Biogas plant in Mełno

Details

Published on Thursday, 02 July 2015 11:16

Biogas plant was established in the former sugar factory in Mełno along with a new distillery facility. Intech was the main contractor of this thermal energy production installation. In times of declining profitability of alcohol production in Poland this biogas plant significantly increased factory competitiveness and reduced production costs.

The design and execution of the cogeneration boiler house was entrusted to the Elteco company, which provided four cogeneration Petra 500C units (MWM gas engine with a generator and equipment). IWT Intech was responsible for entire steam system.

This installation is smaller, compared to the power of other IWT Intech projects (1.65 MW), but the solutions used in the system distinguishes it as the especially interesting one. It uses the combi system. A combination of Exhaust Gas Boiler (EGB) and conventional gas-fired Clayton generator. The steam coming from the two sources is combined in the reservoir which serves as a separator and as a battery.

EGB consists of four sections in series. The flowing water is heated by the hot exhaust gases from gas engines. It is the main source of steam.
Clayton steam generator SEG-104 works as a backup source. The main fuel is biogas from the reactor. In case of its insufficient supply there is also a separate LPG path. A modern Siemens LMV controller provides precise control of two different gases combustion.

The installation included:

• degasser, condensate and blowdown tanks
• softening and a chemical correction water system
• transfer, supporting pumps and Clayton pumps
• exhaust valves
• control, monitoring and protection system

Biogas is produced in a bioreactor, powered by waste from nearby food processing plants and slurry supplied by local farmers. A key component of biomass is a hot stillage obtained from the customer's alcohol production plant. Thanks to that, temperature inside digesters does not fall below 50°C, what greatly accelerates the process of biogas production. Most of the produced energy is used in distillery and surplus is sold back to the main energy grid.

Biogas boiler house in Mełno proves that combi systems, particularly popular on seagoing ships, can be easily adapted to onshore systems while maintaining high sustainability, efficiency and costs reduction.