WELTEC BIOPOWER presents individual solutions at the Second Renewable Gas Trade Fair in Valladolid

WELTEC BIOPOWER presents its technologies for the energetic utilisation of biogas from industrial and agricultural residues as well as sewage sludge at the Second Renewable Gas Trade Fair in Valladolid. Together with their Spanish partner Mark Kornweibel, the German biogas specialists will be presenting themselves to trade visitors from 5 to 6 October at stand 237.

WELTEC BIOPOWER has already realised a biomethane project in Spain on an industrial scale and has experience with the conditions in the country. In 2021, for example, the German manufacturer and its partners built a plant for the Spanish dairy farm Torre Santamaría from Vallfogona de Balaguer, in the province of Lleida. Since then, the family-owned company has become the first dairy producer in the country to use all of its residues to generate energy and to be completely self-sufficient in electricity, heat and hot water.

For this purpose, Torre Santamaría keeps a total of 2,100 calves and 2,300 dairy cows, which produce 24 million litres of milk annually on 14.2 hectares. For the biogas production, 72,270 tonnes of livestock waste are produced. The substrate mix to be fed into the plant consists of 90 percent liquid manure and dung; the rest is made up of bedding materials from ground straw and silage residues.

To ferment this mixture, the Lower Saxons have set up two stainless steel digesters 6.30 metres high and 27 metres in diameter. Together with the two digesters of the basic plant, which was already built in 2011, the pioneering company has a fermentation capacity of 10,000 cubic metres since the commissioning of the biomethane plant in November 2021.

"By processing the biogas produced in it, the Catalans can now feed 300 standard cubic metres of biomethane into the natural gas grid every hour, which corresponds to an annual volume of 26 gigawatt hours," reports WELTEC BIOPOWER's Spanish sales partner Mark Kornweibel.

The biomethane plant of the dairy farm therefore has a model character and can certainly become a reference for many other farms in Spanish intensive regions. According to the EU Commission, it is precisely in these regions that residues should be consistently utilised to generate green energy and protect the environment. Further projects are in the planning stage: the first Kumac plant with an annual throughput capacity of 100,000 tonnes will soon be built in Spain. In this plant, the fermentation residue used will be processed into pure water, nutrient concentrate and solid fertiliser. Advantages of this technology are, for example, the reduction of storage requirements for the digestate, as well as the use or distribution of the solid phase as fertiliser, bedding, biogas substrate and compost.

Thomas Sextro, Sales Manager of WELTEC BIOPOWER, and Mark Kornweibel will be available for a technical exchange on the possibilities and ways in which such projects can be planned and implemented in the country - at the Second Renewable Gas Trade Fair in Valladolid, at stand 237.