DONG Energy has announced that it will invest in and build the world’s first bio plant for handling unsorted household waste without prior treatment.
The new bio plant set to be built in Northwich near Manchester will be ready in early 2017, and will be able to treat unsorted household waste without prior treatment by using a special enzyme treatment. The groundbreaking technology — REnescience — has been developed by DONG Energy and tested at a demonstration plant in Copenhagen since 2009, and will allow for a greater part of the UK’s waste to be recycled and converted into biogas. The technology allows unsorted household waste to be converted into “a considerable amount of biogas” as well as other things like recyclable plastics and metals.
“The decision to build the first plant is a very important step in our roll-out of the REnescience biotechnology,” said Thomas Dalsgaard, Executive Vice President, DONG Energy. “This is an entirely new way of treating household waste where we very effectively can ensure that we get as many resources as possible from our waste.”
The REnescience plant will have an annual capacity of 120,000 tonnes of waste, which corresponds approximately to the waste from nearly 110,000 UK households.
“This is an exciting new technology for the disposal of municipal residual waste which is potentially set to revolutionise our thinking as an industry of what can be achieved,” said Richard Belfield, Group Development Director of UK waste management company FCC Environment, which will supply the waste to the REnescience plant.
“Not only does this technology convert waste into energy without the need for the combustion of the waste, it will for the first time, be able to extract the valuable recyclable materials which so far have been difficult if not out of reach in traditional municipal residual waste treatment processes.”
“We look forward to having this first plant in operation,” added Dalsgaard. “With the increasing requirements for waste recycling and the global need for making better use of our resources, we need technologies such as REnescience that can handle our waste in a much smarter manner.”
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