Power On - Energy from Waste

Jon Hughes and Mark Anslow

1st November, 2007

Each year, UK livestock produce some 60 million tonnes of collectable faeces. If left to run into water-courses or even spread on fields, this waste can lead to the same problems associated with excessive fertiliser use – algal blooms and aquatic life starved of oxygen.

If, however, this waste is captured and placed in a sealed, airless container known as a biodigester, then microbes within the solids begin to turn the slurry into CO2 and methane.

Research has shown that digesting just 6.6 tonnes of cow manure can produce enough gas to generate 186 kWh a day of electricity and 138 kWh a day of heat energy. This is sufficient to provide steady electricity for 20 homes, or heat for six. If small, farm based biodigesters were to make full use of the UK’s yield of animal waste and supply excess power to their neighbours, some 1.6 TWh of electricity – nearly 1 per cent of UK domestic electricity requirements – could be generated from what is essentially waste.

Food waste has similar potential. The Government’s Waste and Resources Action Programme calculates that biodigesting the 5.5 millions tonnes of food waste sent to landfill each year could generate between 477 and 761 GWh of electricity every year, meeting the needs of 164,000 households, and saving up to 3.6 million tonnes of CO2, partly by avoiding climate damaging methane emissions from the rotting produce.

The gas given off by the UK’s landfill and sewage processing sites is already...

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