Waste management company AmeyCespa has announced that it will begin work on its Milton Keynes Recovery Parkin June, in the hopes of bringing the residual waste processing facility online in 2016.

The waste recovery and gasification facility, which received its environmental permit last year, forms part of AmeyCespa’s 18-year contract with Milton Keynes Council and will be built on Dickens Road in Old Wolverton.

Plant technology

Developed to handle projected waste volumes from households, businesses, shops and restaurants, Milton Keynes Recovery Park will utilise mechanical treatment, anaerobic digestion (AD) and gasification technologies.

The mechanical treatment equipment will be able to handle between 120,000 and 132,000 tonnes of black bag waste and will reportedly extract any recyclable items from the waste for reprocessing. It is thought that AmeyCespa will be able to recover nine per cent of the incoming waste for recycling.

The AD technology will have a capacity to process 32,000 tonnes per year, and will break down food and biodegradable waste (also extracted from the black bag waste), to generate energy and produce a ‘compost-like material’, which will be available for use on brownfield sites (unlike digestate produced from source-segregated feedstocks, which can also be used on agricultural land).

The remaining non-recyclable and non-compostable waste will then be used as a fuel for an advanced thermal treatment (ATT) plant. The last process will transform the waste into gas, which will be combusted to ‘generate high-temperature steam which creates electricity in a turbine’.

The AD and ATT technologies are expected to generate 7.7 megawatts (MW) of electricity a year, with 5.7 MW exported to the National Grid. The remainder will be used to power the facility itself.

Building work details

Demolition of the existing buildings on site will begin on Monday, 9 June, and is estimated to take three months. AmeyCespa has said that it aims to recycle or recover 95 per cent of the building material.

Once deconstruction work has finished, work will begin to prepare the site for the construction of new buildings that will house the waste treatment technologies.

It is expected that the construction work, carried out by VolkerFitzpatrick, will be completed by January 2016, with the plant becoming fully operational in September 2016, once both commissioning and testing periods have been completed.

AmeyCespa says it hopes the facility will see less than five per cent of all waste produced in the borough sent to landfill.

Making ‘a huge difference to the amount of household waste being landfilled’

Speaking of the plans to start work next month, Paul Greenwell, Managing Director of AmeyCespa, said: “This is a significant milestone in the Milton Keynes Recovery Park project, and one which has been achieved just 20 months after AmeyCespa was named preferred bidder.

“The facility will make a huge difference to the amount of household waste being landfilled in the borough, as well as increasing recycling and generating enough electricity to power 11,000 homes each year. I look forward to seeing it take shape over the coming months.”

Andy Hudson, Head of Environment and Waste at Milton Keynes Council, added: “Here in Milton Keynes, we are rightly proud of our excellent recycling rate of 53 per cent, and this new facility will help us to push this even higher as any recyclable waste found in black sacks will be removed and processed.

“We are also delighted that the current building in Dickens Road will be carefully dismantled with 95 per cent of the material being recycled or recovered in line with our green ethos.”

Read more about the Milton Keynes Waste Recovery Park.