Digital twins of energy-from-waste facilities go live

Initially covering the boiler, refractory and combustion grate elements of Enfinium’s generating units, the digital twins will be applied to cover other critical equipment at each of the firm’s four (soon to be six) UK facilities. The existing facilities are in Sittingbourne in Kent, Leeds and Knottingley in West Yorkshire, and Sandwell, West Midlands.

Using VR headsets, the experience is immersive, placing the wearer ‘inside’ Enfinium’s huge boilers. This helps the engineers to better understand their state and repair and maintenance needs.

Enhanced performance at Enfinium facilities is critical for ensuring it can provide reliable home-grown energy to 500,000 homes.

Enfinium chief operating officer Jane Atkinson said: “There are immense opportunities for the energy-from-waste sector to deploy the very latest techniques in digitisation to improve reliability and enhance productivity. Taking the immense amounts of data that we have regarding our plants and creating a virtual, immersive digital twins have transformed the way we think about and plan maintenance.’’

Abder Rarmaoui, managing director at Vertex Industrie, added: “The predictive features of the Vertex platform allow efficient preparation of future maintenance. We are confident this will drive operational improvements as well as spur further innovation.”

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