genia bioenergy
We have designed a plant with five biodigesters that will process 35,300 tonnes of agricultural waste and 60,500 tonnes of waste from over 400 local food industries, dairy product manufacturers, breweries, bakeries and municipal solid waste (MSW) per year.
Engineering developed by Genia Bioenergy.
The plant has already passed the design phase – executed by Genia Bioenergy – and is expected to start injecting green gas into the United Kingdom’s national gas grid in early 2022.
In Europe, production of biogas and biomethane from anaerobic digestion of organic waste is seen as an important sustainable energy alternative that applies circular economy criteria to the production of clean energy. Biogas is also the only form of energy derived from renewable sources that can be used for all major energy applications (electricity, heat or as a fuel) and can be easily stored for use when needed.
The facility is designed to process 35,300 tonnes of agricultural waste and 50,500 tonnes of food industry waste in its five digesters to reach a total of 85,800 tonnes per year (equivalent to the waste generated by a city of 150,000 inhabitants) which will be converted into gas and 67,000 tonnes per annum of liquid fertilizer and compost. This means feeding the plant with up to 880 tonnes of waste per day to produce 2,700 m3 of biogas per hour and 184 m3 of liquid fertilizer per day.
The facility is licenced to inject 900 m3/h of biomethane into the gas grid and supply 3 MW of power to the electrical grid through three 1-MW Jenbacher JGS 320 GS-B.L cogeneration engines and will generate significant revenue for the project investors.
Two of the design constraints we had to address were related to its location in an industrial area and the limited available space. The location required special environmental protection measures, which meant that we had to design a common tank for the five digesters to collect the liquid digestate in the event of spillage, along with a pasteurisation process for the digestate and rigorous treatment of the liquid digestate to enable it to be discharged into watercourses.
One of the technological challenges faced by the engineering team in this project was to find technical solutions to harness the heat generated by the process. On the one hand, the heat released by the exhaust gases and the cogeneration engines’ cooling jackets is employed in a heat recovery unit built into the pasteurisation process and on the other, it is used in the liquid digestate treatment to enable part of the latter to be discharged into watercourses since the amount of liquid digestate generated exceeds the requirements of the agricultural facilities in the vicinity. In fact, using any other treatment technology was impossible due to the aforesaid space constraints. The use of this “recovered” heat in other plant processes, however, enables us to optimise the mass / energy flow diagram and generate significant cost savings in plant operations.
Technical aspects:
Biogas produced: 2,700 m3 of biogas per hour.
Tank dimensions:
2 digesters– diameter: 24 m, height: 10 m.
3 digesters– diameter: 20 m, height: 10 m.
2 turbotanks– Diameter: 12 m. Height: 9 m.
Inputs
Substrates: agricultural waste and industrial waste from various sources.
Feed system:
500 tonnes per day of agricultural waste.
380 tonnes per day of urban waste.
Outputs
Energy produced:
830 m3/hour of biomethane injected into the grid = 77.6 GWh/year.
Three 1-MWe turbines = 25.5 GWh of electric power per year.
Treatment and management of 70,000 m3/year of liquid digestate with discharges into watercourses.
Status
Engineering performed by Genia Bioenergy. Start of works: 2021.
Construction begins at Evercreech on the biogas plant designed by Genia Bioenergy.
Los planes para construir una planta de biogás en las afueras de un pueblo han dado un paso adelante gracias a nuevas inversiones.
