Landia chopper pumps sustain Biogen's food waste to energy plant

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A piped digester mixing system using pumps made by Landia is helping Biogen with its successful new £5m food waste to green energy operation near Caernarfon in North Wales.

The 11,000 tonne per annum GwyriAD AD plant has a Landia MPTK chopper pump that mixes 12% dry solids in a buffer tank. A further two MPTKs re-suspend grit (when existing diffusers are not running) using a pressurised ring main with four jetting nozzles, equally spaced around the base of a tank containing 9% dry solid digestate.

At a maximum particle size of 12mm (temperature 60 ^oC), digestate at dry solids 8% is also pumped by two more Landia MPTK chopper pumps at a flow rate of 36-72 m³/hour at a maximum total head of 15m.

The system at Biogen, the UK’s leading food waste AD specialist, further includes a 4.0 kW 1500rpm DG Landia pump to transfer digestate at dry solids 15%, (but still liquid) maximum particle size 20mm, at a flow rate of 20 m³/hour.

Biogen’s Julian Stelmasiak

Landia’s chopper pumps play an important part in the process, proving very capable of handling the different cycles of food waste.

In addition to renewable electricity (for 700 homes), Biogen’s GwyriAD AD plant also creates high quality biofertiliser for farms in the Gwynedd region, as well as helping the local council make a major reduction in the amount of waste sent to landfill.

Landia UK, which is celebrating its twentieth anniversary in 2014, also has its pumps and mixers in operation at Biogen’s Milton Ernest plant in Bedfordshire, where renewable energy is generated from pig slurry and food waste.