Thames Water has awarded a contract for advanced energy recovery from sludge to Bristol-based firm Aqualogy Environment Ltd, part of the SUEZ Group companies.
The bulk of the sewage sludge generated in the Thames Water catchment area is digested, with this proportion due to increase further with the construction of new assets.
Conventional anaerobic digestion typically recovers 30 % of energy value contained within sludge with the bulk of the energy potential being lost as sludge is applied to agricultural land.
When the Thames Water first went out to tender it said it was looking for new methods to recover larger amounts of renewable energy from sewage sludge to meet regulatory, economic and environmental targets. Recent developments and success in advanced thermal recovery technology prompted it to look for suppliers.
Thames Water was seeking as a minimum a third party technology provider to work with to develop a full scale (10-40 dry tonnes/day) demonstration plant to recover renewable energy in the form of electricity, biogas and/or heat
At the time the water company said the technology could either be market ready or under development – including plasma gasification, gasification, pyrolysis, supercritical water oxidation or others.
Thames was looking for market ready technologies to meet immediate requirements but said it was also interested in developing technologies with potential to meet our requirements.
Aqualogy has won the contract for Lot 1 which covered technology that is already proven in the water utilities sector – the contract will run for a minimum of 3 years up to a maximum of 7 years.
However, the tender process for Lots 2 and 3 which covered technology that is proven in industries other than water and technology that is at the developmental stage and unproven respectively has now been discontinued.
No information is currently available on the total number of companies who were in the bidding for the various Lots, or on the estimated value of the contract awarded to Aqualogy Environment Ltd .
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