This year's Southampton Joint Branch technical visit was to the Marchwood Energy Recovery Facility at Marchwood near Southampton.
The facility, which is housed in a futuristic 65m high aluminium clad dome, is a land mark on Southampton Water and is designed to incinerate non recyclable household waste.
After a detailed briefing we had a tour of the facility and saw that the waste, on delivery, is tipped into a holding bunker, where automatic grab cranes transfer the waste to a feed hopper leading to a chain grate where it is fully burned. The hot gases produced pass through one of the two water tube boilers which produce steam at 45 bar and 400*C. The steam produced drives a turbo generator, which in turn produces electricity to power the facility and also exports 14MW to the National Grid.
The flue gas which is treated and cleaned is carefully monitored before being released into the atmosphere through the chimney stack.
The whole operation of the facility is controlled and overseen from a comprehensive control room".