BCB Gasification Project – Frequently asked questions

Q. What is the gasification project?

A. An £18m. capital investment project to buildprovide a 40,000 tonnes advanced thermal treatment plant in BCB’s hangar 86

Q. Why does the official press release quote the capacity at 60,000 tonnes?

A. Phase two will increase the capacity by a further 20,000 tonnes

Q. What does advanced thermal treatment mean?

A. Fundamentally that it is a superior form of combusting waste to traditional and crude incineration methods. The approach involves the slow internal combustion of organic materials in an unpressurised chamber in a reduced oxygen atmosphere.

Q. How does it differ from traditional incineration?

A. Incineration is a controlled conflagration in the presence of oxygen with a varying temperature gradient. Gasification occurs in a reduced oxygen atmosphere and the temperature rises to approximately 550 Celsius and is sustained at the level for up to 24 hours whilst the waste smoulders away (the best analogy is of a cigarette stood on end and slowly burning down)

Q. What are the benefits of gasification over incineration?

A. Several: 1) it is a quiescent process that substantially reduces particle production 2) it produces gas, synthetic gas, rather than just raw heat 3) the burn through is 100% - only ash remainings of the original combustible content

Q. What gases are produced?

A. Carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen mainly

Q. What happens to the gases?

A. They are sucked into the secondary chamber, ignited in the presence of atmospheric oxygen (temperature rises to around 1100 Celsius) and then used to produce steam in a traditional boiler

Q. Why is the plant sometimes described as a power station?

A. The steam produced from the ignition of the synthetic gas drives a turbine that in turn produces electricity, most of which is delivered to the national grid for general consumption. It is probably more apt to think of it as a power station using waste as a fuel

Q. How much power will it generate?

A. At full capacity, that is with 60,000 tpa in place, there will be approximately enough to power 10,000 homes

Q. What types of waste will it burn?

A. Up to 75% municipal waste (direct from the dustbin) and around about 25% of BCB’s current hazardous and non-hazardous wastes though the mixture may vary up to 50:50 depending on the organic content of the waste streams.

Q. Isn’t it dangerous to burn hazardous waste?

A. No more so than municipal. In fact when we consider batteries and similar items disposed in unsorted municipal waste it has been suggested that hazardous waste will be a quite predictable and reliable raw material for the plant. We expect to focus on hazardous wastes such as oily rags, paint and ink based materials much of which is, in fact, non-hazardous

Q. Why is BCB moving into municipal waste?

A. Two reasons:
1)BCB does not manage 60,000 tonnes (or even 40,000 tonnes) ino our current waste business so the reliable flow of municipal waste ensures that the plant will be full from the first days and
2) there are attractive commercial returns for the business in the form of revenues generated from Renewable Obligation Certificates (ROC’s). To achieve these ROC’s we need municipal waste!

Q. What exactly are ROC’s?

A. Ours is a “green” project and benefits the UK in terms of reducing the carbon footprint, facilitating the diversion from traditional landfill disposal and of course, is a source of valuable alternative energy. The ROC’s are financial rewards granted for the generation of clean power (ie. non fossil fuel derived).

Q. So this is a green project?

A. Very much so. It is rated as carbon neutral and supports the government’s determination to force industry to achieve the landfill diversion targets of our national and local authorities in accordance with the nation’s alternative energy strategy.

Q. What benefits does it bring for the local populace?

A. Well, North Yorkshire and, indeed, the whole country – like it or not – has to embrace thermal treatment for municipal waste. Without such projects the cost to the council taxpayer will be severe as landfill diversion targets will be missed and financial penalties levied on local authorities by national legislators. By providing a cheap, green alternative sooner rather than later we are meeting the future challenges head-on. Also, if you consider that the contents of a dustbin represents a significant proportion of the individual’s carbon footprint, our new plant will be like a green recycling machine for waste will be a benefit to reducing that footprint. People care these days about carbon footprints – there is no going back!

Q. How can you reassure the locals who may not fully understand the facts of gasification and see only potential risk?

A. The UK has the most stringent environmental standards in the country. Within these tight strictures, BCB has state-of-the-art monitoring and control systems and processes. If our project had a significant environmental impact it would not be allowed to be built. It really is as simple as that.

Q. Can you elaborate on that statement?

A. Consider the price tag of £18m. A significant proportion of this investment sum goes on systems designed to minimise theeliminate environmental impact and to be compliant with or be better than the stringent WID targets. Investment will be devoted to noise abatement, odour elimination, emission reduction, exhaust gas scrubbing/cleaning, particle capture and so on. For instance, at 4.00 am on a Sunday morning, our nearest neighbour might pop his head out of a bedroom window and observe a background noise of 35 decibels from birdsong and other naturally occurring activities (we have actually measured it!). Accordingly, our operation will be engineered to be only 30 decibels at 4.00 am on a Sunday morning. This is the approach we are applying to all the potential impact issues.

Q. What exactly is emitted from the stack?

A. Water vapour and carbon dioxide mostly

Q. Are there no toxic compounds in the exhaust gases?

A. The UK has stringent standards for emissions defined in the Waste Incineration Directive, or affectionately abbreviated to WID. Because gasification is known to perform significantly better than incineration in terms of emission, the standards dictated to us by the Environment Agency will be even more stringent. We expect this and have made a conservative plan to accommodate these standards.

Q. Will not such a large increase in volumes bring traffic issues?

A. Initially we felt this could be an issue. As a part of the Environmental Statement we commissioned a traffic assessment to be undertaken by the UK’s leading independent experts in this field. Their findings indicate that the roads in question are only receiving 10% utilisation and our operation will only contribute marginally to this percentage figure. Moreover, traffic movements will operate only during daylight hours of the working week. It is anticipated that the local inhabitants virtually unaffected by any increase in traffic activity.

Q. What is the Environmental Statement?

A. The Environmental Statement is the submission made to support BCB’s planning application. It details the potential environmental impact of our project and explains in great detail the likely nature and magnitude of these impacts and how the project design will tackle them. Specifically, the Environment Statement addresses noise, odour, emissions, traffic, visual impact and explains at length why the project will have a nil environmental impact on the local amenity while producing a positive environmental and energy impact on the UK as a whole.