Roche to build anaerobic wastewater plant
27 Sep 2010
Ratingen/Penzberg, Germany - Pharmaceutical company Roche Diagnostics has decided to build a new anaerobic plant for the biological pre-treatment of a partial wastewater flow at the Penzberg site in Upper Bavaria.
The plant, which produces energy-rich biogas, will supplement an existing membrane bioreactor system. The new anaerobic plant will be built by Aquantis, a subsidiary of Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies.
The new system is to pre-treat partial wastewater flows especially rich in carbon as well as biologically degradable liquid waste from the bio-technological production.
A 480 m3 Biobed EGSB reactor (Expanded Granular Sludge Bed) will be used for the biological treatment. In the course of this process energy-rich biogas is produced, collected and processed. The gas will be used in a combined heat and power plant in the Penzberg site boiler house to generate both forms of energy.
The amount of electricity thus gained will cover more than 90% of the energy requirements of the wastewater treatment plant, and the thermal energy will be used to pre-heat the boiler feedwater of the power station.
Further savings will be achieved by eliminating the upstream aerobic high-load step. The carbon dioxide emission will be reduced by about 950 tonnes per year, so that Roche Penzberg will achieve a sustainable reduction of its carbon footprint.
Assembly of the anaerobic plant is planned for end of March 2011 and start-up for November 2011. The project was planned by consulting engineers at Dr, Resch of Weissenburg, Germany.
The Roche Penzberg plant with a size of approx. 350,000 m² is one of the largest biotech centres in Europe and one of the leading biotechnology research, development and production centres of the Roche Group worldwide. In addition, the site is an important international centre for the Group for development and production in healthcare diagnostics.
The focus is on diagnostic verification procedures, for example for infectious diseases such as hepatitis, or diagnostic purposes. With more than 30 years of experience in biotechnological production, the Penzberg site with around 4,600 employees is a pioneer in the industrial application of biotechnology.
