First order to Colombia and second to Latin America for the German biogas technology providers Weltec.
Germany-based biogas technology provider Weltec Biopower GmbH has announced it has received an order from Colombia. The 800 kW biogas plant will be supplied to the country’s largest egg producer, Incubadora Santander, with plant start-up expected in early 2017. The value of the deal remains undisclosed.
The order is a first for Weltec in Colombia and it’s second to Latin America; in 2013 it supplied an 800 kW biogas plant to a major dairy farm with own dairy and milk powder production in Uruguay. Incubadora Santander operates several poultry farms close to the western Colombian province of Cauca producing around 3.5 million eggs a day that are sold in 14 cities around the country. The company plans to co-digest dry chicken manure from the laying hens with process water from the production without using any additional substrate or feedstock.
According to Weltec the feedstock will be pre-treated in a sedimentation tank to remove sand and lime from the manure before being pumped into a 4 903 m3 digester via a 1 076 m3 intermediary storage unit. Stainless steel will be used in the storage tanks and digester. The digestate will be used as liquid manure on the farm’s own fields.
The Colombian government has a target to increase the share of renewable electricity in the main power grid, Sistema Interconectado Nacional (SIN), to 6.5 percent by 2020. According to a Germany Trade and Invest (GTAI) report from January this year, the potential for biomass-derived energy is estimated to be 16 GWh annually with the agricultural sector a producer of significant quantities of unused by-products and residuals.
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