Lukeneder Offers Biogas Plant Owners a Leap in Biogas Plant Efficiency

The German Company Lukeneder recently added the UK to its list of countries to which it supplies its Deuto-Clear® Sulfo product, which is an iron dosing chemical. That means that UK anaerobic digestion plant operators can now obtain substantially improved biogas plant efficiencies, and raise the profitability of their operations.


View this description of the Lukender Deuto-Clear® Sulfo product on YouTube.

The Anaerobic Digestion industry tends to spend too much time scrubbing the biogas, when in most cases, a far better solution to producing a better quality of gas, is to tackle such problems at the source of the problem, in the digester. By doing it in the digester there are so many spin-off benefits. In fact, operators will end-up wondering why they did not previously pursue all avenues for optimizing the conditions in the reactor to suit the micro-organisms they want to encourage!

A policy of H2S prevention, combined with the avoidance of high (and biochemical process inhibiting) ammonia concentrations, not only helps to stabilise the whole methane production process, it also allows the healthier biomass that results, to produce more gas of a better quality. This is achieved, it is understood, without changing the feedstock, and occurs over a period of time.

This looks like a true “win-win” situation, and involves the daily dosing of the digester with Deuto-Clear® Sulfo. This according to the Lukeneder brochure:

"Is a ready-to-use solution containing metal salts and trace elements. It improves the performance of your biogas plant and its dosage will be adjusted to fit the specific needs of your digester. Deuto-Clear® Sulfo features a broad range of trace elements, minerals, and other agents to improve the quality and stability of the digestate."

Deuto-Clear® Sulfo removes hydrogen sulphide and ammonia gas from the digestate and adds nutritious trace elements and minerals to produce a healthy and productive environment for anaerobic bacteria.

 Added benefits are listed as:

• HOMOGENISATION OF FERMENTATION SUBSTRATE

• QUALITY OF FERTILISER IS IMPROVED AS AMMONIUM

• AND SULPHUR COMPOUNDS ARE BOUND IN THE DIGESTATE 

• NO LONGER NECESSARY TO DOSE WITH OXYGEN TO CONVERT H2S.

To read our more comprehensive article go here.

For more information and copies of supporting documents contact:

Dr. Naoimh McMahon, UK Representative, Lukeneder GmbH (BIOGAS & ANIMAL HYGIENE)
Telephone: +44 (0)20.3151 0883
Email: naoimh.mcmahon@lukeneder.com
Internet: www.lukeneder.com

Anaerobic Digestion Projects to get a Boost from Research Showing Up UK’s Huge Food Waste Mountain

The British nation is appallingly wasteful of their food. The UK government has launched a plea for a return to the thrifty approach of previous generations by buying less and eating leftover food.

Each year, the UK dumps 6.7 million tonnes, of food. Furthermore, most of the waste - which nationally costs £8bn to treat or dispose of – is sent to landfill where it rots, potentially emitting the potent climate-change gas methane.

The public must realise that while they are scraping food into the bin they are directly fuelling climate change. Waste food now presents a bigger environmental problem than packaging.

The Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP), a government-funded agency that has been investigating food waste, complained that consumers were, in effect, dumping one in three bags of shopping straight in the bin.

In an attempt to change attitudes, Wrap has devised a campaign "Love Food Hate Waste", launched at Borough Market in London yesterday by Ms Ruddock and the TV chefs Ainsley Harriott and Paul Merrett. Wrap's estimate of waste was compiled after polling almost 3,000 households and getting 300 people to keep diaries of what food they threw away. Most waste arose because people had "over-shopped" for a variety of reasons.

This is a Summarised version of a much larger article at The Anaerobic Digestion Community Web Site (Food Waste).

EU Incineration Debate: How Will it Affect Adoption of Anaerobic Digestion?

Incineration efficiency warning ahead of EU waste debate

Local authorities planning to use incinerators to divert waste away from landfill should check that proposals meet forthcoming EU energy efficiency criteria.

