Chaps:
Have a look at my new business venture/website I’m starting in relation to the renewable energy field,
If it ever gets off the ground it will involve me putting trucks on the road to haul the waste food/energy crops and digestate to/from the anaerobic digester energy plant.
I have had VERY big interest from one of the top UK utility companies for my project
Thought I got quite creative with my logo and strapline 
I would appreciate any feedback from you guys 
Never take off, cause arguments and someone will end up in prison.
Well that was the outcome in Ambridge 
to late now to read it and digest all the info 
Severn Trent are/have built a plant. They have grown and harvested 1100acres of maize this year alone for it. Also some farms are already building their own plants, mainly large dairy farms.
All this is ok, but may start to push up food prices, if that happens it’ll get pegged back by legislation as no government wants food price rises and the upset that causes the general public, no matter how green they are.
Steve,
My understanding is that the bio-mass plant can use many types of waste product and it is not necessary to grow ‘bio-mass’ just to sustain the plant. Admittedly, that is what happened in Germany but only because it was more profitable than trying to grow other crops/produce.
Big Truck youve got mail.
Nice idea BIg Truck, and very much of the moment. There is a plant running here in Shropshire which takes food waste from the local town (Ludlow).
The capital costs of the plant is very high, although I think the technology is low risk. Talk to Greenfinch of Ludlow. I know the owner Michael - he’s a good guy.
wood fuel:
Nice idea BIg Truck, and very much of the moment. There is a plant running here in Shropshire which takes food waste from the local town (Ludlow).The capital costs of the plant is very high, although I think the technology is low risk. Talk to Greenfinch of Ludlow. I know the owner Michael - he’s a good guy.
Greenfinch have now been bought over by these guys: biogen.co.uk
Had a very in depth tour of a GF plant at the Agri Research Institute in Hillsborough Co.Down yesterday, I was quite impressed and didn’t think the capital cost of £500k was too bad 
Mark my words an AD plant with the right feedstock for fuel is a licence to print money especially if you can feed the combined heat and power into a brand new £250 million shopping centre 
Delivered some of the kit for that job in Hilsborough,and there are two new ones up and running over here Bedford and one in Norfolk,Biongen Greenfinch say (although they would wouldnt they) that the business is really starting to gain momentum,as I understand it you dont just generate revenue from electricity produced but also from taking the waste,be it food or muck or whatever! so if youve got that much cash spare l should go for it!!
R500NUT:
Delivered some of the kit for that job in Hilsborough,and there are two new ones up and running over here Bedford and one in Norfolk,Biongen Greenfinch say (although they would wouldnt they) that the business is really starting to gain momentum,as I understand it you don’t just generate revenue from electricity produced but also from taking the waste,be it food or muck or whatever! so if you’ve got that much cash spare l should go for it!!
You are nearly correct,because there is a 3rd “revenue stream” to also consider:
The odour/pathogen free “digestate” that is left over at the end of the AD process has a value too,it has good levels of Nitrogen,phosphate and potash which is what grassland Farmers use in bagged granular fertilizer to grow grass
For every 1000t of primary fuel that goes into an AD there will be approx 900t of digestate at the end,so I’ll need a fleet of walking floor/ejector/vacuum tanker trailers to haul the gear in and haul it out again
Put it this simple way ref an AD renewable energy plant:
You have a coal fire in the house,the coalman PAYS YOU to take his bag of coal and you burn it and heat your house/hot water tank,the binman also PAYS YOU to take away the ashes. 
BTW,
I don’t have ANY capital to spare but I know a very large UK utility company who does
The trouble that I find is, all the new ideas for creating energy and reducing carbon footprints leads to failure because they end up creating carbon through secondary purposes, like these new wind farms need new gearboxes on the turbines every year! We need to break the hold the oil companies have on ceramic machinery so that we can make machines that don’t need oil therefore last a hell of a lot longer.
marcustandy:
Steve,My understanding is that the bio-mass plant can use many types of waste product and it is not necessary to grow ‘bio-mass’ just to sustain the plant. Admittedly, that is what happened in Germany but only because it was more profitable than trying to grow other crops/produce.
Fully agree, but the Severn Trent maize is grown on good arable land. A customer of ours rents the old dairy unit off them at Lowdham, we were carting maize into the pit there for him to feed to his beef cattle whilst they were cutting the maize for the digester. Ours was doing in the region of 14t/acre they were into the 18-19t/acre. It will happen because, at present, most arable crops are struggling to break even, if they offer a good price alot of people will jump onto the contracts.
