Yorkshire Water gets green light for £72m AD sludge treatment facility in UK

A £72 million (€85m) new state-of the-art sludge treatment and anaerobic digestion (AD) facility in the centre of Leeds, UK, has been given the go-ahead.

Yorkshire Water’s planning proposal for a bioenergy facility at the company’s Knostrop works was approved by Leeds City Council’s planning committee and the contract has been awarded to Black & Veatch with the civil engineering element being delivered by Clugston Construction.

The Knostrop wastewater treatment works has been treating sewage from domestic properties and industry for approximately 100 years.

The new facility will replace the existing sludge and bio-solid incinerator, which was constructed in 1993 and enable the more efficient and effective treatment of sewage combined with the additional benefit of renewable power production from the waste water effluent.

“This is the single biggest investment of our current investment period (2015-2020) and will not only provide increased treatment capacity for our sludges but will also deliver significant operational cost savings enabling us to keep customer bills as low as possible,” Nevil Muncaster, director of asset management at Yorkshire Water, said.

“Knostrop is designated as a strategic waste site so by increasing the future sludge and bio-solid treatment capacity of the works the project will support also growth in the Leeds sub-regions.”

Planned for completion in 2019 the facility will be capable of processing 131 tonnes of dry sludge a day and will generate enough renewable energy, using heat and power engines, to provide 55% of Knostrop’s energy needs or enough to power 8,000 homes.

Additional benefits of the new facility are listed as a 15% reduction in carbon emissions across Yorkshire Water, and it will provide 55% of the site’s energy needs and contribute to achieving 94% recycling of the region’s sludge by 2020.