Small-scale Anaerobic Digestion (AD) systems have the potential to provide livestock farmers with the opportunity to combine more effective slurry management, methane abatement and decentralised energy generation in an appropriate investment that also provides a new source of income as well as driving towards UK environmental targets.

The aims for this competition are to:

• Identify manufacturers of smaller scale plant which can be installed at a lower capital cost and complexity than currently, be commercialised throughout the UK and integrated effectively with the farm business.  In this case, ‘plant’ includes both digestion technology and pre-and post-processing options for all feedstocks and outputs.  Currently, on farm installations can cost in the region of £1-2M, this programme seeks to reduce this to c£300K-£1.2M. 
• Demonstrate the most effective proposals
• Disseminate advice, data and best practice guidance to the sector to enable it to reap the benefits of the demonstration projects
  Scope

The installation of small scale plant can have numerous benefits for the rural economy including:

• Reduced odour through improved slurry management
• Ability to combine additional NVZ slurry storage requirements with AD
• Generation of additional and diversified income from sales of renewable energy
• Reduction in requirement for inorganic fertilisers
• Reduction in potential pollution through  run off of nutrients to water courses
• Increased fertiliser value for manures and slurries though increasing the  availability of nitrogen and other nutrients 
• Energy security for the farm business
• Job creation

The purpose of this open call is to identify and demonstrate existing, pre-commercial technologies that can demonstrate the goals of the programme.

The goals of the programme are to achieve:

• A reduction in the capital cost of the installation of between 20-40% from the current costs, this could be demonstrated by an increase in the IRR of small scale projects to more acceptable returns (say between 6%-12%)
• A reduction in the complexity of the installation/build eg by the use of off-site fabrication or modular technologies such that plants can be installed more quickly, on site requirements can be pre-specified and installed and disruption to on site activities is minimised
• A reduction in the complexity of operating the plant eg through the use of automation for feeding and emptying the digester or the development of instantaneous and/or off-site monitoring
  An identification of future commercialisation/roll out plans for the selected technologies

More information on other SBRI competitions may be obtained at www.innovateuk.org/sbri