South America Goes Green with Bioenergy

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cac-2023-poslogo-idea-ahead (CAC ENGINEERING GMBH)

Moreover, it helps to overcome the frequent lack of practical knowledge in fields like combined heat and power generation. Though Weltec was able to convince the client and operator in Uruguay with international experience and flexibility in scaling industrial plants, it was at least just as important for the investor that its dairy products for the Asian markets can be produced and packaged with power and especially process heat directly from the plant.

A Biomethane Megaproject in South America

Thus, there is a demand for projects that create independence — as is also the case with the current planning mandate of Weltec in Brazil. Planning mandate in Brazil Leftovers of the bioethanol production process could be digested for energy production purposes in order to supply the power and heat for the production process.

However, for climate-related reasons, sugarcane cannot be harvested throughout the year. Therefore, other raw materials also need to be used. This constant change of substrates in the course of the year is only one of the challenges that the company faced with in the planning mandate. The dimensions of this biomethane refinery are also unusual. Upon completion, it will have a yearly biomethane production capacity of more than 30 million standard sq mt, ie., about 4,000 standard sq mt an hour.

It will be very important to efficiently ferment, not only the distillation residue, but also the straw and the plant pulp. The process requirements are very demanding particularly due to the high lignin content of the residual matter. And especially against the backdrop of the country’s unused energy sources, it is important to utilize all energy resources.

There is also great potential in other areas: In the field of wastewater treatment plants, large amounts of sludge remain unused— another resource for biogas plants. Though some of the sludge is fermented, the gas is either flared in an uncontrolled manner or escapes into the atmosphere as a harmful greenhouse gas.

Brazil’s agricultural sector also leaves substrates unused. Accordingly, the biogas plant population is underdeveloped in this country as well. In the hog belt down south, there used to be about 2,500 lagoons covered with membrane roofs for the fermentation of liquid manure back in the 1980s. However, only 20 of these still exist. So taking the size of the country into consideration, the bottom-line potential is gigantic.

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