Kelda Water Services Limited, owners of Yorkshire Water, has been granted full planning permission to build an Anaerobic Digestion Plant at the Knostrop Sewage Treatment Works in Leeds.

The detailed planning application was submitted by consultancy RPS Group on behalf of Kelda Water Services (KWS).

The proposed throughput of the facility is approximately 48,000 tonnes per annum and the plant will generate approximately 2.4MW of electrical energy which will be used to power the surrounding WWTW. The proposed development includes:

• a reception building incorporating solar panels on the roof;
• two reception tanks;
• a digester tank unit comprising primary digester and secondary digester tanks;
• three pasteurisation tanks;
• a separator;
• a digestate store;
• combined heat and power plant (chp), including a chp engine and a 30.5m high chp stack;
• carbon filters;
• a high temperature (ht) flare (10m);
• a biofilter;
• a 14.5m high biofilter stack

.The company must also fulfil a number of planning requirements prior to the commencement of the development, including a scheme detailing surface water drainage arrangements  and full drainage plans.

The scheme will be required limit the surface water run-off discharge rate for the development siteto the maximum allowable Greenfield rate of 5 litres/second/hectare, and be designed with suitable attenuation to store the additional peak flow stormwater calculated for the 1 in 30 year up to the 1 in 100 year return periods, with an allowance of 30% for climate change, without causing on-site flooding or flooding to third party property on adjacent land. The attenuating storage of the proposed SUDS Rainwater Harvester Tanks must also be submitted as part of the detailed scheme.