Farmgen advances anaerobic digestion power plans

Farmgen is to establish a 1MW power plant employing anaerobic digestion (AD) technology at a farm near Silloth in Cumbria. Dryholme Farm has been purchased specially for the project. Lancashire-based Farmgen is also set to build a similar project near Blackpool.

The AD plant will use animal slurries, grass silage and other crops from fields surrounding the farm to create biogas, which is then used to generate electricity.

The Dryholme Farm scheme is expected to be broadly similar to Farmgen’s Lancashire project at Carr Farm, near Warton, which is costing £2.5 million. Electricity is to be exported to the National Grid, providing enough continuous electricity for more than 1,000 homes.

Similar plants are already commonplace in Northern Europe, with more than 4,000 running in Germany providing benefits for their local communities, noted Ed Cattigan chief operating officer of Farmgen. AD schemes, he believes, could play a pivotal role in helping rural regeneration and farm diversification across the UK, following the decline in traditional farming over recent years.

“Cumbria is a strong farming county and is, therefore, a potentially a very important area for AD, particularly as diversification has become a key issue in rural communities,” said Cattigan. “The county seemed the next logical move for us, as the site became available, and we are hopeful of introducing AD plants elsewhere in the county.

“At this stage it is too early to say how many, but we are certainly interested in hearing from other farmers, who want to learn about what AD energy generation could mean for them.”

According to a Farmgen statement, AD plants are broadly carbon-neutral and compared with other alternative renewable energy generators, such as wind turbines, have significantly less visual impact:

- Crops grown for Anaerobic Digestion consume the same amount of carbon as will be created in the AD process itself.
- AD uses specially-designed vessels to turn the combination of organic farmyard waste and maize into biogas and, subsequently, electricity.
- The residue from this process is a bio-fertiliser, which is returned to the land to help grow the following season’s maize crop.
- The bio-fertiliser has significantly less odour than slurry, which is traditionally used for muck-spreading on fields, and also provides superior nutrient release into the soil.
- Digestate, the remaining bi-product of AD, will replace 50% of the equivalent amount of nitrogen-based fertilizer currently used by the farms involved. (The production of traditional nitrogen-based fertilizer is a carbon-intensive process).
- Every mega-watt hour (MWh) of power generated by the AD plant will save the equivalent one MWh of highly carbon-intensive power generation from a traditional, fossil-fuel-burning power plant.