A new 22MW biomass plant near Hull will bring around £35m of investment to the local area and secure the long term future of 100 highly skilled manufacturing jobs in the East of the city, as well as 80 additional jobs for local suppliers. The announcement from clean energy firm HRS Energy was presented as “building on the Humber’s burgeoning reputation as a high-tech green energy hub”.
The plant will use HRS Energy’s prorietary combustion, heat recovery and power module technology which will be manufactured in Hull by CF Struthers – which was visited by Karl Turner MP on 3 March coinciding with the announcement- ensuring a local supply chain to minimise costs and emissions and maximise local benefit.
HRS uses a unique fluidised bed combustion and heat recovery system to burn biomass more efficiently than comparable methods. HRS says the technology has the potential to transform the efficiency performance of biomass power plant infrastructure worldwide and a high level of interest has already been expressed, especially in the USA and Mexico. As well as improving the efficiency of biomass generation, the unique heat recovery technology can also be retrofitted to gas compressor plants and peaking gas turbines to recover energy which is otherwise wasted.
The plant will provide enough clean energy to power 11,000 homes. A similar size power station using fossil fuels would produce 160,000 tons of CO2 each year – the equivalent to the annual emissions of 33,000 cars.
