Centrica buys Chesterfield plant for STW biogas project
10 Jun 2010
London – Chesterfield BioGas (CBG), part of Pressure Technologies plc, is to supply Centrica with one of the UK’s first biogas upgrading plants for the production of biomethane from waste for direct injection into the national gas grid.
The order, worth over £0.6 million, has resulted from a partnership between Centrica, Scotia Gas Networks and Thames Water to process the gas naturally produced by waste water at the Didcot Sewage Works.
CBG has been working with the partnership to integrate the upgrading unit into the system that extracts the raw gas during sewage processing.
The upgrading plant employs proven water scrubbing technology to upgrade the raw gas to 98% pure biomethane. This will be injected into the grid for use by all gas customers, both commercial and domestic. The unit is expected to be installed this summer and the Didcot plant is forecast to commence operation later this year.
The water scrubbing technology used in the biomethane production process was pioneered in New Zealand and is already being employed in plants in Japan, Germany, France, Spain and, particularly, in Sweden, where Pressure Technologies has experience of co-operating on similar projects.
Centrica’s order follows the publication of the injection to grid tariffs under the UK Government’s Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI), which will begin operating in April 2011. Under the RHI, feed-in tariffs will reward generators of renewable energy from a variety of sources.
Subject to Government confirmation of the future level of RHI subsidies, Pressure Technologies expects this to provide a significant stimulus to the market for CBG’s gas upgrading technology and the Group is actively working on a number of other potential biomethane to grid projects.
Biomethane is similar in properties to the natural gas which is currently supplied through the grid, except that it is generated from organic waste
products such as cattle manure, horticultural, food and household waste.
According to CBG, the “closed loop” production process for biomethane, is environmentally sustainable and, therefore, is expected to make a significant contribution to the achievement of the UK’s carbon reduction targets.
CBG, an operating division of Pressure Technologies, was formed in 2008 following the signing of a co-operation agreement with Greenlane Biogas Ltd, a world player in biogas upgrading from raw biogas.
Pressure Technologies also includes Al-Met – a manufacturer of precision engineered valve wear parts used in the oil and gas industries, which was acquired by the group in February. Its products are used in high-pressure choke and flow control valves, designed to regulate flow volumes in extremely demanding
applications in the subsea and surface oil and gas industries.
