Biogas plant manufacturer Weltec Biopower will showcase solutions for the energetic uilisation of organic waste and wastewater at IFAT 2018 in Munich on 14-18 May.
The company highlights the sewage treatment plant in Burgebrach, in Bavaria, Germany, as a demonstration of how a municipal enterprise can effectively reduce its energy and disposal costs with the help of a biogas plant. For the existing sewage treatment plant, which serves a population of 13,000, Weltec added a sludge digestion unit including energetic utilisation of sewage gas in the combined heat and power (CHP) plant.
The facilities went live in spring 2016. Since then, the sludge has been stabilised with an anaerobic process in the custom-designed stainless steel tower following the wastewater treatment in a two-stage trickling filter unit. Thanks to the installation of the digestion unit, unpleasant odour emissions around the sewage treatment plant have been eliminated, the company reports, and the digestion reduces the amount of sludge and enables the energetic utilisation of the digestion gas.
The operators also wanted to be able to use all the power and heat generated by the CHP plant for the on-site processes.
"Thanks to our self-supply, we are able to save electricity costs of about 100,000 kWh/year," states Arne Nath, Head of Wastewater Treatment at SüdWasser GmbH, the operator that has supported the town Burgebrach since 2005.
