Advanced Biofuel Solutions Ltd (ABSL), University College London (UCL) and Wood have been awarded a £250,000 grant from Innovate UK to design a production line that makes high purity biohydrogen for fuel cell electric vehicles.
ABSL has made fantastic progress with commissioning the plant. The fuel handling system, cooling circuits, air extraction system and tap hole drill have all been commissioned.
ABSL took delivery today of two moving trailers to transport waste from material recycling facilities to the Swindon demonstration plant. The trailers, manufactured by Legras and leased from Riverside Truck Rental, can each carry enough waste to keep the plant running for 24 hours
Great progress has been made on commissioning the plant. The power and fire suppression systems are commissioned, the bulk of pre-commissioning is finished, the base control system has been installed and cold commissioning is underway.
The final piece of plant equipment – the plasma converter tap hole drill – was installed this week. Construction will be completed in the next few weeks once the remaining control wiring is tested. ABSL is now focused on commissioning the system and bringing it into operation.
The lid of the plasma converter was reunited with the base over the weekend. In total, the metal lid and refractory lining weigh 22 tonnes. The installation team needed to position it to the millimetre to ensure that the bolts would line up. This called for precision synchronised versalift work.
The refractory lining the plasma furnace is progressing well. The copper coolers have been installed in the furnace base and the lining of the roof is nearly complete. A layer of refractory will be applied to the coolers and the refractory will be cured before the complete furnace is assembled.
The ash cooling screw has been installed on site. This takes hot ash from the gasified waste and cools it to a safe temperature so that it can be stored ready for disposal.
The roof of the plasma furnace has been sent to the North West for refractory lining. Its is expected that lining and curing will take around two weeks. The roof will then be shipped back for the final assembly of the furnace.
Work has begun on the lining of the base of the plasma furnace. Lining and curing are expected to take two weeks and once they are complete the final assembly of the furnace will commence.
ABSL is making good progress on plant construction. Around 40 people are working on site finalising the installation of pipework and cabling. The final pieces of equipment will be delivered to site in February and commissioning will start in April.
ABSL is looking for experienced supervisors and senior operators to commission and run our advanced biofuel plant. If you have experience of waste or process operations and are happy with shift work please email you CV to Careers@absl.tech.
ABSL has now appointed all the key contractors required to complete the construction of the world’s first facility to produce grid quality natural gas from household waste.
