Activity within Bulcote Farm for the cattle appears to have wained ?
 
Empty Stock yards ! .. ..
Vacant pastures .. at the moment !
In April, Severn Trent Water began planting maize on a 750-hectare site near Nottingham to be used as fuel for the company’s energy crop anaerobic digestion plant in Stoke Bardolph.
Severn Trent Water has begun work on the UK's first industrial-scale energy crop anaerobic digestion plant at a site in Stoke Bardolph, Nottingham.
The company plans to generate 15GWh of electricity each year by next summer, when the 2MWe energy crop anaerobic digestion plant is due to be completed and commissioned. It plans to use maize as fuel for the digesters. In April, it began planting the crop on a 750 hectare site near Nottingham.
"Each year, 37,000 tonnes of maize silage will be fed into the plant, which will generate power to help run our adjacent sewage treatment works," explained Martin Dent, Severn Trent Water's renewable energy development manager.
"The land has been used for the safe recycling of sewage sludge for many years so cannot be used for food crops. Growing maize for electricity production is an ideal use for this land and is a totally sustainable solution. "
"We already use AD technology to treat sewage sludge and generate electricity at all of our large sewage treatment works, but this is the first time we will be generating electricity from crops," said Martin.
"The project is an important part of our renewable energy expansion programme - by March 2013 we aim to be generating 30 per cent of the power our business requires from renewables, including large wind turbines , other energy crop projects, new hydro generation and additional sewage gas combined heat and power (CHP) plants."
Last year, Severn Trent generated 163GWh of electricity from sewage gas CHP and hydropower. "That's 17.5 per cent of our total electricity needs. It's proof that we're serious about reducing our carbon footprint and reducing the amount of power we import from the national grid," added Martin.
(courtesy of Utility Weekly)
Three engines are used to convert the biogas produced by the digesters into electricity and heat. The heat is used to maintain the
digestion process. Stoke Bardolph can produce up to 5MWh/d of electricity from this renewable resource. This is more than
is needed to run the works and the excess is sold to the national grid. Â(courtesy Energy Recovery: )
• Stoke Bardolph is the largest works in the East Midlands serving half a million people and 200,000 ‘industry equivalents’
• On average it handles 170 million litres of sewage per day
• The inlet removes 2000 tonnes of ‘road’ grit a year and a further 330 tonnesof paper and plastics
• It takes 16 hours to completely treat the liquid phase before returning it as a high quality final effluent to the River Trent
** STW also plan to erect a 200 ft tall skelton mast at their Stoke Bardolph site - to monitor local wind conditions - in order to determine the viabilty an on site, full size "windmill style" power generator
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