Weltec builds on biogas success
8 Apr 2015
Weltec Biopower is building a 500-kW anaerobic digestion plant for vegetable producer Gilfresh Produce.
The new plant, based in Loughgall, Northern Ireland, is the third plant Weltec has built in Northern Ireland, and the eleventh in the UK.
Gilfresh produces numerous field-grown products and processes them into food, including root vegetables, salad crops and numerous cabbage varieties.
Gilfresh currently delivers vegetable waste that accumulates in the sorting, washing and packaging processes to farmers as cattle feed.
Once the new plant is complete in July 2015, the waste and the vegetable washing water will be loaded into the bioreactor along with vegetable waste, cattle manure, chicken litter and silage.
To maintain an optimum stock level, an underground pre-storage tank is located before the two 2,625-m³ stainless-steel digesters and a 6,000-m³ tank is planned for gas-tight digestate storage.
“The biogas plant will enable us to pursue our growth course on the one hand, and our ecological goals on the other hand,” said Thomas Gilpin, founder of Gilfresh.
“Weltec has designed the plant precisely for our specific production conditions. What ultimately convinced us was the fact that Weltec was able to offer this flexible design with highquality technologies at excellent conditions.”
About 40 per cent of the power generated by the 500-kW plant will be used in the company‘s own production process.
As efficiency increases, the excess power will be fed into the public grid or used for heating the company buildings and for the production processes.
Such projects are necessary to enable the UK to provide 15% of their energy demand from renewable energy sources by 2020, said Kevin Monson, sales manager at Weltec Biopower UK.
Besides wind and solar energy, he said another renewable energy source needed to be established in order to ensure a reliable supply, with subsidised bioenergy offering measures such as attractive feed-in tariffs for regional power.
“If other entrepreneurs follow the example of Gilfresh Produce, the United Kingdom will be able to reach the defined climate goals,” said Monson.
