16 GAS GENSETS
Thomas Külz
Getting everything right with gas gensets on the farm
Five years ago, the Biogasfarm GmbH Löberitz co-operative and its partners invested around €3 million in a biogas plant with a container cogeneration plant and silo facility at the Löberitz site near Leipzig, Germany. The biogas plant has an electrical output of 600 kW and is operated using farm slurry, farmyard manure and plant-derived biomass material in the form of maize silage, reports WIP.
T
homas Külz, managing director of Biogasfarm GmbH Löberitz in
Germany tells WIP: “We fed more than 5 million kilowatt hours into the grid last year.” And yet he is actually a farmer and not an energy producer. But the Löberitz biogas farm, a subsidiary of the Löberitz Agricultural Co-operative, operates so efficiently that it is possible to achieve this level of feed-in. The 13 members of the co-operative farm around 2,700 hectares of agricultural land in the rural district of Anhalt- Bitterfeld, just north of Leipzig, and run a pig-fattening operation with 4,000 pigs, as well as farming cattle. Add the biogas production and the cooperative in Löberitz represents a broad-based
“The cogeneration plant has an MWM TCG 2016 V12 gas genset which has been managed and serviced by the MWM Service Centre in Erfurt.”
agricultural enterprise. The cogeneration plant has an MWM TCG 2016 V12 gas genset which has been managed and serviced by the MWM Service Centre in Erfurt (Germany) since it was installed five years ago. The availability of the plant at around 8,200 operating hours per year is particularly high. The collaboration works
without a hitch and plant manager Uwe Hesse, who is always on site, has a good relationship with the service centre: “It’s the only way we’re
Worldwide Independent Power April 2018
able to feed high wattages into the grid continuously,” says Külz confidently. The waste heat generated in the CHP plant is used for heating the adjacent pig- fattening operation, while some of it can also be used for drying cereals as and when required. Since it was commis- sioned in 2011, the biogas plant has also served as a test plant for trialing the process technology used in MWM engines. Specialists from Mannheim (Germany) come here to test new materials and components and take measurements. Külz believes this works best when the manufacturer & the customer have a relationship which is based on genuine partnership. “At the moment, catalytic c onverter trials are being run on our plant in co-operation with
the German Biomass Research Centre (DBFZ),” explains Külz. The biogas farm also benefits from this since the catalytic converter which is fitted to the plant and is being tested has been running trouble-free for four years now – a huge benefit, as otherwise catalytic converters – which aim to minimize formaldehyde and other emissions – have to be replaced at regular intervals of two to three years. Külz is impressed by the biogas plant with the MWM cogeneration plant: “We got everything right back then! The use of renew- able sources of energy, such as the biogas plant and the photo- voltaic units at our sites at Löberitz and Salzfurtkapelle, is our contribution to protecting the climate and the environment.”
www.mwm.net
www.gmp.uk.com
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