Kirk Group Bintulu AD plant now complete

ADBA MEMBER PRESS RELEASE

BIODOME® ASIA, part of KIRK GROUP, has recently completed a state of the art anaerobic digestion plant in East Malaysia for our client Kubota Corporation, consisting of the largest digester tank ever built by Kirk to date which has a capacity in excess of 10,000m³.

The Project

The plant, based in Bintulu, is a 10,000m³ glass-fused-to-steel digester tank complete with a BIODOME® double membrane gas holder roof and a smaller 1,800m³ digester tank with a BIODOME® single membrane roof.

Generally palm oil mills treat the effluent discharged from plants manufacturing palm oil – an important export for Malaysia and Indonesia – in open lagoons, however the release of greenhouse gases and the potential for reduced water quality has become a significant problem. In recent years consumers of palm oil have strongly demanded environmental conservation and the Malaysian government has strengthened its water quality regulations for palm oil effluent, resulting in mills needing to take prompt measures.

The installation of digester tanks complete with BIODOME® roofs will make sure the biogas produced during the anaerobic digestion process is captured in the roofs and held there until ready to be released as renewable energy, significantly reducing the footprints released in the atmosphere.

The RM13 million plant has been built alongside a new palm oil mill which will be the first in the world to adopt membrane technology in palm oil milling. Kubota Corporation were chosen by BBC Biogas Sdn Bhd to design and construct the anaerobic membrane bioreactor system which integrates two processes to extract biogas from POME and treat wastewater to comply with the strict requirements of the Department of Environment (DOE) and Sarawak Natural Resources and Environment Board (NREB). This technology is capable of producing much more biogas from empty fruit bunches for use as renewable energy and is more efficient in the treatment of POME.

The plant has a daily capacity of 936 tonnes based oil mill effluent and the biogas produced will be used to operate a brick factory to be built by BBC Holdings Sdn Bhd next to the plant, making the factory self-sufficient.