Weltec Biopower builds 500-kilowatt biogas plant for Gilfresh Produce.
Vechta, Germany-based
Weltec Biopower has started building an anaerobic digestion (AD) plant in Loughgall, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom, for vegetable producer
Gilfresh Produce.
Gilfresh, established more than 50 years ago, produces field-grown vegetables and processes them into food, will operate the 500-kilowatt plant. The company has close to 130 employees.
“For Weltec, this is the third plant in Northern Ireland and the 11th in the U.K.,” says Kevin Monson, sales manager of Weltec Biopower UK Ltd., in Stoneleigh, England.
Northern Ireland‘s mild climate helps Gilfresh raise its crops on 1,000 hectares (2,470 acres) of land. The company’s product portfolio includes root vegetables, salad crops and numerous cabbage varieties.
Gilfresh used to deliver its vegetable waste, which accumulates in the sorting, washing and packaging processes, to farmers as cattle feed. Starting in July 2015, the waste and the vegetable washing water will be loaded into Gilfresh’s AD bioreactor.
To maintain an optimum stock level, an underground pre-storage tank is located before the two 2,625-cubic-meter (92,700 cubic feet) stainless steel digesters. A 6,000-cubic-meter (212,000 cubic feet) tank is planned for gas-tight digestate storage. In addition to vegetable waste, cattle manure, chicken litter, whole crop, grass and maize silage will be used.
Weltec says investors in the project were impressed by the uninterrupted entry of the input material the system allows. The MULTIMix system “guarantees continuous utilization and homogenization of the substrates [plus] stable plant operation,” according to Weltec.
A dosing feeder also helps the Weltec system ensure optimum shredding and intensive mixing of the vegetable waste and long-fiber silage, says the company. The efficient pre-processing of the substances ensures not only biological decomposition and efficient gas yield, but also low energy consumption.
“The biogas plant will enable us to pursue our growth course on the one hand and our ecological goals on the other hand,” says Thomas Gilpin, founder of Gilfresh. “Weltec has designed the plant precisely for our specific production conditions. What ultimately convinced us was the fact that Weltec was able to offer this flexible design with high-quality technologies at excellent conditions,” adds Gilpin.
About 40 percent of the power generated by the 500-kilowatt combined heat and power plant can be used in the company‘s own production process. The excess power is fed into the public grid and the process heat made is used for heating the company buildings and for production processes.
Such projects are necessary to enable the U.K. to provide 15 percent of its energy demand from renewable energy sources by 2020, says Monson. The U.K. has understood that in addition to wind and solar energy, other renewable sources need to be established in order to ensure reliable supply, he adds. “If other entrepreneurs follow the example of Gilfresh Produce, the United Kingdom will be able to reach the defined climate goals,” states Monson.