Ad Plant Hit By Lightning

thesilentone said:

Looks to be a fair size plant.

In reality, based on the tons going through, the clamps are quite small, so cant' be to much energy crop.

According to google its a 2.1MW plant, so, if it was energy crop only, it would require over 40,000 tons of maize per year.

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I hired them a piece of machinery and visited the site maybe ten years ago when it was Agriverts and the amount of food waste lorries that turned up when I was there it seemed it would have been 80% + feedstock, i think they were growing a few hundred acres of maize for it back then but things change, lot more competition nowadays for food waste. Agrivert were amongst the pioneers of the job in the UK. Their production capacity was always up in the ninety percents while most were back in the 60’s.

Gate fee is where the money is.

Waste brings money, crop costs money, it's a no brainer.

How much said:

when the news said "explosion" in an AD plant I thought it would be a proper mess with "turds" all over the place obviously the gas went but didn't seem to displace much of the digestate could have been much worse , but they need better lightning conductors.

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Lightening conductors need to be mounted to something.

These gas domes are flexible, and are held in shape either by the gas pressure inside, or air pumps.

There was no lightning protection, and as it was an old Agrivert site you would have thought they had learned their lesson back in 2016 when one of their other sites was hit by lightning

thesilentone said:

Lightening conductors need to be mounted to something.

These gas domes are flexible, and are held in shape either by the gas pressure inside, or air pumps.

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Lightning conductors can be mounted on a catenary system, completely independent of the structure they are protecting. Would be no problem providing an LPS to the AD plant (and should probably be a requirement).

Surely they would be a COMAH site, and have a legal requirement to protect against such events?

Highland Mule said:

Lightning conductors can be mounted on a catenary system, completely independent of the structure they are protecting. Would be no problem providing an LPS to the AD plant (and should probably be a requirement).

Surely they would be a COMAH site, and have a legal requirement to protect against such events?

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Well, I wouldn't disagree - now.

Many have a lightening conductor mounted to the side of the tank, however a direct strike from lightening on a plastic dome, and hey-presto...

Sadly, it's not the first time this has happened in the UK, so it's a hard one to defend.


But in it's defence: The AD plant was operating again and producing energy within 90 minutes of the lighting strike. The Wallingford plant handles close to 50,000 tonnes of food waste per year.

There is already an ex MP calling for every plant to have a lightening conductor installed, and if it's a simple as a mast, then of course it should be considered. The other issue, is methane leakage, and the need to monitor regularly.

If no one is nearby, the risk to life is low, however the risk does exist.

Most plants that handle waste should have a haccp and hazop plan in place.

thesilentone said:

Looks to be a fair size plant.

In reality, based on the tons going through, the clamps are quite small, so cant' be to much energy crop.

According to google its a 2.1MW plant, so, if it was energy crop only, it would require over 40,000 tons of maize per year.

Click to expand...

Quite a bit of maize is stored on supplying farms and then reclamped when required. Have moved quite a bit to various plants from farmers clamps and the main site at Burton Joyce throughout the entire year.