My Fresh supplies freshly prepared vegetables and ingredients to well-known UK food brands and retailers. At its Bedfordshire facility, trade effluent and organic residues from processing onions, garlic and potatoes are treated in our on-site Anaerobic Digestion (AD) plant.
The plant installed by EnviroChemie UK handles solid process residues that are converted into a vegetable ‘soup’ and fed to the digester. By accessing the latent energy content of unwanted residues, the company has boosted the site’s power supply with renewable energy (overcoming a grid capacity issue), cut carbon emissions and improved resource use, replacing off-site disposal with a robust on-site solution.
The liquid digestion technology converts the vegetable co-products into biogas, supplied to a CHP unit, to help power the factory. The energy is derived from treating the chemical oxygen demand (COD) in feedstocks, which is reduced by over 95%.
The project was completed over two phases. Phase 1 involved refurbishing the existing aerobic plant, by adding a membrane based biological treatment module (MBR) to better protect the stream. Phase 2 was the construction of the AD plant. Following commissioning EnviroChemie has provided ongoing technical support.
Key components of this bio-energy plant are:
Feedstock supply Vegetable residues are dissolved and fed into digester.
Anaerobic reactor 3,000m3 fully-mixed system optimises biogas output.
Biogas handling Gas is cleaned and supplied to a CHP unit near factory.
Digestate Dewatered sludge applied to grow crops on the adjacent farm.
The bio-energy plant combines an efficient solution for handling the vegetable processing residues with an attractive return on investment, enabling My Fresh to embrace the circular economy.
This approach to on-site bioenergy supply can be replicated on smaller sites with modular plant design.
