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Solent Turf Supplies demonstrates impressive turf growing results from AD digestate

ADBA MEMBER NEWS

Romsey-based Solent Turf Supplies has revealed it has successfully trialled the use of a liquid digestate, a bi-product of the anaerobic digestion (AD) process, as a viable alternative to traditional chemical fertilisers.

According to Robert Hack, owner and managing director of Solent Turf Supplies:

The results so far indicate that the area, sprayed with the AD digestate, has grown as well as that treated with our usual chemical fertiliser. Given its performance, and the fact that the digestate is 100% organic, we believe that that a wide range of growers will place increasing value on this natural feedstock.

The supply of the digestate has been made possible by the award-winning micro power plant manufacturers SEaB Energy, whose Flexibuster™ is converting the food scraps from the Best Western Chilworth Manor hotel and the Southampton Science Park, on which the power plant is located, into heat and energy. Whilst the electricity generated is being used to power buildings directly on the science park, the digestate, an end-product of the microbial process, is now being used as a proven organic soil improver for turf growers.

Trials, conducted in collaboration with turfing and landscaping specialists Solent Turf Supplies, have indicated that the nutrient value of the PAS 110 compliant liquid digestate has an equal value to the applied chemical fertiliser normally used at the nursery. This has been backed up by scientific tests conducted at specialist chemical testing laboratory NRW. The trial has been conducted over the last five months on an area of turf roughly equivalent to half an acre. The cost of the digestate is currently on a par with chemical fertilizers but, as more and more AD facilities come online, economies of scale dictate that the price will fall as supply increases.

The turf growing properties of AD digestate have already been well documented following research conducted by the government-sponsored organisation WRAP at the Sports Turf Research Institute and at Cranfield University. The trials concluded that, when used as a feed for turf establishment and then as an on-going maintenance product, the effect of the digestate was comparable to fertiliser treatments and demonstrated clear signs of soil improvement.

Sandra Sassow, SEaB Energy’s chief executive, said:

As well as generating a reliable source of energy, these trials demonstrate that our micro-power plants also produce a completely organic digestate rich in nutrients. The lab tests and field trials have proven that it performs as well as traditional fertilisers, but without the chemicals and, over time, at a reduced cost. This presents plant and turf growers with a clear economic opportunity to shift to a more sustainable propagator as well as a potential valuable additional income stream for organic waste producers.

SEaB Energy was last year selected from over five hundred applicants by the NASA backed sustainability initiative, ‘LAUNCH: Beyond Waste,’ as a provider of a global game-changing technology to address climate change, and most recently scooped the 2013 Resource Revolution Award ‘Technology Trailblazer: Energy-from-Waste’.

SEaB Energy also won the 2012 UK ADBA Industry Award for Best Micro AD Project (<250kWh) for its installation at the University of Southampton Science Park and last year were chosen as one of the 16 most innovative and fastest growing Cleantech companies in Britain. The company has also been selected as one of the Winners in the 2013 Defense Energy Technology Challenge (DETC) held in Hawaii and was most recently selected to participate in the UK’s Clean and Cool entrepreneurial mission to Brazil.

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