Progress made on Tynes Bay upgrade

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 23: The latest stage of the multi-million dollar project to upgrade Tynes Bay is nearing completion.

For the last two-and-a-half months contractors from Germany have been busy replacing the combustion, furnace and boiler sections of Stream One where the rubbish is burnt and converted to power.

They have also installed a new Electrostatic Precipitator for Stream One that cleans the exhaust gases.

Exactly the same process was completed on Stream Two just before Christmas of last year.

Project manager George Peck said: “It’s all gone very well so far.

“A lot of the contractors from Germany who were brought in to do the work have now left and we are hoping to have the new Stream One up and running in February.

“Commissioning work and tests on that Stream will begin in January.

“Work has also been ongoing on the new water treatment plant too and that should be ready by the end of the year. ”

Running on Stream Two

Since the work on Stream One started in September Tynes Bay has been running on just the new Stream Two with excess trash being baled and stored at Morgan’s Point.

Mr Peck added: “Because of the efficiency of the new Stream Two we have not had to bale up as much trash as we did when we were running on just the old Stream One before.

“Moving forward from here our next step is the turbine and upgrading the seawater cleaning plant.

“The project is progressing well.”

The Government will have ploughed more than $130 million into the facility by the time all the work has been done.

And in 2011 it allocated $27 million for the project.