Plans unveiled for €30m eco waste plant

Plans have been unveiled for a new €30m thermal treatment facility in Tullamore - which could create 200 construction jobs and another 50 to 70 full-time operational posts. The renewable energy from waste facility, to be located adjacent to Derryclure landfill, five kilometres from Tullamore, is the brainchild of a Midlands green energy company, Glanpower Ltd, which describes itself as "clean and green". The 82,000 square-foot facility will be Ireland's first pyrolysis facility and will be fuelled by an annual intake of between 65,000 and 75,000 tonnes of biomass and mixed municipal waste. Pyrolysis is the thermal decomposition of waste in the absence of an external oxygen supply. The pyrolysis process takes place under the temperatures typically around 500 degrees celsius. The advanced pyrolysis system being mooted for Tullamore is at the cutting edge of the technology. Promoters of the facility envisage that the facility will generate up to six megawatts of electricity for the national grid, as well as five megawatts of heat. Plans have been lodged in recent days with Offaly County Council for the facility, which will include a 19 metre-high and a 30 metre-high vent stack. Brian Gillen, managing director of Glanpower Ltd, told the Offaly Independent: "The Derryclure Energy Centre is relatively small in size, but has the highest efficiency, and green, clean credentials of any technology currently available in the emerging green-tech economy, crucial to the future development of our country."