For many years, a lot of animal waste has accumulated in the north of Greece. According to the Greek research institute CRES, the waste from animal husbandry and slaughtering throughout Greece amounts to 17.5 million t/year. This corresponds to a potential biogas capacity of approximately 370 MW. The capacity currently installed in Greece is only about 83 MW.
The new Weltec plant in Veria will make use of these resources for the generation of energy. The anaerobic digestion process will mainly use cattle manure and meat processing leftovers. Apart from these substrates, the 4,903-m3 stainless-steel digester will also be fed with production wastewater and fats. The input substances will come from the operator's own abattoir and farms as well as from farmers in the vicinity.
The highly efficient digestion will start with a customized input process. For this purpose, the substrates will first be loaded into a 60-m3 moving floor feeder. The feeder will transport solid substrates, such as orange peels, to the MULTIMix unit, where they will shredded and then pumped to the digester. Liquid substrates will be pumped directly into the digester from two storage units.
In the coming decade, Greece will invest some €9 billion in such plants. During this period, the installed biogas and biomass utilization capacity is expected to triple. In this process, new laws are to provide investment security.
"The Greek power grid operators will be required to preferentially connect these plants to the grid, purchase their electricity and pay defined minimum prices", explains Weltec's Greek partner John Tetoros.
Tetoros Machinery and Weltec Biopower have collaborated in the Greek energy reform since 2007. With a portfolio of 18 plants and extensions that they have set up, they are the market leader for biogas plants in Greece. Based on the concept of the latest plant in Veria, more plants are likely to be added to the portfolio.
