Bouygues Energies & Services, a subsidiary of Bouygues Construction, has been awarded by the Full Circle Generation investment fund a €202m contract to build a 15MWe waste-to-energy gasification plant in Northern Ireland.

Bouygues will be responsible for engineering, procurement and construction of the Belfast facility and will also perform operations and maintenance for 17 years.

The gasification plant will have capacity of 60MWt, which, when converted by two steam turbines, will generate the 15MWe. A manufacturing plant owned by Bombardier Aerospace will be the principal beneficiary.

Construction is scheduled to start in January, with handover set for late 2017. It will generate jobs for 200 people at peak periods.

The waste-to-energy facility will contribute to treating more than 150,000 tonnes of feedstock derived from local commercial and industrial waste and will enable Northern Ireland to save 50,000 tonnes of carbon per year.

The Full Circle Generation fund consists of the developer RiverRidge Energy and a consortium of investors made up of Green Investment Bank, Equitix and P3P Partners.

A £107m energy-from-waste plant (€151m) planned for Belfast has moved a step closer with news that the finance for it has been put in place.

The operating company is Full Circle Generation Ltd, made up of a consortium of equity investors including RiverRidge Energy Limited, UK Green Investment Bank plc (GIB), Equitix and P3P Partners.

It will service aeroplane company Bombardier’s facility in the harbour estate in the east of the city, and is expected to be operational by late 2017.

What will be the north’s largest energy-from-waste facility, providing 14.85 megawatts of energy from household waste, will also provide 250 construction jobs and 20 full-time jobs once completed.

Planning documents suggest it could cut Bombardier’s energy bill by a quarter.

The energy from waste plant has the capacity to take 180,000 tonnes of fuel a year derived from black bin waste, and it currently has planning permission to deal with 120,000 tonnes.

The scheme will incorporate the use of gasification technology – a process that converts any material containing carbon into synthesis gas (syngas) which can then be burned to produce electricity or further processed to manufacture chemicals or fertilisers.

Managing director of RiverRidge Energy and RiverRidge Recycling Ltd, Brett Ross, described the announcement as “a significant day” for the Northern Irish waste management sector.

“It is also a significant day for the Northern Irish economy as a whole”, Mr Ross said.

Amec Foster Wheeler has received a host of contracts from CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, to conduct radiochemical testing.

Radiochemical testing work started earlier this year and is ongoing. The work entails characterisation of waste elements derived from high-energy accelerators such as the large hadron collider (LHC).

The LHC is considered as the biggest accelerator in the world due to its 17-mile ring of superconducting magnets that steer proton beams travelling almost similar to the speed of light.

CERN headquarters near Geneva has sent samples to be analysed at Amec Foster Wheeler’s laboratories.

Amec Foster Wheeler’s Clean Energy business consultancy director Greg Willetts said: “CERN is one of the world’s most prestigious science projects and sets very high standards for its suppliers.

“We have received excellent feedback about the quality of our work and have exceeded CERN’s expectations by delivering fully accredited results within five weeks on average, rather than the three months specified in the contracts.

“We aim to build on this developing relationship with CERN and offer a wider range of Amec Foster Wheeler services. This work complements our strategy to support ‘Big Science’ projects with engineering, project management and scientific consultancy, as well as the work we are doing at ITER, the world’s largest nuclear fusion project.”

The LHC has enabled physicists to understand better how ordinary matter is structured and helped confirm the existence of the Higgs boson and discover a new type of particles, called pentaquarks.

When protons shift away from the beam, they tend to collide with magnets or machine components, which in turn generates a low level of induced activity in materials. When certain components are taken away from accelerators, radiochemical testing becomes essential in oder to dispose them in the safest and cost-effective manner.

Amec Foster Wheeler’s radiochemical laboratories conduct independent testing for nuclear operators, research institutes, decommissioning contractors, contaminated land consultants, local authorities, regulators, water companies and defence establishments.

John Daly has been appointed as general manager of Dublin Waste to Energy, which is the company in charge of a €500m public private partnership (PPP) project to build a waste-to-energy facility in Poolbeg, Dublin.

Work started on the 600,000 tonne facility late last year and operations are targeted for late 2017.

When complete, the facility will generate clean energy to supply 80,000 homes, reducing Ireland’s reliance on imported fossil fuel, and has also been designed with technology and infrastructure to provide enough heat to meet the equivalent needs of over 50,000 homes.

Dublin Waste to Energy is owned by US sustainable waste and energy solutions provider Covanta and the PPP is with Dublin City Council.

Daly moves to Covanta from Bord na Mona, where he was head of its resource recovery unit since 2013, responsible for overseeing the commercial and domestic waste management business across seven sites in the Republic of Ireland.

