Study Tour Report th of September 2012

Transcription

1 Study Tour Report th of September 2012 Written by PhD students Thanos Pantelopoulos & George Bekiaris Objective of the study tour The main purpose of this study tour was to: Visit major Danish agro-industry facilities developing or utilizing environmental technologies, project research groups and agricultural advisory services closely correlated with the objectives of the program, Give the opportunity for ESR/ER, PIs/Supervisors and other participants to be informed on animal waste practices, and processes widely used in Denmark Provide an insight of the present legislation and regulatory practices concerning animal waste management and environmental protection in Denmark. Pict. 1 Group photo of the ReUseWaste participants at the kick-off meeting

2 Thursday 27 September Study tour start We all met at Cabinn Scandinavia Hotel where the participants of the ReUseWaste kick-off meeting were staying during their stay in Copenhagen. The participants (PIs/Supervisor, ESR/ER, advisory board and company representatives) were introduced to the Danish agricultural sector, its key production figures and organization by Professor Lars Stoumann Jensen, in a lecture during the trip to our first destination, Hashøj Biogass Plant. See attachment: 1-DK-Agriculture-Facts-and-figures-2012-uk.pdf Highlights of the lecture: Danish soils are generally quite light textured (sandy to loamy) with medium to high concentrations of organic matter. The majority of animal production is located in the Central and Western Part of the country, on the more sandy soils. The Danish agricultural model is based on the cooperative movement, started historically by local farmers, which has led to very strong farmers organisations and cooperatively owned food industries.

3 Hashøj Biogass Plant The manager of the cooperatively owned biogas plant welcomed us and guided us through the facilities. The plant processes the received slurry and a range of other organic wastes (quite variable composition also over time) at mesophilic temperatures (37 C). Before the anaerobic digestion the feedstock passes through pasteurization tanks for an hour at 70 C. The odour near the tank, where the slurry and the organic wastes are mixed, was quite intense but overall, annoying smells were absent, since the plant has quite effective air filtering. The plant also hosts the first demonstration facility in Denmark for upgrading biogas to natural gas quality (removal of CO 2 to obtain pure methane) a full scale facility will be constructed shortly. A few kilometers away we visited the combined heat and power (CHP) station, where the biogas is converted to electrical power and heat for the needs of the nearby villages, and distribution of the electricity on the network. See attachments 2a-Hashoj-biogas-plant.pdf and 2b-Hashoj-biogas-upgrading.pdf. digester) and of the storage tanks are equipped with collection bubles for residual methane evolution. The local scale CHP was equipped with 3 different engines and generators, to enhance flexibility, plus to biogas / natural gas boilles and a wood pellet boiler for maximum flexibility. The noise of the electrical engines in the heat plant was overwhelming! Danish speak very good English Highlights of the visit: The main philosophy behind this plant is that Everything in here is reused and returned to the farm The plant facilitates the redistribution of animal slurry in the area, through 10 digestate storage tanks in the area. The produced digestate has improved fertilizer value of nitrogen for the farmers and is seen as an attractive fertiliser The size of the digester is currently around 2 x 3000 m 3 (but will soon be supplemented by an additional 8000 m 3 Pict. 2 The manager of the biogas plant is welcoming us at the facilities

4 Pict. 3 The mixture of slurry and organic wastes Pict. 4 One of the two domes in the biogas digestate storage tank Pict. 5 Production of heat, electricity - and noise! Pict 6 Pilot plant for removing CO2 to convert biogas to natural gas grade for input to the gas grid

5 Southern Denmark University (SDU) We arrived at Odense, after we had crossed the Great Belt Bridge, the second longest bridge of the world (18 km), only exceeded by a bridge in Japan. We were amazed by the plane landscape (we, as Greeks, are not used in so flat settings) and the number of small lakes we were coming across throughout our journey. Our next stop was the Institute of Chemical Engineering, Biotechnology and Environmental Technology, partner at the ReUseWaste. A buffet with various delicacies was expecting us and we all enjoyed the hospitality of our hosts. The department hosts 24 PhD students and 200 undergraduate and graduate students. A small introduction for the scientific interests of the department took place and after that we were guided to the training facilities. Spacious labs, hi-tech instruments and robots are at the disposal of students and employees! Yes, the Institute has its own robotics lab! See link _bio-_og_mijoeteknologi Pict. 7 Snapshot from the lab tour Highlights of the visit: Very good instrumentation, the huge labs and pilot facilities for membrane and reactor technologies development and research The broken washing machine. Students break electrical devices in order to measure the environmental impact of their parts. The table football where you play against a robot!

