Germany-headed biogas technology suppliers and plant operators EnviTec Biogas AG has announced that its first high-pressure biomethane-to-grid project in France has begun feeding into the high-pressure gas grid run by network operator GRTgaz.
With fixed feed-in tariffs for biogas and its recently announced target of reducing the high proportion of nuclear in the energy mix from 75 percent to 50 percent by 2025, France is now one of Europe’s most dynamic markets for biogas and biomethane production. The package of sustainability measures passed by the French government aims to increase the share of renewables from the current 14.2 percent to 32 percent by 2030.
This is welcome news for biogas plant operators like Regis Marie. Production started recently at his 340 Nm³ EnviThan plant in Étréville, Normandy, and the facility now feeds into the >60-bar network run by local network operator GRTgaz.
The EnviThan project is something of a premiere since it’s the first time we’re feeding biomethane into the high-pressure natural gas grid at 64 bar. The piston compressor compresses the upgraded biomethane from 9 bar to 64 bar, which means it fits perfectly into our tailor-made plant design. Here, EnviTec Biogas is making good use of experience from Munich-based Baur Kompressoren, EnviTec project manager Andreas Kley explains further.
Production at the 1 MW Agrienergie SAS plant run by operator Régis Marie started back in 2012 and is operated exclusively on organic waste and consumer food waste. In this way, waste materials that would otherwise require cost-intensive disposal can be used to generate electricity and biomethane – and a profit for the operator. The new upgrading plant Vitaligaz is also operated exclusively with organic waste and consumer food waste.
Innovative digestate treatment
The new plant in Étréville is also equipped with innovative digestate treatment technology from EnviTec subsidiary A3 Water Solutions GmbH. Currently, this plant is under construction and is expected to be commissioned in the second quarter 2018.
Anaerobic digestion (AD) of organic waste produces digestate, which will be treated in the digestate treatment plant using the multi-phase separation (MPS) technique. This generates both, clean water, which will be routed directly into a receiving water, and a high-value fertiliser.
Complementing the solid/liquid separator, the ultrafiltration unit and the reverse osmosis unit, a second reverse osmosis stage is also installed that concentrates the fertiliser from the upstream stage again so as to further minimise the final volume. In addition, the use of hot filtration also reduces the energy needed for the treatment process by over 50 percent.
In what is now the company’s eleventh year in the French market, Christian Ernst, Managing Director of EnviTec Biogas France, expects strong demand to continue for biogas plant technology. To date, the twelve-strong team at the biogas all-rounder’s branch office has constructed a total of nine plants.
Another four plants are now being built, and we’ve also had a large number of enquiries for new projects, revealed Ernst.
