Member Article

Tata Chemicals Europe opens £5.5m Cheshire plant

Tata Chemicals Europe today opened a new £5.5m turbine at its Winnington CHP plant in Northwich, Cheshire, allowing the facility to provide energy for 200,000 households – an area the size of Liverpool.

The project - backed by a £2.5m European Regional Growth Fund grant from the UK government - has taken two years to complete. It will help to provide energy for Tata Chemicals Europe’s sites across Cheshire, local businesses in the area, and also for the National Grid.

The steam used to generate electricity is a by-product of industrial procedures at the Tata Chemical plant, effectively recapturing spent energy and reducing overall energy demands.

Generating this electricity means that this volume of electricity doesn’t have to be generated elsewhere on the grid—saving 71,000 tonnes of CO2 in the UK, and going a long way to help the Government meet decarbonisation requirements of a 75% reduction by 2030.

TCE’s General Manager for Energy Peter Houghton said: “This has been an unbelievably good project, and a really complex one that underpins our energy business moving forward. It simply could not be more important to the business.”

Martin Ashcroft, Managing Director of Tata Chemicals Europe, said that the steam turbine is “a great achievement by all involved”.

Dr Ashcroft added: “The installation of this steam turbine was one of our key objectives for the past three years. Along with the restructuring and stand-alone Sodium Bicarbonate plant, the steam turbine is fundamental to the ongoing success of our Northwich operations.”

The turbine takes high pressure steam from Heat Recovery Boilers and reduces its pressure and temperature for use in our chemical plants, and in doing so produces electricity.

An estimated 12MW of electricity is expected to be produced on an ongoing basis and will be exported onto the national grid, which will correspond to over 100,000MWhrs in a typical year. Plans already exist to generate even more electricity from the new infrastructure.

Also involved in the project are energy supplier E.ON, who are a strategic partner in the installation of the turbine and the operation of the Winnington CHP site.

Mike Wake, Head of Business Heat and Power Solutions at E.ON, said: “Working together to maximise the energy efficiency of this site is proof of the great relationship between Tata Chemicals Europe and E.ON.

“Taking advantage of heat energy as steam and using it more effectively means we can help reduce this site’s carbon footprint whilst ensuring a chemical works which has been operating since 1874 continues to go from strength to strength in such a commercially challenging time.”

Looking to promote your product/service to SME businesses in your region? Find out how Bdaily can help →