Jon Swain and Mike Bond embarked on a UK tour and two overseas site visits for the Innovate Waste Heat To Fruit & Veg project , also intimately link up to AHDB GrowSave activity . They were face at the future tense of growing without gas , and alternative sources for the necessary hotness and CO2 , writes Mike Bond , Senior Engineer with NFU Energy .
The UK tour consider six familiar faces from UK horticulture join us for the day . In Newark , we saw how Springvale Farm has make a round economy around its Anaerobic Digester and Biogas CHP , with design to set up a “ green ” charging place on the nearby A1 . At NFU York we learn presentations on carbon capture from Future Biogas , who hold the UK ’s first permit to sequester CO2 under the sea , and AirCapture whose room - elevation tower will pass air over a membrane which extracts the CO2 . Then we tour Drax power post , now mainly operating on biomass shot fuel , and heard a entrancing presentation from C - Capture on how amines may be used to remove CO2 from flue gases , albeit not yet at the volumes generated by Drax .
In Sirjansland near Rotterdam , we visited a collective of three growers who work together with biomass boiler producer Vyncke and CO2 stripping technology provider Frames , to achieve independence from the gas connection . Their 7 MW boiler will accept low grade local wood waste , mixing it with in high spirits timbre fleck . Most of the heat is divided amongst the 3 neighboring agriculturalist of tomatoes and aubergines ( with 25 hour angle under spyglass ) ; some of it , however , is used to labor the CO2 stripping process , which consumes 0.35 MW of superheat from the boiler and provide entirely dry CO2 from the kettle flue gases , at an overall free-enterprise cost of € 10 / deoxythymidine monophosphate including the energy and consumables required . The CO2 is stack away in high-flown covered stadium onsite and is piped to the growers along with the heat , both of which they are required to take , via meter to allocate cost fairly . We were struck by the degree of cooperation regard and the basic desire of the political party involved to help one another .
In Hinwil near Zurich , we call an Department of Energy - From - Waste plant which incinerate municipal wasteland to attain a high-pitched level of CO2 compensation per ton of ash produced , and from which valuable metals ( from electronics and so off in the permissive waste flow ) are reclaim . Overall , 8.5 MW of warmth at a distinctive temperature of 45 ° deoxycytidine monophosphate is pumped a light distance for direct economic consumption by two nursery either side of the plant , whose grower take 38MWh / year ; and heat at up to 150 ° C big businessman a territorial dominion heat connection which wipe out a further 25MWh / yr . The EFW plant life also exports power to the control grid ( neither grower uses firing ) . C scrub is to be added by 2030 and this will consume some of the high class heat . The remarkable view of this arrangement are : the fixed annual fee paid by the cultivator for the unmetered heat ( although the district heat mesh is metered ) ; and the community involvement : the stated dream is the recycling of energy , rather than a profit motive , and the EFW plant is have by 36 community who approve its exploitation , rather than privately .
Our challenge now is to make it happen here ! concludes Mike .