The warning which essentaily fires a shot across the bows of those promoting Incineration without Combined Heat and Power, came ahead of next week's European Parliament vote in Strasbourg, on a Directive that could shape the next 50 years of EU policy on waste management (Read the full article at letsrecycle.com news).

Carbon Emissions

Dr Jackson said she was fully supportive of more incineration being used, provided it was efficient. She derided the "out of date" views of her Conservative Party colleague Peter Ainsworth that there were still concerns with the health affects of incineration in the UK, now the EU Waste Incineration Directive is in force.

She said the only question concerning whether to use incineration – or recycling – was over its carbon footprint. The MEP for the South West suggested that both recycling and incineration of certain materials should be looked at by the government in order to minimise the emission of climate change-causing carbon.

It is believed that only one existing incinerator in the UK – in Sheffield – is in a position to meet the new EU energy efficiency criteria. This is because most plants do not generate heat for use in the community, only electricity, since the unpopularity of incinerators means they are rarely built close enough to neighbours that could use the heat.

The Directive includes measures that would classify energy-from-waste incinerators as recovery plants, rather than "disposal" facilities if they are sufficiently efficient at generating energy from waste being treated.

Comment:

This also means that all the other major existing UK incinerators will not derive the benefits which would have followed for the re-classification to recovery plants.

This is good for Anaerobic Digestion I think.

It is my view that the more that the regulations discourage incineration - which may compete with Anaerobic Digestion for organic feedstock in the future - the better for the prospects of anaerobic digestion adoption. Anaerobic digestion plant will also of course (like incineration plants) themselves always be more efficient if provided with CHP (Combined Heat and Power).

The other aspect that will help anaerobic digestion is that if CHP has to be a part of the investment cost for an incinerator then the additional capital outlay for anaerobic digestion will not be so great. Again, this makes Anaerobic digestion more competitive with incineration.

However, I would like to know how one gets an Anaerobic Digestion Plant which processes waste (as opposed to bio-crops) defined as a recovery plant? Let's hope our politicians are also discussing thta one?

Bad News for Agricultural Use of Anaerobic Digestion in Agriculture - DEFRA 2005 Report is Discussed

New Web Page about the Agricultural Use of Anaerobic Digestion for Livestock Manures and Slurries

The Anaerobic Digestion.Com web site has [so far] been short on information on Agricultural AD. This actually only reflects the position in the UK which had more on-farm AD units in operation during the mid-1990s than it does now.

Probably the most authoritative recent study on the viability of anaerobic digestion is the report prepared for the Sustainable Agriculture Strategy Division of the United Kingdom Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA).

This is not a new report as it was published in October 2005, however, we do think it worth studying for anyone interested in utilising this abundant source of on-farm AD and Centralised Anaerobic Digestion (CAD) feedstock.

The report is really quite heavily negative about the economic vialbility of this form of AD, under the then, and current, regime in which the UK government is not providing direct financial support for AD.We would argue that:-Our view at Anaerobic-Digestion.Com is that there is a very good case for additional government investment in on-farm AD.

There is a significant win to be found from the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, and the necessary £143 lifetime costs estimated for the first twenty plants in this report would surely deliver big bonuses in the development of the technology. If done well this investment would act as the seed corn for the mature development of the Anaerobic Digestion industry at which time costs would surely plummet.

Were we not at a similar stage with wind turbines no more than ten years ago?Surely many of us can remember that wind turbine rotor blade failures featured heavily in the news. The doubters were saying that the reliability problems being experienced in that industry at the time were close to insoluble for such highly stressed and massive blades.

Yet now who even mentions such problems?

The parallels are all around us which show us the benefits of strategic investment and the potential in Anaerobic Digestion. Let us see some leadership from our politicians who should by now realise that the public demand for action on carbon emissions is high.

The public also increasingly want to buy renewable power for their own domestic use, and so the provision of financial incentives for Anaerobic Digestion would help in this and other many ways.

Visit our new web page on the Agricultural Use of Anaerobic Digestion here.