Our biogas plants: striving to be the most effective solution

Scandinavian Biogas supports customers and partners with what we do best: designing and operating biogas plants with high level of resource and energy efficiency. Furthermore, we strive to improve the efficiency of all our plants on a daily basis.

Increased production capacity through efficiency

At Scandinavian Biogas we keep our promises and take long-term responsibility. Proof of this are the plants that we operate in Sweden and the Republic of Korea. Indeed, at the Swedish plants in Bromma and Henriksdal we have increased the volume of fuel grade biogas an entire 21 percent in three years and have been able to maintain production at a high level. In the Republic of Korea our plant at Ulsan plays a key role in solving the city’s environmental problems with food waste. We have increased the management and processing of food waste from the city of Ulsan with more then 500%. As a result, the plant has been ranked by the the Republic of Korea authorities as the country’s most efficient biogas facility. The food waste that is now turned into biogas was earlier dumped into the ocean.

Qualified expertise with high level of competence

Our core expertise is to develop concepts for resource efficient, high loaded, stable biogas processes where organic waste and residual products are used as substrate. We either own or co-own the biogas facilities that we design and operate, adding value with our qualified expertise in the field of biogas production. Our strength lies in developing resource and economically efficient processes for many different types of substrate. These process concepts include the whole chain from designing biogas plants to the management, pretreatment and digestion of organic material as well as the upgrading of biogas to vehicle fuel grade quality. What differentiates us from many others in the industry is our deep knowledge of the biological process and our focus to use that to fine-tune the digestion process.

Integrated solutions: from waste to valuable bioproducts

In Sweden, our biogas production plant at Södertörn is Stockholm County’s first industrial facility for the digestion of food waste. During 2016 the facility extracted energy from 50,000 tonnes of food waste, corresponding to one year’s worth of waste from almost 700,000 Stockholmers. Biogas is produced by converting food waste into renewable bio gas and highquality biofertiliser. Due to the plant’s efficiency, nearly 80 per cent of food waste energy is converted to biogas.

HOLD Technology™ och The Leadership of Microbes™

One of Scandinavian Biogas’s success achievements is its self-developed HOLD Technology™, an advanced process technology used to optimise large-scale biogas production. The method is one of the most effective in the world and has been utilised on a full scale in Ulsan, Republic of Korea, where production efficiency has increased 3–5 times since the Company took over in 2007.

HOLD stands for High Organic Load Digestion

The method, developed by the Company’s R&D department in close collaboration with Linköping University, is founded on three cornerstones:

The first cornerstone involves the way a biogas plant should be designed to increase efficiency and reduce energy consumption between stages – e.g. from food waste collection site to digestion tank. This is the system’s hardware, involving mainly stirring and also pipes, pumps and heat exchangers.

The second cornerstone is based on in-depth expertise and well-proven methodology regarding the substrates that work best in various combinations. Since 2005, Scandinavian Biogas has tested over 350 different substrates in a laboratory environment. Substrates need to be mixed with chemicals and other additives to achieve an optimal balance between maximum energy extraction, efficient decomposition and minimal production of by-products. The right combination – the recipe – is the system’s software.

The third cornerstone involves the way the substrate is introduced to the digestion tank to allow the micro-organisms to maintain efficient production with a high substrate utilisation rate. The product – biogas and bio-fertiliser – is then packaged and transported, and any by-products are taken care of in order to close the circle.

The development of HOLD Technology™ is one of the Company’s greatest successes. The technology also forms the foundation of the business. Identification of a substrate mix that provides efficient microbiological decomposition and that can subsequently be refined into vehicle fuel quality via an optimised digestion process: this is the Company’s key driver – The Leadership of Microbes™.

Scandinavian Biogas has primarily focused on improving the mesophilic process, where production takes place in a temperature between 35 to 40 degrees Celsius. The company has made substantial steps forward in research & development, including the evaluation of over 350 types of organic material as substrate for biogas production. Furthermore, the company has developed robust processes that accommodate high loads in the reactor, enabling production levels far more efficiently and economically than has previously been possible.

Project - Waste to energy first, Ulsan - Case Study

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