Suffolk Energy from Waste Facility

Today we had an educational visit to Suffolk's Energy from Waste facility at Great Blakenham.

This was the invite from Joyce...

"December 17th. Have you ever wondered what happens at the Recycling plant in Great Blakenham? I have arranged a visit for 2pm and if weather plays ball there will be a walk beforehand."

Here are a few photos.

Dawn and I opted out of the walk beforehand and were the first ones there, where we were soon joined by Karen and Wendy, before the walkers arrived. Our guide for the day, Jenny, met us and took us up to the visitor centre while we waited for the others.

I happened to be the 10th anniversary of the opening of the plant today, so there was a big meeting to celebrate... and hardly any car parking spaces left.

When the others arrived Jenny got them to park by the kerb with a bit of toing and froing.

Eventually we were all assembled in the meeting room....

...where Jenny and Sarah gave us an excellent presentation and answered all our questions.

Here is a schematic summarising how the plant works.

Time for the tour now, and we all had to get kitted out in PPE.

Dab and Shaun had a go at the bikes.

Into the plant now, and we spent a bit of time in the control room watching Danny move the waste around to make room in the trench for lorries to dump their waste and ensure everything is evenly distributed.

The colour display here shows the temperature distribution. They don't want any fires starting here.

A large teddy bear had been left dangling.

Everything from our black/grey bins and the "non-recyclable" skips at the recycling centres ends up here.

Now we were taken round the rest of the plant.

We got to look into the furnace.

Climbing higher. The thermometer here shows the dry steam is at 380 deg C.

There are quite a few levels and we climbed a fair number of stairs.

Among other things, urea is used to treat what comes out of the furnace.

The ash goes across the road on a conveyor belt here to be treated in the building opposite.

The composition of the gases going up the chimney is carefully monitored.

We returned though the plant via the shaking griddle that sorted out the biggest lumps of metal.

Then it was back to the education centre to stow away the PPE before leaving.

Thank-you Jenny and Sarah for the talk and the tour and thank-you Joyce for organising it. It was well worth the visit! You can book your own on their website here.

You can see more of my photos here on Flickr.