Resource Park Model

The Raynesway Resource Park will generate renewable energy and recycle material that would usually have gone to landfill. It will generate enough renewable electricity to supply 19,350 households in Derby – 21% of the town's requirement – and recycle 20,000 tonnes of material.

The Raynesway Resource Park will accept a total of around 100,000 tonnes of waste per annum for recycling and energy production. This tonnage will be split with about 30,000 tonnes going for sorting in the Materials Recycling Facility (MRF) and 70,000 tonnes going directly for energy generation in the Gasification Plant.

Vehicles for waste delivery will come into the site and drive onto the weighbridge. At the weighbridge it will be decided if the waste is to go to the Materials Recycling Facility or directly for Energy Generation. The weighbridge will monitor the delivery trucks using CCTV to ensure that any waste materials coming into the Resource Park comply with the Environmental Permit and Operating Licence.

Once the delivery trucks have delivered to the relevant plant, they will tare off on the second weighbridge to ensure accurate weights are taken for every load.

Waste materials will come onto the Resource Park and will leave either as raw material for reprocessing elsewhere or as heat and electricity. It is intended to use the ash from the Energy Recovery process for secondary aggregates, however, if this is not the case then a worst case scenario will be that only 6% of the incoming waste by weight will require landfill disposal.

The Materials Recycling Facility (MRF) will accept waste that would otherwise have gone to landfill. The waste going through the MRF will typically be from retail parks and commercial premises and be rich in recyclable packaging such as cardboard and polythene. These recyclable materials will be sorted, separated out and then baled for onward transportation to reprocessors such as paper mills and plastics factories. The non-recyclable portions, such as waste from a canteen and contaminated packaging, will go for Energy Generation to generate renewable electricity and heat.

Having the MRF ensures that we are recycling materials of value rather than using recyclate to feed the energy plant (see section on Waste Hierarchy). The MRF will recycle in excess of 60% of the waste going through the plant. This will be some 20,000 tonnes of material each year that would otherwise have been landfilled and lost forever.

Job roles will range from management, administration, fork-lift drivers and operatives.

The energy plant will be used to generate electricity and heat from the residual waste materials and recover its energy value. The process used to generate this heat and power is called Gasification.

The generation of renewable electricity and heat at the Raynesway Resource Park uses syngas from the gasification process as the fuel to create steam and electricity. The syngas fuel is combusted in a single chamber to give off the heat necessary to pass through a boiler that will generate high quality steam for renewable electricity production using steam turbines. The high pressure steam is passed through turbines that spin at high speed and generate electricity in the same way as many power stations in the UK. The electricity generated by the Raynesway Resource Park is then fed into the local electricity distribution network to be used by local homes and businesses – this is enough for more than 19,350 homes, equivalent to 21% of household needs in the Derby Unitary Authority.

Waste that will be used in the Energy Generation Facility will be material that has already been sorted by other waste transfer stations and MRF's as well as waste from businesses that already recycle and remove recyclate at source. There will also be an element of waste such as oil filters, oily rags, tannalised timber, paint scrapings from spray booths, etc. that under legislation is now considered as hazardous waste.

The electricity generated at the Raynesway Resource Park will be low carbon with the whole of Phase 1 saving circa of 63,500 tonnes of CO2 by not landfilling recoverable resources and generating electricity from means other than coal or fossil fuels. In addition to this, gasification has been classified as a renewable form of providing electricity by the Government, so the Raynesway Resource Park can claim 50% of the power produced as renewable. This is based on the assumption that 50% of the waste being gasified is biodegradable and, therefore, qualifies for Renewable Obligation Certificates.

Additionally, there are great quantities of hot water at about 50°C that come from the cooling system of the electricity generating turbines. This hot water can be used in the winter for heating the Phase 1 buildings and offices as well as other businesses surrounding the development. The hot water can also be condensed and then used for cooling in the summer months.

Gasification is a process that can take non-inert materials and converts the solid material to a gas that can be used in the same way as gas in the home for heating and hot water. Gasification has been used since the late 1800s for the production of town gas for street lighting and cooking in the home, so this is a tried and tested process over many, many years.

Gasification is a highly efficient process whereby virtually all the energy in the material being gasified is released into the gas and, therefore, a very efficient method of generating steam and electricity from waste materials. Waste types accepted for energy generation will be along the lines of packaging that is too contaminated for recycling, treated wood wastes, damaged and/or out of date stock from supermarkets and other wastes that are too low in value to recycle.

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