AD at Codford

The AD plant at Codford is located on a 5-acre site of a redundant dairy in the middle of East Farm, Codford, over 2 miles from the nearest house. The plant generates 3.7 megawatts of power, which is sufficient to supply up to 4,000 homes or 10,000 people. The power is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The site is screened by woodland on all sides and benefits from the existing infrastructure of roads, on-site water and electricity, and available farmland for digestate spreading.

The food waste for the plant is sourced across southern England. We are partnered with a network of operational AD plants across the country, giving us excellent coverage across the UK for all of our food waste clients.

The plant was built by British-based GE Monsal, who have 20-years of experience building digesters in the water industry, and this is their fifth AD food waste plant. Virtually any waste product can be effectively processed by the plant to produce a strong, stable gas yield with a short retention time required in the digester tanks. Packaged waste can be processed and cleaned by the plant, with the non-digestible products (plastics, grit etc.) being set aside for further recycling into RDF.

The plant has a large waste reception building with full odour control. We have the capacity to unload and clean two full size articulated lorries at one time, plus we have a dedicated liquid waste reception area.

Processed feedstock is piped to the Hydroysis Tank, a 1,400 m3 vessel where the digestion process begins. From here the feedstock is pasteurised, then enters one of the two 4,000 m3 digesters. This is where the anaerobic reaction takes place, with billions of bacteria processing the calorific content of the feedstock and converting it into methane.

The methane is then tapped off the top of the tanks, and is piped to a storage vessel. From there it is pumped into one of the three CHP generators. The electricity is then exported through underground cables into the national grid at Codford.

Digested feedstock (digestate, or biofertiliser) is piped out of the digester into the on-site lagoon ready to spread onto the crops on the surrounding farmland.