Atkins to help deliver Glasgow EfW project

Atkins has been selected by Energos to help deliver an advanced conversion facility – part of Viridor and Glasgow City Council's £146 million Glasgow Recycling and Renewable Energy Centre (GRREC) project.

The GRREC will divert Glasgow’s domestic residual waste from landfill in line with Scotland's zero waste plan. It will operate a three-step process comprising: A 'smart materials' recycling facility to enhance recycling; anaerobic digestion (AD) to capture food and organic material; and the Energos advanced conversion facility to recover renewable energy from post-recycling material that remains.

The Energos thermal treatment facility will process the leftover post-recycled waste to generate enough renewable energy to power the equivalent of 22,000 households and heat the equivalent of 8000 homes, delivering a saving to Glasgow of 90,000 tonnes of CO2 every year.

Building work will begin at the site at Palmodie this summer, with completion expected in early 2016. The unit will then produce electricity, and potentially heat for district heating, with the electricity used to power the remainder of the recycling facility as well as providing renewable electricity to the grid.

Back in January, Glasgow City Council approved a planning application for the establishment of the £154-million GRREC. The decision followed an application submitted in September 2012 by Viridor to establish the state-of-the-art facility in Polmadie.

The  investment is expected to save the city £254 million during the 25-year contract and create 254 jobs, including a range of professional, skilled and new entrant roles including apprenticeships with an annual local salary bill of £1.5million Construction will commence in summer 2013 with completion in early 2016.

Under a framework engineering services contract, Atkins is to assist Energos in tendering of the major and long-lead plant items including the furnace and steam turbine generator packages. Once vendors have been selected, Atkins will provide engineering and commercial support.

“The specific requirements of this project meant we needed a company that not only had proven ability to support large scale projects but also had experience in the field of power generation with a strong technical engineering capability,” said Alan Wilson, projects director for Energos.

Energos designs, develops, builds and operates small-scale clean energy from waste facilities using advanced thermal conversion technology for improved emissions performance.  It has patented gasification technology for treating non-recyclable municipal, commercial and industrial waste, by converting it into renewable energy.

The company has more than 550,000 hours of operating experience over more than 15 years at eight plants across Europe.

For its part, Atkins has been involved in a number of energy from waste developments, most recently advising on environmental permitting and waste characterisation for TAQA, the global energy company based in Abu Dhabi.