WELTEC BIOPOWER has announced that the anaerobic digestion plant at Lanes Farm Energy in the UK has delivered its first biomethane to the UK gas distribution network, meeting all required quality standards.The plant located near Pontefract, West Yorkshire took six months to complete.

From now on, the Lanes Farm plant will deliver c7.3 million m³/year biomethane, which is sufficient to supply about 9,600 households with sustainable energy around the clock.

The sustainability of the project is visible from the initial input of material. Material include food leftovers, which account for more than half of the 80,000 tpa of substrate, as well as cattle and chicken manure, grass silage and hybrid rye.

Under consideration of the substrate structure, the solids are fed through two walking-floor feed hoppers with 110 and 220m³, and two MULTIMix units, which removes foreign objects, liquefies, shreds and macerates incoming solids to make them into an easily pumpable, easily mixed, easily digested liquid.

Liquids are then fed in controllable volumes directly to digesters from five pre-storage tanks, of which two are equipped with a stainless steel bottom. The gas production takes place in four stainless-steel digesters with a height of 8.8m and an above-average capacity of 6,848m³ each.

WELTEC has also implemented membrane upgrading to transform the biogas into high-quality biomethane. In a separation process comprising several stages, the raw biogas is refined efficiently without methane slip.

Additionally, the biomethane production yields digestate, which is used as high-quality fertiliser, returning organic material and nutrients to the land. For this purpose, it’s first pasteurised and separated.

For on-site electricity supply, WELTEC has integrated a 500 kilowatt CHP. The operator generates additional income from exporting excess electricity to the grid.

“We are very happy and proud to hand over this plant to our customer within less than a year after signing the contract,” says Wolfgang Bokern, head of project management at the German biogas plant manufacturer WELTEC BIOPOWER.

Bokern further states: “This project will bring many benefits to the project developers Aqua Consultants as the technology is state of the art. Furthermore the fast construction time and the construction costs within the budget speak for themselves. We have to thank all involved parties for the good cooperation and hope that this project will be a role model for future waste-to-energy projects.”