Weltec site yields biomethane in Spain

Vechta, Germany-based Weltec Biopower GmbH says a livestock manure-to-energy installation in Spain is helping that country move toward increased biomethane energy production.

“Spain has a very strong food sector and an intensive agriculture and livestock industry [and] as a result, the untapped feedstock potential for biomethane production is very large,” Weltec states.

Weltec cites a Spanish energy trade association as estimating up to 163 terawatt hours of biomethane could be produced annually if all available byproduct resources were used consistently.

This month, Weltec helped inaugurate a biomethane plant for CycleØ, in Granja La Carbona, about 20 miles from the city of Lleida, Spain.

That project includes what Weltec says is a high-quality digester made of Duplex stainless steel. The developer, owner and operator of the plant is planning to collaborate with Weltec on another project in the near future, says the technology provider.

“Such measures will relieve farmers and their livestock farms in their manure management and support the goal of becoming climate neutral by 2050,” says Mark Kornweibel, Spanish sales partner for Weltec.

Weltec specializes in the construction of individual, technically mature solutions made of stainless steel up to a plant size of ten megawatts.

Slurry and fermentation residues produced in the biogas process can be further processed into water, fertilizer concentrate and marketable solids in a four-stage process using its Kumac treatment technology. That process “offers a viable, scalable solution, particularly in agricultural regions,” Weltec says.

“Not least on the basis of the modular design of our digesters, a consistently high quality of the stainless steel tanks and efficient digestion of the input materials are also ensured,” says Alain Priser, international sales manager at Weltec Biopower. “The technologies have already proven themselves in over 25 countries under very different climatic conditions.”