Clarke Energy leads the field in decentralised power generation, utilising combined heat and power in a variety of different gas-based applications.
The company has expanded successfully following a number of years robust growth and is now present in ten countries including Algeria, Australia, China, France, India, Ireland, New Zealand, Nigeria, Tunisia and the United Kingdom. This wide geographical spread provides a tremendous variety of interesting and challenging opportunities.
One of the key components of this success is, without a doubt, the GE Jenbacher gas engine. Group Marketing Manager Alex Marshall says, “GE Energy’s Jenbacher engines are manufactured in Jenbach, Austria and designed from the outset to run on gas (not diesel engine conversions) – either natural gas, biogas, coal seam gas or special gases. Over five decades of experience in the gas engine business has resulted in many 1000’s of GE Jenbacher engines being installed worldwide. These high tech engines cover a range for 330kWe to 9.4MW and are designed as stationary continuous operation units. We are the largest distributor in the world for these engines, which can generate power from a range of gases, including biogas, landfill gas and syngas, in other words, all either renewable or low carbon.”
At the Davyhulme sewage treatment works, Clarke has installed four Jenbacher 620 engines, each capable of producing 3MW of power. Greater Manchester Waste Disposal Authority operates a series of plants around Manchester and Clarke is involved in three of the sites and is installing gas engines on two of them. At the Sandon Dock sewage
treatment plant – the first ever to serve the Liverpool and Bootle areas – Clarke Energy has installed two GE Jenbacher engines (one JMC 320 and one JMC 316), each driving 415V generators. Today in the UK, ~80% of landfill gas generation equipment has been installed by Clarke Energy. However, one of the challenges of using landfill gas is the chemical mix of the gas, which, in addition to methane, also can contain hydrogen sulphide (H2S) and siloxanes. These are silica-based particles coming from detergents and other chemicals that create a build-up of silica in the engine, requiring additional regular cleaning.
Alex goes on to explain, “One of our targets is the agricultural sector, where we can utilise the biogas produced by the biological breakdown of organics material, such as pig slurry, manure, energy crops, abattoir waste and feed this gas into our GE Jenbacher engines. In Germany, they grow large amounts of maize and harvest it as silage, which is fed into waste digesters to produce the biogas for our engines. At GWE Biogas in Driffield, we have 2MW of installed capacity taking the biogas from food waste while at the William Grant Distillery we will have >7MW of capacity working on gas produced from the distillery effluent and this provides the energy required by the distillery as well as providing power to the surrounding area. Finally we are involved in a very interesting project at Barfoots of Botley, Hampshire where a sweet corn waste digester opened last year by Justin King from Sainsbury’s and we have integrated a GE Jenbacher engine to provide 1MW of electrical export capacity.”
Since its formation in 1989, Clarke Energy has grown from a diesel engine service and spare operation into a multinational organisation. Since 1995, it has installed over 2,300MW of gas power generation equipment worldwide and become a complete one-stop shop for this increasingly important sector.
For further information please telephone 0151 546 4446 or visit www.clarke-group.com
