Energy From Chicken Litter
13 October 2010
A biogas power station is being built just south of Cirencester, which will make the town one of the first in the world to receive energy from chicken litter, according to the station's main supplier Alfagy. Fed by local farms that deliver animal waste, as well as corn, wheat and grass, the feedstock will be turned into biogas in an anaerobic digester. The plant will produce 1MW hour of energy, enough to supply 350 houses with electricity, and is expected to deliver heat and energy to homes by November 2010.
There are other benefits from the biogas process, which extracts the smell out of waste and burns it in a combined heat and power (CHP) plant after which the leftovers can be used for farming. This "digestate" is a powerful fertiliser that decreases the average fertiliser costs by up to 100 percent. Normal fertilizer production uses large amounts of fossil fuel, emits large quantities of CO2 and the product can be transported over great distances to farmers.
Peter Kindt, managing director of Alfagy, said: "As the UK is 30 years behind continental Europe in energy efficiency, we wanted a project in Britain. We have many installations in Europe but this is our first biogas installation in the UK.
"What makes this project exciting is that farmers deliver energy to the urban environment. Recently a German test institute verified that Alfagy's biogas CHP performed at 42.9 percent electrical efficiency for its 260 kWe unit - a new world best."
