News

2016.10.21 | Doosan Enpure

Enpure moves to site scale plant trials of its sonixTM feedstock pre-treatment system for anaerobic digestion

Enpure speciales in waste treatment and renewable energy technologies and actively invests in its waste and renewable energy related research and development activities to create and launch needs-driven technologies that will introduce innovative solutions to the worldwide waste and renewable energy sector.

With over 400 UK anaerobic digestion plants in operation, and a similar number in the Planning process, reducing energy subsidies and feedstock cost increases or reducing gate fees lead the sector to look ever closer for Process improvement and optimisation.

Successful laboratory scale trials, overseen by Birmingham City University, have demonstrated that Enpure’s sonix^TM process can significantly increase anaerobic digestion biogas yields from various feedstocks. So successful were the results that Enpure committed to a >£1 million R&D project to build and operate a full size agricultural AD plant sonix^TM system. This is now in full operation progressing towards completion of a robust six month trial demonstrating the benefits of the process.

Sonix^TM applies ultrasonic sound energy to feedstocks to break open cellulosic barriers enabling the anaerobic digestion biology more ready access to digestible content. The process is fully containerised with plug and play design meaning the new plant is operating within days of arrival on site. Available at various throughput sizes the sonix^TM process can be retro fitted to an existing plant or included in new build facilities, giving the developer high returns and payback in well under five years.

Commenting on the project, Avtar Jirh, MD of Enpure said: “The objective of our sonix™ project is to expand upon our promising laboratory scale results by demonstrating on a full scale operational plant the biogas yield improvements, and reduced cake disposal quantities which together will offer existing and proposed plant operators significant investment return benefits.”