He previously held positions with Kingspan Environmental & Renewables as divisional operations director, Onyx Ireland (Veolia Group) as managing director. He has also served as deputy chairman of the Irish Waste Management Association.

“This is a landmark development in state-of-the-art waste management for the Dublin region, and for Ireland,” said Daly.

“The project will deliver a long-term sustainable waste management solution which will divert post-recycled waste from landfills, generate renewable energy and reduce greenhouse gases, all while providing a meaningful boost to the economy.”

He also stressed the importance of developing positive relations with the local community in the Sandymount, Ringsend and Irishtown areas, and said he would work steadfastly to maintain an accountable and transparent relationship with local residents and other stakeholders.

Two days ago UK based engineering firm Olympus Automation (OAL) were approached by the president of Azersun, the leading food producer in Azerbaijan, for a rapid cooking system to feed refugees in Northern Iraq. The president was so appalled by the plight of the refugees stuck on mount Sinjar he has chosen to fund the equipment himself.
Time is clearly of the essence and managing director, Harry Norman, of OAL has been quick to respond and a system will be shipped in record time next week. Norman, states:
“Normally systems take 24 weeks to manufacture, but this is clearly not a normal situation, lives are at stake and we will be able to deliver a Steam Infusion cooking system in a week. Steam Infusion is 4 times faster than traditional processes making the equipment ideal for feeding lots of people, hence the call from the president.”
OAL will be flying application specialist Stuart Rigby to an undisclosed location in Turkey to provide training on the system before it is deployed in Northern Iraq.
OAL are supplying a simple cooking system based on its revolutionary Steam Infusion technology to make lentil soups, rice and provide a clean source for drinking and washing water. The cooking system uses will use Steam Infusion, OAL’s revolutionary heating and mixing process to make 4,000 portions of hot food an hour.
Follow us on Twitter, @OALgroup

The UK Government has launched a new long-term plan to permanently dispose of the radioactive waste in the country.

The plan follows a consultation on improving the process of finding a site to host a geological disposal facility (GDF), which will safely isolate radioactive waste deep underground and inside multiple barriers in order to protect it for hundreds of thousands of years.

The new GDF will support the development of new, low-carbon, nuclear electricity generation in the UK while helping to permanently deal with waste from decades of generating low-carbon electricity from nuclear power.

A new and improved plan has been created by the government based on feedback and consultation for working with communities to identify a site for a GDF.

The government and experts will work jointly over the next two years for greater clarity on issues such as national geological screening, the planning process and the environmental impacts.

Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey said: “Geological disposal provides the secure, long-term solution we need to deal with the radioactive waste we have been creating for more than 60 years, and we can learn from the experiences of other countries who are also doing this.

“Building and running a GDF will be a multi-billion pound infrastructure project, which will bring significant economic benefits to a community.

“Today we’re setting out our plan to find a suitable site, based on a fundamental principle of listening to people, to make sure we have the right process in place. The area that eventually hosts a geological disposal facility will benefit from significant investment in the community and hundreds of skilled jobs for decades to come.”

Currently, the radioactive waste is temporarily being stored at secure nuclear sites across the country; a GDF will allow to dispose the waste permanently.

Loans of up to £400,000 per farm are available from today in a new initiative to help farmers in England who want to build small-scale AD plants on their farms.
They are available from the On Farm Anaerobic Digestion (AD) Loan Fund of as part of a £3 million initiative administered by the government-funded Waste Resources Action Programme (WRAP).
The first stage of the Fund, which was launched in October 2013, offers grants of up to £10,000 per farm to help farmers develop business plans for on-farm AD projects. This has already received nearly 400 enquiries.
The second stage is a loan, funded by Defra and managed by WRAP, which aims to support the construction of on-farm AD plants generating less than 250kW of energy, and which will utilise farm waste such as manures and slurries.
“The capital loan fund is designed to support farmers who are finding it difficult to obtain asset finance for such projects from the usual commercial sources, and comprises of a maximum loan per farm of £400,000, or 50% of the capital,” said a spokesman for WRAP.
He explained that the lending amounts varied from £50,000 to £400,000 and farmers would need to match the value of loan with finance from other sources. Interest rates would vary between 3% – 12% depending on the risk and the individual details of the project.
Different repayment options were available and they would not conflict with eligibility to claim from incentives schemes such as the Feed-In Tariffs (FITs.
UK environment minister Dan Rogerson said he hoped the loans would encourage the anaerobic digestion sector to grow.
“This will strengthen local economies by producing local energy, cutting waste, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and recycling valuable nutrients back into the land,” he added.