AN ice cream factory is investing £1.5m in a fully automated waste treatment plant.

R&R Ice Cream, the UK’s largest ice cream manufacturer, could eventually use the plant, at its Leeming Bar factory, to generate electricity.

Work has begun and the plant is scheduled to be fully operational by March.

The new facilities will be able to process up to 600,000 litres of waste a day.

At present, waste is treated onsite before being piped to Yorkshire Water’s effluent treatment plant, where it undergoes further processing before being discharged. At present, R&R has to use chemicals in the cleaning process that will not be required with the new plant.

In future, the process will be done by reverse osmosis – a separating method that uses very high pressures to force a solution through a semi-permeable membrane.

Clean water passes through the membrane while particles and contaminants are retained.

The water, which is safe to drink, will then be returned to the factory where it will be used to wash and clean equipment and floors.

A spokesman said: “It is being done to reduce the carbon footprint. We feel it is sending out a strong environmental message, as we are using less water and recycling water.

“It is also reducing costs.”

At present, two options for recycling the retained waste are being examined.

The first option is to transfer the waste to a sludge tank first, and then to a nearby bio-digestor, where methane gas will be produced that could be used to generate electricity.

The other option is to install driers that will bake the sludge so that it can be sold for use in animal feed.

Dr Ryad Apasa, UK group engineering and project manager at R&R Ice Cream, said: “Reverse osmosis and ultra filtration are currently one of the most advanced technologies available for cleaning up water.

“I am also confident that we shall be able to significantly reduce our water usage.”

Much of the installation is being done by R&R six-strong project team, including assembling more than one kilometre of pipework, carry out all of the wiring and cabling, including building the electrical panels and also undertaking some of the civil engineering work.

Another advantage of the new process is that it will be fully automated, with Scada (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) controls and will only require a single operator to monitor the process by computer.