6 Pict. 9 Demostration of membrane experimental facilities Pict. 11 Pilot plant facility Pict 12 The robot posing! Pict. 10 Snapshot from the lab tour demonstration of equipment

7 Centrovice Farmers Advisory Service Centrovice, is an independent advisory service owned by the regional farmers association and its mission is to provide a wide range of services (from fertilization plans to financial plans). It has no connection with private companies and it employs agronomists, biologists, economists and other experts. All advisory services like Centrovice are connected to the Knowledge Center for Agriculture, a national center also owned by the farmers organization. They also run field experiments to test new fertilizers, pesticides, manures and other technologies introduced into the agricultural sector and the results are used as an independent product validation, which the farmers know they can trust. At Centrovice, chief crop consultant Leif Hagelskær informed us about the national legislation connected with the use of nitrogen in agriculture, and chief environmental advisor Ejler Petersen presented rules and regulations concerning permission procedures s for livestock production. See attachments: 4a-Centrovice-LeifHageslskaer.pdf and 4b-Centrovice-EjlerPetersen.pdf Highlights of the visit: The environmental fertilizer regulations limits the maximum allowed Nitorgen application for the farm crops (around 15-18% lower than the economic optimum), de facto setting a Nitrogen application quota for the entire farm The farmers must redistribute their excess of manure (in excess of 140 kg N ha -1 ) either to other farms or to biogas plants Acidification of the slurry with sulfuric acid either in the animal house, storage tank or at field application (see next days visit to Biocover) reduces ammonia volatilization by at lest 50% When farmers expand or change their animal production, they must go through an environmental audit and approval to obtain permission; criteria related both to P and N surplus, ammonia, odor and N leaching Best Available Technology (BAT) listings or similar (e.g. the VERA certification scheme being part of ReUseWaste as an associate partner) are hugely benficial for streamlining and standardizing the approval process, to the benefit of both farmers, municipalities (and hopefully the environment). Future priorities include the removal of the excess water from manure in order to transport it easily (cheaper) to greater distances Danish legislation concerning agriculture and animal wastes is very complex! Pict. 13 Briefing on nitrogen regulations Pict. 14 Talk on livestock permission

8 Arrival to accommodation and dinner After a long day, we arrived to the city of Kolding and our accommodation at Kolding Byferie where we settled in our rooms. We shared apartments with supervisors and students in a very cozy environment. Dinner took place at Café Nikolai where we enjoyed the good food and the nice company of our colleagues. Everyone was pretty tired but very happy for this excursion. In a very happy and relaxing atmosphere we shared our impressions from the trip. Highlights of the dinner : The organic Spanish olive oil The red wine The Carpaccio The salmon

9 Friday 28 September Depart from hotel In the morning of the second day we had a good breakfast and we started our trip to visit the other stations of the program with final destination Copenhagen. Everyone seemed refreshed from the good nights sleep and happy that the sun was shining (yesterday, during most of our journey it was raining) Biocover The visit to the company Biocover took place at a large farm running a contracting operation (Gamst Maskinstation). The farmer and three cute dogs welcomed us. The owner of the Biocover company, Morten Toft, gave us an enthusiastic lecture about the SyreN technology he has developed, a new system which acidifies the slurry during the application on the farm. SyreN is a system that can be retrofitted to a slurry tanker with trail hose applicators and full computer control from the tractor of the sulphuric acid dosage and loging of this and GPS location of application It has proven and validated beneficial effects in terms of ammonia and odour reduction, increased crop yield and economic profit of the farmer. After the briefing we all had a close up look of the system. The system seemed extremely complicated and all of us wanted to take a photo of the system. See attachments: 5a-SyreN-system-UK-2012.pdf and 5b-SyreN-brochure-UK-version-July-2011.pdf Highlights of the visit: SyreN has a certfified average 50% reduction efficiency on ammonia emissions, the system is actually the first Danish agro-environmental technology to receive a VERA validation certificate (a new Danish-German-Dutch certification scheme) The complexity of the system the devil is in the detail of making such a system work efficiently and safely in practice The system usually uses less than 2 L of sulphuric acid per ton of slurry, whereas other acidification systems use twice as much The three dogs of the farm, especially the brown puppy who dirtied our pants with its feet The inventors nowadays also are / have to be very good salesman! Pict. 15 Arrival at the farm. The dogs seemed to like us.

