Crop Residue & Plant Waste Incinerators

Crop residue waste, for incineration purposes, is plant material from a growing or packing operation that cannot go back to the land or into a feed, compost or digestion route. That covers residue from a crop found to be carrying a notifiable pathogen, glasshouse and polytunnel waste where a soil-borne disease has been identified, rejected produce with no onward market, root and tuber waste carrying rots, and the spent growing media and plant debris a nursery clears between cycles. The reason this material is a problem is that its normal routes are all recirculating ones. Chopping and incorporating returns the pathogen to the field. Composting on the holding rarely reaches a temperature that reliably kills a soil-borne organism throughout the heap. Anaerobic digestion has an inlet specification, and a rotten or contaminated load fails it. When each of those routes is closed, the material accumulates in a corner of the yard and does exactly what everyone was trying to prevent. Destruction runs at 850–1,200°C in the primary chamber with flue gas held above 850°C for two seconds in the secondary. That condition destroys fungal spores, bacterial and viral plant pathogens, nematode cysts and viable seed in the same cycle. It is also the condition an open fire cannot hold: a field fire runs hot in the middle, cool at the edges, and lofts exactly the light material — chaff, husk, dry leaf — you least want carried downwind. Where destruction is required by a statutory plant health notice, the notice is the driver rather than the tidy-up. A permitted incinerator with a cycle log gives a dated record that the material reached and held the destruction condition on the holding. That record is far easier to produce at inspection than an account of a bonfire.

4,200 kg ÷ 500 kg per charge = 9 charges on the AGBI-500, one a day, and 126–210 kg of ash at 3–5% — with nothing leaving the holding while the notice is in force. Substitute your own: charges = mass ÷ capacity, ash = mass × 3–5%, one charge a day. Where the residue is baled or bulky, check the chamber volume first — 1.19 m³ on the AGBI-500 fills before the weight rating does.

Generally no. The Crop Residues (Burning) Regulations restrict burning cereal straw and stubble in the open, with narrow exemptions such as disease control, and burning waste outside a permit or registered exemption is an offence in its own right. An open fire also cannot hold 850°C for two seconds, which is the condition that actually destroys pathogens and viable seed.

Yes. Primary combustion at 850–1,200°C with two-second retention above 850°C in the secondary chamber destroys fungal spores, bacterial and viral plant pathogens, nematode cysts and viable seed in the same cycle. What comes out is sterile mineral ash at 3–5% of input mass.

Check the volume before the weight. The AGBI-350 chamber is 0.48 m³, the AGBI-450 is 0.76 m³ and the AGBI-500 is 1.19 m³. Dense wet produce reaches the weight rating first; baled or loose residue at roughly 120 kg/m³ fills the chamber at a fraction of it. Whichever limit comes first is the one that sizes your charge.

It can, but it costs fuel and cycle time — the first part of the burn drives off moisture before the material combusts. Where the load can stand under cover for a few days first, it burns cheaper and faster. This is a cost question, not a compliance one.

Normally yes, and it is often the preferred answer because the material never moves. The notice itself specifies what destruction means, so read it first — but a permitted dual-chamber unit with a dated cycle log is a stronger evidence trail than any account of a field fire.

No. Farm plastics have a collection and recycling route and belong in it, and polymer film carries halogenated content that raises the secondary-chamber requirement to 1,100°C and has to be declared on the permit. Keep plastics out of a plant-material charge.

Shake it out. Soil does not combust, absorbs heat the charge needs, fills the chamber with inert mass and multiplies the ash you rake out afterwards. A little clinging soil is unavoidable; bulk soil turns a 500 kg charge into a much smaller one.

Roughly eight to eleven hours for a full charge, depending on the model and confirmed at commissioning. These are batch units burning at under 50 kg/h, and that cycle is measured from first load to complete burn-down, taking in heat-up, burn, cool-down and ash removal. Plan a clearance in charges and days rather than in kilograms per hour.