Walsall ERF will provide the West Midlands with essential waste treatment infrastructure, while producing 49MWe of baseload electricity – which is equivalent to meeting needs of around 90,000 homes.
Our vision
This will not only divert residual waste from overseas export and landfill, in line with the Government’s landfill reduction targets, but also generates important baseload electricity. The facility will produce up to 49MWe of baseload electricity – which is enough to meet the electricity needs of around 90,000 homes. There are also emerging plans to export heat from the facility so that it can supply a future district heat network in the local area, which reduces reliance on fossil fuels.
The Energy-from-Waste process is designed not only to generate electricity and heat but recover other resources from the ash that remains, including ferrous and non-ferrous metals, and material for conversion into aggregates.
The facility is being built on a disused industrial site in Fryers Road by specialist engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractor Kanadevia Inova.
More than 300 workers will be employed during the construction period and there is a commitment to purchasing good and services locally where possible. Once operational, the facility will create around 60 local, high-skilled jobs, and provide wider supply chain opportunities to support the region’s drive to be a hub of green innovation.
Our role
Before the development of modern energy-from-waste technologies, most residual waste was sent to landfill. Now the same waste can be delivered to energy recovery facilities where it is weighed and tipped directly into a bunker.
The waste is then delivered into combustion chambers heated to above 850°C. The process heats up water in steel tubes within the boiler. The water is converted to superheated steam and delivered to a turbine that continuously generates electricity for onward transmission.
Emissions are filtered and cleaned before being released via tall flue stacks as a vapour. Ash from the furnace is collected separately and taken away for recycling and metal recovery.