14 | OCTOBER 2015 | WWT | www.wwtonline.co.uk
Industry leader
Richard
Warneford,
Wastewater
Director,
Northumbrian
Water
"We are starting
to understand
the value of good
analytical brains,
as well as good
analytical systems."
V
ery little is wasted in the wastewater
treatment process these days, and
nowhere is this more true than at
Northumbrian Water. For the last
three years all the sludge produced
by wastewater treatment in the Northumbrian
region has ended up at just two plants –
Howdon in North Tyneside and Bran Sands near
Middlesbrough – where it is used to generate
power via advanced anaerobic digestion (AAD).
And with the opening earlier this year of a gas-
to-grid facility at Howdon, the utility has gone
one stage further, and is now injecting biogas
produced from AAD into the National Grid.
I meet Richard Warneford, Northumbrian's
wastewater director, at Bran Sands, which is
a sprawling out-of-town treatment and sludge
processing complex the size of a small village.
Before we clamp on our hi-vis for a tour of the
site, he tells me how Northumbrian is also
actively investigating putting in gas-to-grid at
the Bran Sands site – it plans to have this up
and running by the end of 2016 – and how the
arguments for extending energy generation in
this way are compelling.
"We're quite proud that we put 100% of
our sludge through those two plants, where it
generates electricity, and then 100% of the waste
product goes back to the land and is recycled
- there's something we love about that whole
story," says Warneford. "It seems a logical step,
then, to take the opportunity to do even more
with that and look at the options for gas. It's
important as part of the whole environmental
cycle, but it's important financially to us as well,
as the government has incentivised the whole
thing around green gases at the moment. It's
things like this that actually allow you to keep
bills low."
The 88kWh of energy generated from gas-to-
grid at Howdon will save Northumbrian £3M a
year, from an £8M investment, and is helping
