Delivery of two Biogas Plants to Japan

Cur­rent­ly, WELTEC BIOPOWER is set­ting up two agri­cul­tur­al 250-kW bio­gas plants for one of Japan‘s major milk pro­duc­ers. One of the plants is being set up in Ura­horo on Japan‘s island of Hokkai­do. The sec­ond plant is being built in Saka­ta in the pre­fec­ture of Yam­a­ga­to on Hon­shu, the largest island. The struc­tur­al design of the two bio­gas plants takes the earth­quake risk in these regions into con­sid­er­a­tion. The gen­er­at­ed pow­er and heat will be used direct­ly on site in order to enable ener­gy auton­o­my. The com­mis­sion­ing will take place in sum­mer 2021 in Ura­horo and in autumn 2021 in Sakata.
Fol­low­ing the Fukushi­ma nuclear dis­as­ter in March 2011 and thanks to the sup­port of renew­able ener­gies, bio­gas enjoys a good rep­u­ta­tion in Japan. Among the renew­able ener­gies, bio­gas is con­sid­ered to be a weath­er-inde­pen­dent ener­gy source that makes a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to the required grid sta­bil­i­ty. Addi­tion­al­ly, the pre­con­di­tions for the devel­op­ment of bio­gas are favourable, since despite the lim­it­ed avail­abil­i­ty of oth­er raw mate­ri­als, Japan boasts plen­ty of bio­mass poten­tial. Efforts to pro­mote bio­gas projects had already start­ed in 2002. A short while there­after, WELTEC built its first „Made in Ger­many“ plant in Japan. How­ev­er, the pace of devel­op­ment in this area picked up only after the gov­ern­ment intro­duced the feed-in tar­iff for green ener­gy in July 2012.
The com­panie’s lat­est bio­gas projects in Japan are hybrid dairy farms. This means that the embryos of spe­cial beef cat­tle breeds are trans­ferred to dairy cows, allow­ing the farm to pro­duce both milk and beef. Every year, the two loca­tions of an agri­cul­tur­al com­pa­ny group yield approx­i­mate­ly 30,000 t of liq­uid cat­tle manure, which will be used for the ener­gy pro­duc­tion in the anaer­o­bic diges­tion plants. To ensure effi­cient diges­tion, WELTEC BIOPOWER is set­ting up one stain­less-steel digester in Ura­horo. In Saka­ta, the con­cern is build­ing two digesters, as the ani­mal head­count will soon be increased. With a height of 6.3 m and a diam­e­ter of 25.34 m, the three biore­ac­tors will each have a capac­i­ty of 3,176 m³. The ben­e­fits of stain­less-steel tanks include com­pact ship­ping in just a few con­tain­ers from Europe to Japan and easy adap­ta­tion to the struc­tur­al require­ments in earth­quake regions.
At the Ura­horo site on Hokkai­do, the liq­uid sub­strates will be pumped to the digester from three upstream stor­age tanks. Two of the three pre-stor­ages are already in place, but are being fur­nished with state-of-the-art tech­nol­o­gy. WELTEC is build­ing the third pre-stor­age tank with a capac­i­ty of 393 m³ from scratch. Its height is 5.03 m, and its diam­e­ter mea­sures 9.98 m. A pre-stor­age of the same size is also being set up in Saka­ta. Due to the cold win­ters with a lot of snow, the prestor­age tanks at the two loca­tions will be insu­lat­ed and fur­nished with gas-tight dou­ble-mem­brane roofs. Addi­tion­al­ly, the com­pa­ny is set­ting up a diges­tate stor­age tank with a capac­i­ty of 524 m³ for each loca­tion. Fol­low­ing the sep­a­ra­tion, the diges­tate will be spread on the company‘s own fields as fer­tilis­er. Apart from the digesters, upstream and diges­tate stor­age tanks, sep­a­ra­tion and pump tech­nol­o­gy, they are also set­ting up a 250-kW CHP unit at each of the locations.
Based on the customer’s spec­i­fi­ca­tion, the plants will run in par­al­lel grid oper­a­tion. There­fore, both con­struc­tion projects are viewed as pilot projects in Japan. The fact that the pow­er will not be fed into the grid, but will be used for the rotary milk­ing par­lour and oth­er facil­i­ties, makes the oper­a­tor more inde­pen­dent from the pow­er grid.
This makes sense from an eco­nom­ic per­spec­tive, as the grid capac­i­ty and sta­bil­i­ty in Japan is endan­gered espe­cial­ly in the earth­quake areas. The fact that the frame­work con­di­tions for the devel­op­ment of bioen­er­gy are favourable is a great advan­tage: The year­ly bio­mass poten­tial in Japan amounts to approx­i­mate­ly 284.4 mil­lion t, enough to pro­duce about 13 bil­lion kWh of elec­tric­i­ty and con­tin­u­al­ly sup­ply 2.8 mil­lion house­holds. At the bot­tom line, the effi­cient util­i­sa­tion of raw mate­r­i­al in bio­gas plants such as in Ura­horo and Saka­ta con­tributes to the eco­nom­ic via­bil­i­ty, eco-com­pat­i­bil­i­ty and secu­ri­ty of sup­ply and thus to the suc­cess of the ener­gy tran­si­tion in Japan.