Sweden-headed wastewater treatment and biogas technology providers MalmbergGruppen AB has announced that its subsidiary Malmberg Water AB has been awarded its first biogas to biomethane upgrading project in Italy by HERAmbiente S.p.A., a subsidiary of Italy-based Gruppo HERA.
Headquartered in Bologna, Gruppo HERA is one of Italy’s largest local utilities and operates mainly in environmental services including waste collection and treatment, distribution and sale of electricity and gas and water services including wastewater treatment and purification. The subsidiary HERAmbiente operates amongst other things ten waste-to-energy facilities and 11 composting plants in northern Italy.
The composting plant in Sant Agata (BO) will be supplemented with treatment and anaerobic digestion (AD) of 135 000 tonnes of food waste per annum. The biogas will be upgraded to biomethane using a Malmberg Compact GR 20R unit with a capacity of 1 000 Nm3 per hour. On an annual basis, HERAmbiente estimates to produce 7.5 million Nm3 of biomethane that will be injected into the Italian gas network.
According to Malmberg, following a “thorough evaluation” of available biogas upgrading technologies the choice fell on water scrubber and that Malmberg won the tender thanks to good references that demonstrate high availability from plants where the substrate is food waste.
Italy is a large gas market with a gas network that extends across the entire Italian peninsula. There are more than 1 000 gas filling stations and over 900 000 natural gas vehicles (NGV) running on the Italian roads already today, so the infrastructure is already in place for biomethane.
We see very positive on the Italian biogas market and are pleased that we now also can make a green footprint in Italy, said Erik Malmberg, CEO of Malmberg Water AB.
