Situation
Brocklesby edible oil recovery plant in North Cave, East Riding, Yorkshire, processes approximately 52,000 tonnes of waste oil each year. Used oil and waste food comes from restaurants, retailers and food manufacturers from all over the UK to the site, where the waste oil is extracted and used as aviation and road fuel.
The remaining product is fed into an anaerobic digestion plant located next to the site, where it creates enough energy to power 11,000 homes. Every part of the waste brought in is turned into fuel and power serving thousands of people and businesses from this 10 acre site.
“Our customers see us as solution providers, as we’re able to extract their waste oil from a variety of tricky places such as drains, or take very dirty, used cooking oil and food waste, such as sausage rolls and takeaway meals,” said Neil Taylor, Managing Director. “Because of this, we need plant machinery that can deconstruct and pump an enormous volume of waste material.
“We focus a lot on research and development and always try to find the smartest way to work. Often that comes from finding suppliers that listen to us, understand our needs and work with us on a solution. We’ve found Vogelsang are very good at working together in this way, and helped us create a chopping solution for our oil recovery system.”
Solution
The food waste has to be cut into a certain size before it can be processed in a large pool and centrifuge. Brocklesby installed a Vogelsang RotaCut RCQ 43 macerator at the start of its refinery system over a decade ago, and has recently replaced it with another of the same machine.
“Vogelsang’s macerator is one of the best pieces of equipment we have on the site,” said Reece Webb, Operations Manager. “We have a lot of confidence in the reliability of the machinery and our relationship with Vogelsang. The team are supportive and there when we need them, and have often brought new ideas to the table, showing us sites or equipment in the UK or Germany that might benefit our plant.”
Brocklesby oil recovery plant originally used a cutting screen of 20 millimeters, but now cuts to just 4 millimeters for very fine waste particles ready for oil extraction. The separated oil is used as sustainable aviation and road transport fuel. The rest of the waste goes into the biogas plant connected to the site.
Outcome
Established in 1987, the plant has continually invested in itself and come up with innovative ways of refining used oil. In the past 10 years it has invested over £9 million in plant equipment and £600,000 into a laboratory which allows it to test all of the waste material before it is processed. This determines the way the waste is treated in the plant, and can trial new types of waste to see if it is possible to extract oil from it.
“In the next few years, we are aiming to double the size of the UK operation and are looking at opening an additional plant in Europe. “We want to replicate the success of Brocklesby,” said Neil. “We’ll be looking at further enhancements in the next few years, and it’s companies like Vogelsang that help us to achieve this.”
