Modern Pumping Today November 2024 - 9

NEW UPGRADE MAKES A MARK
Enhanced mixing and true back-up for AD plant
BY SOREN RASMUSSEN, LANDIA
N
ew to the AD/biogas industry,
Ross Mingotti could have
been forgiven for walking
away from a plant that had already
had major mixing issues in its final
storage tank. Within two months of
him joining the business in December
2021, one of the paddle mixers in the
secondary tank failed.
The mixers had worked well since
being commissioned in 2017 at
Ampgreen Estates' Greengill Farm
AD plant (near Penrith, Cumbria, in
the far north of England), but now
came the problem of retrieving
them. This wasn't possible without
emptying the tank; in this case
from the final storage tank, which
holds close to three million gallons
of digestate.
" The final storage tank had already
been offline for twelve months, " says
Mingotti. " But at least we were still
able to run our primary digester,
which is the outer ring of the site's
tank-within-a-tank design. "
Jamie Seggie, appointed as AD
plant manager in February 2022,
must have also wondered what he'd
walked in to-and then to make
matters even worse, the invasion of
Ukraine shortly afterwards created
a delay in the replacement mixers
that had been ordered. As a 2.4MwH
plant, supplying power to the grid
was a considerable problem in
downtime and loss of income.
" After a three-month wait, with
still no word on the delivery of new
parts, " adds Mingotti, we decided
to look elsewhere. Our final storage
tank had become very crusted over,
but we managed to get it moving
temporarily with a very basic
propeller mixer that we could mount
on the back of a tractor. We went
to ADBA's World Biogas Expo in
WWW.MPTMAG.COM
Part of Ampgreen Estates' Greengill Farm AD Plant.
Birmingham, where we looked hard
at some new mixing systems to see
what might suit us.
" Potential suppliers then came
to visit, and could immediately see
that this was a site in distress, but
while price always comes into it,
MPT
Jamie and I knew we needed to feel
comfortable with whom we were
going to work with, and not be taken
advantage of with all sorts of add-on
sales. We may have been new to the
AD industry, but we were learning
fast. It was clear that there hadn't
NOVEMBER 2024 | 9
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Modern Pumping Today November 2024

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