March 2006
up goes the chimney
The Incineration/waste to energy plant has been built and is in testing stages as at beginning August 2006 as Kent County Council granted permission to build an incinerator
to burn over half a million tonnes of waste each year, in an old
quarry that was due to be returned to a natural environment (birds
insects and plants).
550,000
tonnes of waste will be handled by the £150 million waste to
energy incineration project. Waste Recycling Group will manage this
facility along with Pepperhill Household Waste Recycling Centre near
Southfleet and various transfer stations and facilities around Kent.
The residual waste and hazardoud ash from Allington will be taken
to Norwood Quarry Isle of Sheppey.
The Plant
being built by Lurgi will use a ROWITEC® Fluidbed incineration
process which intends to produce 40 mw/hour electricity. It will be
operated by Fortum who have experience in Sweden and Finland with
11 power plants of various sizes.
Household
waste will be collected from Tunbrudge Wells to Dartford.
Just
a few hundred yards away is a high residential part of Maidstone which
has over 52,000 inhabitants. Maidstone is the county town of Kent,
a county in the south east of England. Renowned for its apples, hops
and agriculture it has been referred to as the Garden of England.
"As
the County Council deals with disposal of household refuse, surely
there is a better way than to reduce it all to polluted smoke, that
will be absorbed by plant life and breathed by humans and animals."
This
was the question posed by the residents. So now that the waste site
has been developed, lets make sure that it will be run as promised,
and lay fears that any pollution, traffic and nuisance fears are dealt
with. It wil be interesting to see just how much energy can be produced
by this state of the art plant
The chimney emmissions are
strictly monitored by the environment agency who also make sure their
impact on the environment is minimal, also inspections of plant regularly
takes place to make sure they are operating within the regulations.
KentEnviropower have promised to publish results of emissions on their
website.
