MEMBER’S PRESS RELEASE: First Economizer SE commissioned in the UK

Biogas Systems GmbH of Austria and Future Biogas Systems Ltd (a subsidiary of the market-leading anaerobic digestion development and operations firm Future Biogas Ltd) today commissioned the first Economizer SE in the UK at an AD plant in Nottinghamshire. The unit passed all its system tests, running for a straight 48-hour performance and acceptance period.

Hermann Dauser, Biogas Systems’ founder and the firm’s technical director, said:

We were lined up to commission a little over a month ago, but decided to delay to allow us to introduce certain improvements to the system. The machine’s output during the 48-hour commissioning run exceeded the expected output by 10% whilst using minimal additional heat, which is very exciting for us and shows the improvements have really paid off.

The Economizer SE, a front-end process system which unlocks the full digestible capacity of materials with high levels of lignin, has the potential to revolutionise the way biogas is produced. The system opens up materials such as wheat straw and soiled straw bedding for rapid digestion, using only limited amounts of electricity and some high-grade heat. This allows the average unit to replace around 19,000 tonnes of purpose-grown crop with 7,500 tonnes of wheat straw, representing a potential annual saving to an AD plant of circa £500k per annum depending on local feedstock availability.

Philipp Lukas, MD and founder of Future Biogas Ltd, said:

We are very pleased with the system, and since signing a distribution agreement for the UK last year we have been busy engaging with the market. A second unit arrives in the UK for installation at a Norfolk plant at the end of this week and a third is already being fabricated in Austria for a site on the south coast. Two additional orders were placed this week, with more in the pipeline.

Helge Leinich, CEO of Biogas Systems, points to the speed of deployment to the UK market:

We are delighted with the way our partnership is shaping up. We expect to be expanding our production facility in Austria shortly to be able to satisfy UK demand for our product. It is an exciting time for us. In Future Biogas we have the right partner for the UK market; there really isn’t anyone else in the crop-fed AD market with such a well-respected and experienced operations and servicing team.