In the UK, WRAP has a specific focus on the development and growth of a safe, sustainable and profitable AD industry and is working to deliver specific actions from Defra’s AD Strategy and Action Plan. The ‘Driving Innovation in AD’ programme aims to meet some of those actions by developing two projects that challenge specific areas of AD, namely:
- The optimisation of processing and product manufacture at all scales of AD
- The reduction of costs and complexity of small scale AD
To complete this programme of work WRAP will act in partnership with the Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) on both of the projects as well as with the Royal Agricultural Society of England (RASE) on the small scale AD projects.
Programme Overview
WRAP selected a total of 19 projects (6 small-scale; 13 optimisation) to take through to Phase I Feasibility Studies. An overview of each project can be seen below.
WRAP is now looking to take forward a small number of successful projects to Phase II Demonstration Trials. A list of the Phase II projects will be announced by the end of March 2013.
Small-Scale and On-Farm AD
| Company | Location | Description |
| EHV Engineering | Abingdon, Oxfordshire | Cost-effective clean up and supply of biogas for small-scale AD |
| Marches Biogas | Ludlow, | New and retrofitted AD plants from farm slurry stores |
| Evergreen Gas | Ludlow, | Small-scale Biogas upgrade for vehicle fuel |
| Biotech | Sandbach, Cheshire | Mini biogas digester for self-assembly on farm |
| Aardvark | Wivelscome, Somerset | PowerQube, adding pasteurisation phase to current technology options |
| Green Farm | Co. Tyrone, Northern Ireland | Pre-treatment technology for farm-scale AD to enable wider feedstock options for farm-scale projects |
Optimisation
| Company | Location | Description | Feasibility report |
| CWM Harry Land Trust Ltd | Newtown, | Hub & Pod proposal to guarantee that the Animal By-Products Regulations (ABPR) standards are met by having smaller ABPR compliant Hubs located close to where the food waste arises. Feedstock is then distributed to multiple digesters (PODs) | |
| Cranfield University | Cranfield | Improving the production of methane through enriching the reactors CO2 content | Read report |
| NeueAg | East Anglia | Proposes to integrate Pyrolysis and the digestate from AD, subsequently producing additional renewable energy and a biochar for enhancing soils | |
| Jesta Ltd | Loddon, Norwich | The use of targeted enzymes and bacterial inoculations to deliver a reliable improvement to AD | |
| Linton & Robinson Ltd | Strabane, | Improvement of mixing and the reduction of parasitic mixing costs in grass silage fed continually stirred tank reactors by using fine bubble gas mixing | |
| CatalySystems Ltd | Newcastle | Application of photocatalytic technology to increase the energy efficiency of an AD plant while protecting the bacterial species found in the digester from toxic compounds | |
| The National Energy Foundation | Milton Keynes | The use of modular small-scale AD and associated membrane technology as a means to reduce the COD content found in the produced liquor fraction | Read report |
| Black & Veatch Ltd | Redhill, Surrey | The selective solid recovery (SSR) of biomass from digestate for recirculation into the front-end of an anaerobic digester, leading to an increasing organic loading rate (OLR) | |
| CPI Innovation Services Ltd | Redcar, Teeside | The use of oscillatory baffle reactors (OBRs) which use an advanced mixing technology to improve throughput and digester performance | |
| Newcastle University | Newcastle | The use of next generation sequencing (NGS) technology for the monitoring and diagnosis of Anaerobic Digestors | |
| Sustainable Resource Solutions Ltd | Leeds | Application of a biosolar reactor to convert volatile fatty acids (VFA) into hydrogen gas with high efficiency | |
| AWS Burdens Environmental Ltd | Cardiff | The pelleting and subsequent biomass burning of the solid, non-hydrolysed, non-readily digestible fraction of an AD feedstock | Read report |
| Queen's University | Belfast | Use of novel MIR-spectroscopy system for real-time monitoring of a biogas plant, which comes with a fully-automated cleaning and recallibration system | Read report |