We are running out of landfill sites and it is costing YOU via your council tax. 
An AD solves the puzzle of what to do with ALL the food/garden waste that goes into LF and rots down ending up putting methane directly into the atmosphere and significantly contributing to global warming.
Big Truck:
landfill sites . . . . . . costing YOU via your council tax.
Now you’ve touched a nerve with me!!!
Council tax for our new house is evidently £2,258.53!!! 
I want a gold-plated landfill site for that much. Whatever will help reduce that bill grabs my attention!! 
The problem with all bio-fuels is there isn’t enough arable land to satisfy the requirements of that alone without taking food crops into account. So we’ll be warm while we’re starving… 
44 Tonne Ton:
The problem with all bio-fuels is there isn’t enough arable land to satisfy the requirements of that alone without taking food crops into account. So we’ll be warm while we’re starving…
Sorry but you are wrong BIG TIME,
have you ever heard of the word “setaside”
Its where the EU give Farmers thousands of pounds to “setaside” portions of their land in “fallow” to end the food mountains we used to have.
They even have schemes (countryside management) where Farmers are given grants to grow bird cover around the “end rigs” of the fields,in effect that takes out one third of their hectares available for growing food crops.
British Farmers have the know how and the expertise to easily increase their food production to cope with any land going into “industrial crop” production.
Farmers will welcome AD renewable energy with open arms as the progressive ones among them are already looking at renewable energy crop production.
There are over 4000 AD’s working in Germany and I’ve never heard of any food shortages overthere 
BTW,
like it or not its coming:
timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/e … 561236.ece
That article refers to it as a means of disposing of food waste with power generation and fertiliser as a by-product and from that angle it looks promising, I’m in favour of that. My argument is about the part where you refer to it as a means of producing energy from crops grown specifically for energy generation. All the comments I’ve heard about the possibilty of creating bio-fuel this way falls down as there isn’t enough land on the planet to satisfy the demand. The scientists think the most promising avenue could be energy from algae in the future. I think some smart @rse scientist will probably be the undoing of us all but hey, why let that get in the way of the chance of earning a pound note?
Big Truck:
Sorry but you are wrong BIG TIME,
have you ever heard of the word “setaside”
Its where the EU give Farmers thousands of pounds to “setaside” portions of their land in “fallow” to end the food mountains we used to have.
The issue with that argument is that compulsory setaside was abolished a couple of years ago and since then the majority of it has been integrated back into the normal crop rotations.
Farmer will of course welcome this - anything that increases the demand for their products will help firm up cereal prices (which are currently very low). That doesn’t mean it’s actually any good for us in the long term. We’re already struggling to feed the world without losing valuable arable land to fuel production.
The other issue (although not strictly relevant in this case) is that vast tracts of rainforest in south america are being felled to make space for fuel crops which kind of makes a mockery of the whole biofuel idea as the amount of carbon the rainforest would have absorbed is significantly more than is saved by using biofuels instead of conventional fuels.
Of course that doesn’t mean that your business plan isn’t sound - government commitments to increase the use of biofuels mean you’re almost guaranteed a market, but any claims that it’ll save the planet are, in my view, complete rubbish.
Paul
There are millions of hectares of derelict “black soil” land in the “Eastern block” countries which happened due to the fall of the state farm system under communism. 
Most of this is in the Ukraine and Russia but there are large blocks in other ex Warsaw pact countries too.
The vast farming corp from the UK/USA are already moving in to put the land back into viable production and this will alleviate any notion of food price rises due to land going into energy crop production in the rest of Europe.
My AD system will only use 25% energy crops with 25% food waste,25% brown bin food/garden waste from local Councils collected from residential housing and 25% Pig/Cattle slurry with possibly Poultry manure.(There is nowhere in NI for all the Poultry litter to go at this time and it has been stockpiled for the last two years )
Big Truck:
There are millions of hectares of derelict “black soil” land in the “Eastern block” countries which happened due to the fall of the state farm system under communism.
Most of this is in the Ukraine and Russia but there are large blocks in other ex Warsaw pact countries too.
The vast farming corp from the UK/USA are already moving in to put the land back into viable production and this will alleviate any notion of food price rises due to land going into energy crop production in the rest of Europe.
. . . . . and as an example of what BT is saying, a company local to me is doing exactly that. Read more here.