Weltec constructs biogas plant in Finland

The biogas plant construction company's new plant will produce biomethane refined to natural gas quality, which is suitable for all consumption paths and also suitable as fuel for Finnish natural gas stations. The fermenter, pump and agitator technology, separation and sanitation technologies are constructed in-house, and are operated with a control system specifically developed by Weltec.

The three 4,000 cubic metre fermenters and two receiver containers are made of stainless steel. The stainless steel cladding contributes to the quick and safe completion of the plant. With this system, Weltec says it can guarantee the same high-quality container characteristics world-wide. For the high degree of automation and the precise plant control, the company relies on its experience from the construction of other German industrial biomethane refineries in Konnern and Arneburg.

The company integrated an in-house innovation for the feeding of substrate – the MULTIMix: with this, fibrous input materials such as grass silage, straw or co-substrate are disintegrated. This way, these normally difficult-to-process substrates can be decomposed into biogas by the bacteria.

Similarly, there is the option for a foreign body separation upstream of the pump and stirring systems of the plant. The new feeding system reduces the stress on the stirring system as well as the wear of the plant. In the future, the plant operator will be able to choose input materials and can rely on cheap, but difficult-to-process substrates.

In energy production, Weltec says Finland has to count on its own resources in order to decrease the dependency on the import of energy carriers, which it says is important because trade deficit in 2011 increased by 40 per cent compared to the previous year.

Finland is relying heavily on biomass among the renewable energies. The preferred form of utilization is based quite considerably on the enormous supply of wood in the forest-rich country as well as the sufficiently large deposits of peat and the volume of refuse.