The system is known as the Norvento-BioPlant and it enables small and medium sized companies and landowners to sustainably manage organic waste and turn it into renewable gas, electricity or both, allowing them to take a step towards energy independence. It is a medium sized system for the agricultural and landfill waste sectors that will benefit from the Feed-in Tariff (FiT) and Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) sweet spots, which range between 150kWh for electricity and 600kWh for heat. It consists of a modular and automated anaerobic digestion (AD) plant that can be tailored to the energy and budget requirements of the end user, as well as the available fuel source. It collects, stores and treats waste, creating renewable biogas, which is refined and then pumped into a boiler or cogeneration engine to produce heat and electricity when required.
The UK AD market has shown steady growth in recent years, fueled by FiT and RHI support. It continues to offer opportunities to a diverse range of industries, including farming, food processing, water and waste treatment, and the chemical and pharmaceutical sectors. These users are able to deploy on-site biogas plants to directly support high energy and heat-intensive production processes. In doing so, they can benefit from reduced energy costs and meet increasingly stringent sustainability targets.
Norvento is a specialist in helping UK industrial and agricultural users realise the commercial advantages of becoming independent power producers (IPPs), having rolled out its industry-leading nED100 medium wind turbine throughout the country over the past three years. The Norvento BioPlant forms part of a growing renewable energy product line that is designed to meet increasing demand for on-site power production and consumption.
With a growing pipeline of sites scheduled for development in the UK, Norvento BioPlants have already been successfully deployed in Spain, where they are providing considerable benefits to agricultural and industrial users.
At Xustás Farm, an intensive dairy farm in Galicia with 110 cattle, a BioPlant system is converting slurry and plant waste into 280,000kWh of energy per year and meeting 100 percent of on-site heat and power demand. At Casa Macán Dairy, a cheese factory, also in Galicia, a BioPlant is directly supporting the cheese production process by covering 40 percent of total heat and electricity demand.
“The economics of small and medium biogas generation really stack up for users with energy-intensive on-site processes, especially if the energy demand is heat-based” said Ivo Arnús, Director of UK Business Development, Norvento. “Having supported UK landowners and businesses for some years with our nED100 wind turbines, we’re now enabling these users to further diversify their sources of income with a highly efficient AD system that delivers rapid return on investment and long-term energy cost savings. Wind turbines and biogas solutions share a similar customer base - plus these two technologies can work really well together in a micro-grid, which is the next step for on-site generation.”
Norvento assumes full responsibility for the project over a 24-month period, handling plant design and construction, and will carry out all the project management. Once the plant is up and running, both the site owner and the operations and maintenance (O&M) provider are given full access to remote monitoring data, delivered via Norvento’s online plant management apps, which enables real-time performance tracking and informs maintenance activities.
For additional information:
