Anaerobic Digestate (Renewable Energy) Plant to convert silage, maize, and food waste to Methane Gas

Type: Civil Engineering works Location: Great Hele, South Molton

We are currently working on a number of Anaerobic Digestate plants involving heavy Civil Engineering works. The work involves roads, paved areas, structures and bases for various items of plant, together with foul, dirty and storm water drainage.

One site at Great Hele, South Molton, is nearing completion and already has gas being fed into the National Gas Grid. We have three further projects in early stages of design and construction. The following is a link to the Greener for Life website with further information about the various sites and the process.

We are faced with a number of challenges with these projects. Firstly to deal with containment in the unlikely event that one of the reinforced concrete digestate tanks becomes fractured. The brief is to contain all digestate within the designated site area and this is achieved by the use of earth bunds and reinforced concrete retaining walls. Containment calculations have to be carried out to Environment Agency standards, then we design the necessary containment bunds and retaining walls.

Storage is required for maize and reinforced concrete silage clamps are used for this. The material is then transported (using telehandlers or tractors with front loaders) into feeders where it is then mechanically transported into the digestate tanks. We are required to design all the necessary reinforced concrete structures to achieve this.