This is a success-story that spans three decades of turning waste into energy.
The story stared in 1987 with one man in the city of Hull, recycling waste cooking oils and animal fats. A decade of impressive expansion necessitated a move to a large 10-acre site in the nearby town of North Cave where further experimentation in blending waste oils resulted in the refinement, creation and sale of green Biodiesel from 2006 to local schools and businesses for powering their generators.
Brocklesby’s ambitions to grow and diversify its food-waste-to-energy recycling business resulted in the design and construction of its impressive biogas facility at North Cave to convert food waste into green energy. The project was funded through a deal with Iona Capital, a UK investment company specialising in biogas ventures, carbon reduction and green energy.
With Iona Capital’s strict focus and expertise in biogas investments and monetisation an anaerobic digestion plant was swiftly built and commissioned in 2017. BioConstruct GmbH, a world leader in biogas plant designed and construction have built over 200 plants throughout Europe, some of which they own and operate. They were instrumental in recommending Permastore’s bolted Glass-Fused-to-Steel tanks to Brocklesby and helping to establish the business model and local ecosystem for exploiting every ounce of value from the project.
How the Model Works:
Brocklesby’s existing food-waste collection infrastructure provided the perfect vehicle for the collection and supply of a continuous flow of feedstock to the biogas plant’s digestors – the gas from which, powers a sizable Combine Heat & Power (CHP) plant. Heat from the CHP plant is channeled for use within Brocklesby’s 10-acre site, while the electrical offtake is exported to the national grid.
Outputs from the North Cave Plant:
In addition to furnishing the North Cave site with all its heating needs, the electrical power output is 3.5MW, which is sufficient to power around 11,000 homes. The plant process 60,000 tonnes of food-waste each year while the spent digestate is processed into bio-fertiliser (a by-product of the digestate) which is spread on local farmlands.
Near net-zero-waste recycling:
The combination of Brocklesby’s original food waste recycling business (i.e., its extensive food-waste collection and processing infrastructure) with its state-of-the-art anaerobic digestion plant and CHP system, provides the perfect example of a green, multifaceted, circular business-ecosystem. See diagram – opposite.
This extraordinary, circular business model illustrates how the acquisition of one business’s raw materials can be used to create cost reducing, revenue earning waste recycling service for companies.
The second part of this business model is equally interesting in terms of how the ‘waste-recycler’ (Brocklesby) comprehensively transforms waste into such a variety of products. The product output list comprises green fuel for space and water heating, fuel for road vehicle transport, mains electricity, fertiliser for crop-growth, localised power (generator fuel) and finally, chemical compounds for a variety manufacturing processes.
Brocklesby’s diverse recycling infrastructure model is the key to all this productivity. In its absence, all the waste-generators (Brocklesby’s waste suppliers) would incur increased costs that would be reflected in increased prices to their end-users.
Brocklesby’s business model also eliminates ongoing, low-grade environmental contamination – arising from conventional waste processing plants discharging their cleaned-up waste into drains and rivers.
…it’s all about efficiency, minimising lifetime-cost and optimising profit. Permastore tanks deliver:
- Exceptionally fast installation – reducing build costs
- Highest Glass-Fused-to-Steel Quality & engineering design
- …underpinning an achievable tank operating life of 50 years or more
- Near-zero maintenance across a tank’s operational lifespan
- No requirement to recoat the tank’s inner protective glass coat within its operational lifespan
- …resulting in near-zero down time & lost production / revenue
- …providing the best lifetime value & economy
- An all-steel construction (bar concrete base) allowing for nearly 100% of the tank to be recycled. NB. Steel can be infinitely recycled with over 70% of new output being produced from scrap steel and rising.
Conclusions
Best of the Best
It is always pleasing to learn that a highly successful company with an exemplary business record in green innovation has selected your product technology in preference to other technologies but has also chosen Permastore from a global list of bolted, Glass-Fused-to-steel (GFtS) tank manufacturers.
Brocklesby’s decision was also guided by two leading companies in this field, Iona Capital, the key investor, and Germany’s renown biogas plant constructor and operator, BioConstruct GmbH. Jointly, these three experts selected Permastore and our ‘scientifically created,’ highly resilient Glass-Fused-to-Steel coat – TRIFUSION®PLUS.
The Challenge
Temperature-based Mesophilic or Thermophilic anaerobic digestion which involves four biological and chemical stages, elevated temperatures, pressure and combination of liquid and vapour states, all within a single tank, presents an extreme engineering and materials-based challenge. High-quality Glass-Fused-to-Steel (GFtS), bolted containment technology, although not initially created for Anaerobic Digestion (AD), is arguably the most economic and low-maintenance containment solution, by far, for this type of application.
Economy & Lifetime Value
The extreme durability and resilience of Permastore’s TRIFUSION®PLUS glass coat and structural engineering expertise delivers an operational life span of up to 50 years or more. GFtS requires little to no maintenance with no need to re-coat the tank’s lining every few years – as would be the case for all other technologies. These factors combine to provide a technology that keeps performing without stoppages or extensive downtime. The latter does not lend itself to biogas production which necessitates 24 x 7 production economics with no stoppages.
By choosing Permastore, Brocklesby has evaded mounting annual maintenance costs and numerous periods of extended down-time that would be required by alternative technologies to undertake expensive re-coating projects.
We protect what’s important:
- Optimal uptime
- Minimal maintenance
- Minimal operational cost
- Revenue stream continuity
- Protection of the local environment