10 Pict. 16 Briefing on the SyreN technology Pict. 18 and 19 A closer look Pict. 17 Truck with SyreN system

11 Rønhave Dairy farm and AL-2 Agro Separators Rønhave is one of the largest (if not the largest) dairy producers in Denmark. The farm manager and Preben Nissen from AL-2 Agro Separators introduced us to the facilities and gave us some details about the farm. In the property that we visited there were around 650 dairy cows, with current extensions being built to house 900 dairy cows, and the farm comprises three properties with a total of 1600 dairy cows + the heifers. A cow produces approximately kg of milk and 21 tons of manure per year. Their diet is cover by maize and grass silage, supplemented with some fodder beets and concentrates in the form of barley and soybean protein feed. The slurry is separated in a mechanical screw press and the solid fraction is mixed with 20 % waste gypsum building material which is then used as a bedding material in the cubicles in the animal house. This saves the farm from a cost of 40-50,000 per year -1 for straw or wood chips as regular bedding material, yielding a 1 yest payback time for the investment in the screw press separator. The liquid fraction is stored and used as fertilizer on own crop and forage land as well as on neighbouring farms (the farm itself does not have sufficient land) See attachment 6-AL2-Agro_brochure_eng.pdf Highlights of the visit: The screw press only separates around 25% of the N ad P into the solid fraction, but produces a high dry matter content around 32 %. The solid fraction of the slurry is very light and almost odourless when freshly separated, producing a surprisingly attractive bedding material when mixed with gypsum, which the cows like and with no detrimental effect on milk quality and positive effects on cow welfare. The excess solid fraction is currently used as crop fertilizer, but the farmer anticipates to export this to new biogas plants under construction in the area. Cows are not very polite. They satisfy their physical needs in public Pict. 20 Welcoming at the farm

12 Pict. 21 Snapshot of the stables Pict. 22 Explanation of the solid-liquid separation system Pict. 23 The fiber fraction of the slurry Pict. 23 The bedding from fiber fraction

13 Komtek Miljø We arrived at Komtek Miljø, the largest municipal waste composting plant in Denmark, where we were informed about the activities of the company. The surroundings looked like a junkyard, but as our guide, Bitten Lorenzen, mentioned It is not easy to keep the place clean with all these wastes entering. The company receives sewage sludge, manure, garden-park waste and othe woody waste as structural material etc. and produces composts and soil mixtures, dedicated to various purposes. The feedstock is composted in controlled environment (enclosed and ventilated static piles) for about 30 days, followed by a curing phase of around 2 years. We were also shown the Ecogi technology, which is a pulping method for transforming source-separated municipal organic waste into a volatile solids rich, pumpable slurry/pulp to be used for biogasification, and a residual inorganic fraction of plastics, glass and metal scraps. After the tour in the outside surroundings we were guided to the administration buildings of the company where we were informed about the scope and the function of the company and the Ecogi technology. We were really touched by the fact that although the owner, Bjarne Larsen, was going through some major economic problems for his company, he took the time and effort to accept us visiting to his company. See attachment 7-KomTek-Ecogi.pdf Highlights of the visit: The company can monitor the nutrient composition of the compost in different stages of the composting All composting takes place indoors with specially designed ventilation system, which ensures low emissions of odour and ammonia The Ecogi pulp is currently supplied to a nearby biogas plant, which produces a significant supplementary gas yield from it and enables recycling of nutrients in the pulp back to agriculture, with low heavy metal and org. contaminant The companies technologies are so developed that many potential buyers have declared their interest for financial take over.. Pict. 24 Introduction in the facilities

14 Pict 25 Old compost structural material Pict 26 Municipal household wastes Pict. 27 Enclosed windrow compost piles with gas collection system Pict 28 Windrow compost pile turning machine Pict 29 The Ecogi technologi for producing organic pulp from various municipal wastes Pict 30 Hi-tech monitoring system

15 18.15 Arrival at Copenhagen Later in the afternoon, exhausted but happy from this two day tour, we arrived at Copenhagen. We said good bye to our partners who were to return to their country and everyone enjoyed a relaxing evening at Copenhagen (beer was a vital part of the relaxing process ). Conclusion Our overall experience was very satisfying since we had the opportunity to have a closer look and understand the procedures and techniques that we are normally reading about from the scientific papers. This was very beneficial for us in terms of understanding in depth the processing of animal slurry, the difficulties and challenges of these practices and technologies and their environmental impacts. We believe that the relaxing atmosphere of this tour was the perfect starting point in a long term relationship between all project partners. Best regards, George Bekiaris Thanos Pantelopoulos