UK clean energy recovery from waste business Energos, part of the ENER-G group, has acquired waste to energy business BioGen Power through a share swap arrangement. Energos, which is gasification technology partner to BioGen Power, already had a 28% shareholding in the business.
The deal brings together a joint portfolio of six fully consented UK sites, with a total generating capacity of 60MW and waste treatment capacity of 650,000 tonnes, plus additional sites in the development pipeline.
Nick Dawber, managing director of Energos, says: “The combined portfolio of development-ready sites and pipeline of opportunities – now under the control of Energos – provides an exciting opportunity to deliver a UK network of small-scale advanced thermal conversion plants. This offers commercial waste operators a proven, cost effective, environmentally friendly alternative to mass-burn incineration and landfill for their non-recyclable, non-hazardous waste streams.”
He adds: “This acquisition brings further specialist planning and waste contracting expertise into the organisation and adds to the strength of Energos. We look forward to starting to roll out the UK development portfolio in 2012. Our community-sized model of operation means that the renewable energy facilities can sit alongside businesses and supply them with heat.”
Energos expects to start construction on two of its six approved sites in 2012, with the remaining sites in the following two years. Energos’ patented gasification technology is an advanced thermal treatment process that converts residual, non-recyclable waste into a gas by using the heat of partial combustion to free hydrogen and carbon in the waste.
Residual waste is fed into the gasification chamber, where it is converted into a syngas. This syngas is then transferred to a secondary oxidation chamber where it is mixed with air and recycled flue gas under tightly controlled conditions that ensures complete and efficient combustion resulting in reduced emissions in the flue gases. The upshot is ultra-low emissions, with the resulting heat recovered to produce steam and/or electricity.
A typical plant can generate 9MWe of renewable power from a variety of waste streams. This would equate to the output of 15 large wind turbines. The facilities are compact, with a building height of around 18m that does not dominate the skyline.