Pre-2002: Research and more research
It became clear to us that landfilling of waste was unsustainable and that we should thoroughly research the expanding range of technologies that were being proposed as a way to treat household waste. We looked at the full range of technologies to see which could meet our checklist of needs. We discovered one process using in-vessel composting that looked the most promising. It could cope with the volume of waste being produced, it could process unsegregated waste, it increased recycling and produced valuable recycling products. This became our prefered solution - we gave it the brand name Parc and set about building a test tower.
2002 Research and Development
Tower 1 was built in 2002 as a test bed to prove that the aerobic digestion process using the technology in the tower would work. This tower was built with the help of the County Durham Environmental Trust (CDENT).
This tower originally had a residence time of twelve days. As we refined the process this gradually dropped to six days. Various seperation technologies were also tested to see what produced the most recyclate.
The Parc towers are discrete units, the only things that links them to the seperation phase is a conveyor belt. This means that as new or improved seperation technology is launched it can easily be incorporated into the facility.
2005 Tower 2 comes on stream
Tower 2 became operational in this year. This tower incorporated a host of improvements and techniques discivered while operating tower 2. With two towers the plant moved onto a full production basis. Essentially the facility took on the look and feel of a process industry: the raw material is waste and the products manufactured are soil conditioner, glass, plastic bag fabric and metal.
2007 Tower 3 comes on stream
Tower 3 is a departure in design from the existing towers. The innovations include: concrete walls, wider tower and a 50-percent increase in waste volume.
This tower was built as part of the Defra New Technologies Demonstrator Programme. Defra launched this £30 million programme to demonstrate innovative waste treatments technologies as possible alternatives to landfill. The programme aims to prove the economic, social and environmental viability (or not) of each selected technology.
We have created a seperate mini-site to report on the performance of the tower 3.
July 2007 Visitors Centre opens
Each New Technologies Demonstrator Programme (NTDP) site has a visitor centre which will be open throughout the plant’s participation in the programme. This will enable representatives from local authorities and the waste sector to see the sites operating and to learn more about the particular strengths and weaknesses of the technologies.
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