Fluence Argentina + Fluence Italy in Buenos Aires today running a partner day on waste to energy with partners Berghof & Pentair.
Relevant as the new RenovAr Round 3 contracts are coming up over the next 12 months in Argentina.
https://www.berghofmembranes.com/industries/food-beverage/https://advancedfiltration.pentair.com/en/applications-waste-waterAnd we started more a Partner Day "International Meeting of Waste conversion technology in energy"-Buenos Aires Edition! Thank you Fluence Italy, Berghof, and Pentair for the support!
Michele Ceccaroni It shows the practical results of plants in operation and how to calculate the Payback of the investment with biogas generation and other profits. Partner Day W2E Edition Buenos Aires 2019. #WasteToEnergy #W2E #Efluentes
Mauricio Accietto It shares the details of the ArreBeef project which will be the first anaerobic digestion plant in the refrigeration industry in Argentina. Value content in Partner Day W2E-Edición Buenos Aires 2019. #WasteToEnergy #W2E #Efluentes
Alfredo Crespo Of the company Berghof present in the "Partner Day of W2E" Buenos Aires Edition, talking about the optimization of power generation systems with membranes. Thanks for your input!
MAURIZIO TIARCA He talks about the European experience in converting waste into energy, as well as W2E's technology as a tool for energy recovery for the refrigeration industry. Partner Day W2E Edition Buenos Aires 2019 #WasteToEnergy #W2E #EFluentes
Older article from Maurizio Tiarca:
From Waste to Resource: Recovering Energy from Unconventional Wastewater Sources
Published on November 5, 2016
By Maurizio Tiarca, CEO, RWL Water Italy When "energy recovery" is mentioned, many people think of burning refuse to create thermal energy. That's correct, but too many people don't realize that it also means tapping into the energy stored by organic matter in wastewater.
Energy recovery from wastewater is a vital but often overlooked way to conserve water resources, produce renewable energy, and significantly curb the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
It also can save a lot of money.
The basic wastewater treatment used in energy recovery is anaerobic digestion. As its name implies, anaerobic digestion uses bacteria to break down organic matter outside of the presence of oxygen. The process creates biogas (primarily methane), which can be used to create steam or hot water for industrial processes, as well as to generate electricity. The wastewater treatment process contains other steps, including flocculation, dissolved air flotation, and double-stage nitrification-denitrification.
There's a reluctance to embrace this technology that may, in part, be due to some confusion over terminology. In the United States, energy recovery from wastewater is generally known as waste-to-energy, no matter the source of the waste stream. In other parts of the world, the word "waste" immediately brings sewage treatment to mind. This association is unfortunately limiting.
Who Can Benefit From Waste-to-Energy Treatment?As mentioned above, even though sewage and manure processing are obvious candidates for wastewater energy recovery, it doesn't occur to many manufacturers that these environmentally friendly processes are ideal for the food and beverage industries, as well as many other ventures, large and small.
Industries that can benefit are the pharmaceutical industry, meat and dairy processing, beverage manufacturing, vegetable processing, fruit juice production, baked goods production, and the processing of other types of food, including fish.
We recently completed a project with Eurofish, a tuna processing company based in Ecuador. Most of Eurofish's competitors don't use anaerobic digestion for treating fish-processing wastewater (despite its many benefits, in some industries it just doesn't have a great image, perhaps because of its association with sewage treatment).
The benefits of treating wastewater with energy recovery include:
- A significant reduction in wastewater treatment costs
- A large reduction in the amount of greenhouse gas released
- Elimination of noxious odors and resulting nuisance fines
- A 75 percent reduction in sludge (and the sludge that remains is rich in nutrients and can be used as agricultural fertilizer)
Challenging Wastewater StreamsTuna fish, which are frozen aboard fishing vessels, arrive at the Eurofish facility, where they're defrosted, sorted, and prepared for cooking. Inedible parts are removed and sold to factories that convert them to products such as fishmeal, fish oil, and nutritional supplements. The fish flesh is cooked by steam and either canned or preserved in sealed pouches.
All of the steps along the way require potable water and steam, and produce great volumes of wastewater heavily polluted by grease and protein. The Eurofish facility has its own wastewater treatment plant to deal with this challenging wastewater stream.
The grease and proteins in the wastewater are partially oxidized and if recovered, they typically are very poor in quality and may even contain toxins. Conventional treatment of this type of waste produces a thick sludge that must be disposed of in landfills, which can be expensive.
With anaerobic digestion, this sludge can instead be reduced, stabilized, and dried.
90 Percent Energy CaptureThe anaerobic digestion process uses less than 10 percent of the energy contained in the grease and protein sludge, which means more than 90 percent of the energy can be captured in the form of biogas. Over time, landfilled sludge releases methane, which is dispersed into the atmosphere. So, adding energy recovery to wastewater treatment both reduces the amount of sludge to be landfilled AND reduces the release of greenhouse gases.
The concentration of organic pollutants in wastewater is measured in terms of chemical oxygen demand (COD). This is the amount of oxygen needed to completely burn all the organic substances in the wastewater. In other words, it's a measure of the organic matter's chemical energy content.
For every ton of tuna processed, about 55 kilograms of COD is created in roughly 3 to 4 cubic meters of wastewater, which equals 13,750 milligrams per liter of COD. This is the equivalent of 195,000 kilocalories of chemical energy. The biogas that can be recovered from the sludge contains roughly 11 cubic meters of methane, or about 93,500 kilocalories of energy.
At the height of the processing season, Eurofish processes 200 tons of tuna a day. This means it is producing about 2,200 cubic meters of methane a day, or the equivalent of 18,500,000 kilocalories a day.
Is Wastewater Energy Recovery Right for You?The strongest argument in favor of adding energy recovery to a facility is the economic benefit. For instance, Eurofish reduced its wastewater treatment cost by 80 percent and its fuel consumption by 600 gallons a day, saving more than US$160,000 a year. Without anaerobic digestion, the wastewater treatment would cost roughly US$1 per cubic meter of water to be treated. Anaerobic digestion of the primary sludge enables the facility to recover 75 to 80 percent of the treatment cost.
The capital expense of adding energy recovery to the wastewater treatment process is easily repaid if an operation's wastewater stream contains 10,000 to 20,000 kilograms a day of COD. An operation must produce a minimum of 3,000 kilograms a day of COD for energy recovery to be economically sustainable.
