for export to the National Grid.

Thermal hydrolysis is a two-stage process combining high-pressure boiling of waste or sludge followed by a rapid decompression. This combined action sterilizes the sludge and makes it more biodegradable, which improves digestion performance. Sterilization destroys pathogens in the sludge resulting in it exceeding the stringent requirements for land application.

Some benefits of the Thermal Hydrolysis process –

• Increases net biogas productivity from all organic and bio-mass wastes due to maceration at cellular level.
• Sterilization system allows the processing of material not suitable for conventional processes, e.g. Cat. 2 abattoir waste.
• Facilitates the processing of lignocellulose biomass not normally available to Anaerobic digestion (AD)
• By introducing a high efficiency hydrolysis step, the subsequent AD process can operate at high organic loading rates providing the potential for higher hydraulic AD plant throughput.
• Highly efficient de-packaging process with easy separation of liquefied organics from inorganics e.g. dissolving of bio-degradable packaging and paper.

by Chris Power, Project Engineer