Operational performance
Leisure customers
NWL is one of the founding members of Kielder Water & Forest Park Charitable Trust. This will replace the existing Kielder Partnership and seek to promote sustainable development, recreation, access and leisure, education, infrastructure and a range of other charitable purposes at Kielder and in the surrounding area. The Trust is seeking registration as a charity and will be chaired by John Cuthbert, Managing Director.
The development of Kielder Water & Forest Park is supported by the Northumberland Strategic Partnership, Government Office Northeast and One NorthEast. This year has seen the completion of a 27 mile lakeside multi-user track and water access points as well as the opening of an award winning observatory and a range of mountain biking tracks. The new website at www.visitkielder.com provides further details of all facilities.
NWL continues to develop its leisure facilities at all strategic sites, investing in fishing facilities, holiday accommodation and supporting ‘Access for All’.
Kielder Water & Forest Park’s award winning observatory.
This autumn, work will be completed on a green energy scheme at one of our largest treatment works at Bran Sands, on Teesside, which will help generate energy to run the plant.
The thermal hydrolysis advanced anaerobic digestion will enable us to use waste sludge to generate methane to fuel gas engines and produce c.4.7MW of green electricity. This will reduce the site demand for grid electricity by half.
Raw sludge is placed in stainless steel vessels, injected with steam and held under pressure at high temperatures to break the sludge down. The pressure and temperature is reduced and the sludge is then passed to the next step to be digested by billions of tiny methane producing bacteria. This methane will be used to fuel the gas engines and reduce our carbon footprint. We plan to build a similar plant on Tyneside and, together with the Teesside plant, this will increase our use of renewable energy to over 20%.
The sludge cake that remains after this process is odourless, harmless and can be used as a fertiliser for agricultural land.
Biogas holding vessels at Bran Sands, on Teesside.