Cockle Park Farm Anaerobic Digestion Plant
Newcastle University has installed a state of the art Anaerobic Digestion plant at Cockle Park, which will generate heat, electricity and digestate - an organic fertiliser from the farm’s pig and cattle manure.
The plant uses slurry from the dairy, beef and pig herds and will utilise energy crops and food residues from neighbouring businesses. Key features were built into the plant design such as the additional digester tank and the sampling ports to allow the university to experiment with various feedstocks such as energy crops whilst monitoring the quality of the biogas produced.
The project which is jointly funded by Newcastle University and ONE North East through its Rural Development Programme for England (RDPE), has been set up to help farms become more sustainable creating energy from waste.
Working with North East farmers, land managers and other related businesses, the university will disseminate information on Anaerobic Digestion technology and issues relating to the installation of this technology as well as outlining uses for digestate through a series of one day workshops (PDF: 205KB) and plant visits.
The workshops will take place on the following:
- 2 February 2012
- 8 March 2012
Further dates in 2012 will be confirmed later in the year.
The workshops will commence at 9.30am and will finish at approximately 3.00pm.
If these dates are not suitable or you would prefer a shorter visit, please contact us, as this facility is available for any interested parties to visit and not just restricted to the full day workshops.
For more information contact the Anaerobic Digestion office 01670 791958 or email Jenny.conn@ncl.ac.uk