The Global Water Summit was pleased to offer delegates the opportunity to visit Thames Water’s Basingstoke Sewage Treatment Works, one of the most innovative and sustainable works in the UK.
This is a unique opportunity to witness how UK’s leading utility operates a state-of-the-art wastewater treatment plant; using disruptive technologies such as CambiTHP® thermal hydrolysis and Annamox to turn sludge into valuables resources.
Basingstoke STW is sized for effluent stream from a population equivalent of 135,000. Basingstoke’s previous conventional digestion treatment process was upgraded in 2017/18 with a new purpose built brown-field sludge stream. As a regional sludge treatment centre, it can treat sludge either as liquid or cake, for a population equivalent of over 500,000.
The upgrade was carried out having the thermal hydrolysis process (CambiTHP) as a core technology, followed by mesophilic anaerobic digestion and dewatering. Pre-treatment of sludge with CambiTHP enhances biogas yield, allows increased loading into the digesters and produces high quality biosolids after dewatering.
Dewatering liquors pass through a state-of-the-art Anammox process commissioned in 2018. The high strength ammonia liquors are treated in a smarter way with low energy demand, before returning to the wastewater treatment plant.
Operational results show that up to 62 MWh of electricity is produced from the biogas every day, enough to power the entire site and export 50% of it to the community. Basingstoke has thus significantly reduced its carbon footprint and operating costs, making it an innovative and energy positive plant.