Weltec Biopower, Vechta, Germany, will shortly start building an anaerobic digestion plant for a Colombian egg producer. The 800-kilowatt biogas plant is to go live in early 2017.

In terms of the feedstock input, the operator Incubadora Santander, located in Bucaramanga, Santander, Colombia, which produces about 3.5 million eggs a day, plans to make use of the codigestion of dry chicken manure from the laying hens and process water from the production. The enterprise, which operates several poultry farms close to the western Colombian province of Cauca, markets its eggs under the “Kikes” brand in 14 cities in Colombia.

The production yields a great amount of dry chicken manure and process water, with which the biogas plant from the German plant manufacturer Weltec Biopower can be operated without purchasing any additional substrate. The feedstock will be pretreated in a sedimentation tank. There, the manure will be separated from sand and lime and will be pumped into the 4,903 cubic meter digester by way of an upstream storage unit with a capacity of 1,076 cubic meters. Through the codigestion, the digestate will reach a high fertilizer value, enabling it to be returned into the plant‘s agricultural substance cycle for efficient use as liquid manure on its own fields.

The high quality requirements of South America‘s agricultural and food industry were a key reason why the operator Juan Felipe Montoya Muñoz opted for Weltec technology. For the sake of hygiene and other reasons, the company prefers stainless steel for the construction of the prestorage tanks and digesters.

Plant modules, such as the ready-for-operation combined heat and power (CHP) plant, the preinstalled pump and control technology and the stainless-steel panels for the tanks will be transported to the plant location in maritime containers from Germany that will pass the Panama Canal.