Tarmac’s Tunstead cement plant secures solid recovered fuel supply from Eco-Power Environmental

CRH subsidiary Tarmac has awarded a contract for the supply of solid recovered fuel (SRF) pellets for its Tunstead cement plant to Eco-Power Environmental. The supplier says that the fuel will come from its 125,000t/yr Humberside SRF pellet plant in Melton, East Riding of Yorkshire. It has spent Euro17m in recent upgrades to the plant. Its pellets offer up to 50% biomass content, calorific value in excess of 20MJ/kg, less than 0.5% chlorine, low ash content and the ability to be co-dosed with fossil fuels using existing equipment.

Tarmac Tunstead plant manager Chris Bradbury said “Reducing CO₂ at Tunstead is one of the team’s top priorities and working closely with our colleagues in Sapphire we have made good progress with sustainable waste-derived fuels throughout 2020 and hope to go further in 2021.” He continued, “We got the opportunity of trialling the SRF pellets early in the year as a replacement for woodchips. The trial went well with only a few modifications required for the inside of the storage silo and feed out system. Once the moderations were completed, we extended the trial, which had great results. In June 2020 we then went on to continuous usage and from the start the pellets have proved to be a very stable fuel. These have been one of the main contributors to the continuous high waste-derived fuel substitution rate for fossil fuels from June to the end of the year.”