Biogas plant manufacturer hopes to find foothold in SA

Within the current climate of energy scarcity and increased electricity tariffs in the country, South African businesses may be more ready than ever to invest in renewable, self-sustaining energy options, even though the incentive of energy credits for businesses who contribute to renewable energy is not yet available in South Africa as it is in Europe, Reynolds adds.

However, he says, this demotivating factor is dwarfed by the sheer effectiveness of the plants themselves. He remains optimistic that the South African market is becoming more desperate for alternative sources of energy and that Weltec BioPower provides a very viable option.

"The separation and use of organic material collected by municipalities will reduce material dumped at municipal landfill sites and create jobs, while the organic material can be used to generate electricity for power hungry South Africa," adds Reynolds.

The plant ferments biological waste to produce methane gas, which is in turn used to generate heat and energy. The design of the biogas plants, which function mostly in the agriculture and sewage industries, is unique to Weltec BioPower.

Owing to the high quality products used in construction and the precision of the German engineering, the plants are guaranteed to be fully operational for more than twenty years, allowing enough time for the investment to pay for itself in terms of savings on energy costs and through the sale of the heat and energy generated by the plant.

In June, Weltec BioPower received the building permit for what is currently the largest biogas plant in the world, with direct infeed of prepared biogas into the natural gas network. The operator of the biogas park, which will be erected between Halle and Magdeburg in the German city of Könnern, with 8 000 inhabitants, will be the subsidiary Agridea BioPower.

Working closely with about 30 local farmers, about 30-million cubic metres of raw biogas will be generated a year. This will be processed to produce about 15-million cubic metres of biomethane. Little more than 120 000 tons of substrate will be fermented for this purpose in a year.

"The most ambitious project in the company history to date begins with the building permit," emphasises Weltec Biopower MD Jens Albartus. "With the concept of gas processing to biomethane, Weltec BioPower is taking an innovative path, which not only responds to energy policy goals, but also does justice to the current requirements of the Kyoto Protocol and helps to reduce carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions."

As a rule, biogas from the plant is immediately employed in a cogeneration power plant for heating and power generation. The resultant heat, however, can only be effectively employed if a consumer is available in spatial proximity for this purpose. Such consumers can be, for instance, public swimming pools, schools or greenhouses. The presence of heat-purchase is then a decisive factor for the cost effectiveness of a biogas plant.

However, in the case of the Biogas Park Könnern, such deliberations are secondary. The biomethane is fed directly into the natural gas network and can be conducted to the respective location of consumption. Significantly more efficient uses are concievable though, depending on the location and circumstance.

In contrast to wind and solar energy, a completely integrated and uniform energy supply to the final user is possible. The biomethane generation in this concept is produced as CO₂-neutral, which helps actively preserve the environment and makes an important contribution to the reduction of greenhouse gases.

After the relatively short construction time of about nine months, the facility should start operation in the first quarter of 2009, placing substantial demands on planning competence. "Because of our past experience in erecting some 200 biogas plants all over the world, however, we are perfectly up to this task," says Albartus, "Since we are the only actual producer of biogas plants, we build and construct the stainless steel equipment ourselves and are capable of installing biogas plants rapidly and effectively anywhere in the world at any time."

Weltec BioPower plans and produces turnkey biogas plants worldwide. The company has grown to employ over 50 people, and has successfully established more than 200 biogas plants across Europe, in Sweden, the Netherlands, England, Scotland, France, the Czech Republic, Luxemburg, Greece and Latvia, as well as in the US and even on the islands of Cyprus and in Japan.

In order to further expand these successful international activities, Weltec BioPower has founded subsidiaries in England, the US and in a growing number of eastern European countries, which serve the markets and customers locally.

Weltec BioPower directly supports the customer at each step of a project with a full range of expertise, including the dimensioning of the biogas plant, professional yield estimation and financial conceptualisation, as well as operational consulting that is combined with a detailed analysis of substrates, to ensure a stable and long lasting digestion process.

To ensure the decision and the investment of the customer is correct, Weltec BioPower provides onsite service through every stage of the project, from planning to start up and training of personnel.

Because of the individual requirements of each customer in designing a biogas plant, Weltec BioPower designs and constructs its systems in separate modules. This enables Weltec BioPower to adapt to individual needs, and to provide professional solutions from small on-farm units, to fully automated and computerised large Megawatt units.

Efficiently coordinated technologies are the basis of the reliable operation of the plants. The substances used are shredded and mixed and the gas produced is processed and efficiently used. This is the reason the company only uses reliable established plant components.

A large part of the technology is developed internally, including dosage technology for specific substrate input, mixing systems for efficient mixing of fermenting substrate and constant gas yield with low energy consumption, gas processing for optimal energy production in thermal heating plants, sanitation plants in accordance with European Union hygiene regulation and solutions to processing fermenting residue.