COMPANY PROFILE
2014
Agraferm Technologies AG
+49 8441 8086-100 | www.agraferm.com/en/
Renewable, cheap, eco-friendlyBiogas, the fuel of the future? Editorial: Roland Douglas
Agraferm Technologies is a leading name in the biogas industry offering services including project management, construction, re-powering, and technical and biological services for AD plants across Europe and further afield. Two Directors from this innovative company tell Total World Energy more about the growth of the business and the development of the industry… Biogas is perhaps the most overlooked of all of the prominent renewable energy sources around the world. Wind, solar and to some extent, hydro, claim all the plaudits in the renewable energy sector but as we know – they do have their pitfalls. And biogas is no different but one thing that it has in its favour is that it can provide a continual energy source. A report from Woods End
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Laboratories in the USA said: “The difference between biogas - the dark horse - and ‘sexy’ solar and wind that everyone is talking about, is that biogas is steady and storable.” But what is biogas? Energyscience people will tell you that biogas typically refers to a mixture of gases produced by the breakdown of organic matter in the absence of oxygen. The production of biogas is a result of using raw materials such as
recycled waste while producing a very small carbon footprint. Biogas is produced through the process of anaerobic digestion with anaerobic bacteria or fermentation of biodegradable materials such as manure, sewage, municipal waste, green waste, plant material and crops. Biogas is a fuel gas, a mixture consisting of about 55% methane (CH4) and of 45% CO2 and sometimes amounts of hydrogen
Agraferm Technologies AG sulphide (H2S), moisture and siloxanes. But producing biogas is not an easy process; to create a quality, safe, productive facility, you cannot go out with a screwdriver and build it yourself. You need the help of a specialist and one of the foremost names in biogas plant construction in Europe right now is Agraferm Technologies, a German based organisation which this year celebrates a historic milestone. “We will be celebrating our tenth anniversary this year,” says Director, Eike Liekweg. “The company began when there was already a boom around biogas in 2004. Our competitors at that time came from related industries, perhaps they were in tank building or construction but none of them were biogas specialists. The business was founded as the only real biogas company and specialists from other existing companies joined to form Agraferm.” Head of Sales at Agraferm, Markus Ott says that the founders of the company all came from a biogas background, giving great experience to the management team. “The guys who founded Agraferm were all already active in the biogas industry before Agraferm. Take myself for example; biogas was my first job after university so I have been in the industry for over 18 years,” he says. “The founding of the company was based on being a specialist and coming from a biogas background and not other technical fields. The knowledge we have in the business was active in biogas before the German boom. “You need engineering skills as a core, and knowledge of
biological aspects as well. The idea is always to bring together mechanical requirements with the biological ones. We are not doing rocket science in terms of equipment. We use standard pumps, standard engines, standard tanks – so there is no rocket science in the components – but the process design, engineering and smart cooperation of components with each other and with the bacteria; that is a core focus.”
AGRAFERM PLANT In its ten years, Agraferm has demonstrated its expertise in a wide variety of applications and many different locations. With completed plants in the UK, Germany, Italy, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Luxemburg, Belarus and Latvia, the company has a wealth of experience but Liekweg says each plant is different and always put together with the customer requirements in mind. “Each one is unique but there’s
elements that are typical to an Agraferm plant. Our plants, from a space and tank volume perspective, are smaller than other plants because we run a higher dry matter content in the tank and we have vertical stirrers in the main digesters and this specific way of stirring the mass is part of our process knowledge. “It really is bespoke design depending on the customers input materials and how they want to handle it and what they want to do with it. “All the plants vary in size of output. It always depends on the legislation; there might be certain feed-in tariffs and customers tend to build plants which are economically viable in the long-term. When you go to different countries, the legislation changes again and so you have to be flexible,” he says. One of the key differentiators between Agraferm plants and the rest of the market is that
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digesters in an Agraferm facility can take higher volumes of dry matter, resulting in a smaller plant with a larger output. “This has advantages in construction, operation and in cost,” says Ott. “Another very important factor is the flexibility you get with feedstock. If you have an AD (Anaerobic Digestion) plant that is able to mix a higher dry matter content, you are much more free to leave maize silage and there is a trend in the AD business, to think about other feedstock apart from maize silage, in both the agro as well as the waste sector.” This flexibility is hugely important as sources of feedstock can change because of many different factors and it is important that a feedstock
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“People would not consider building a coalfired power plant themselves but in biogas, people think it’s simple but at the end of the day, it’s still a power plant”
shortage or a change in input does not affect overall output. “You can substitute your maize silage with grass for example without creating a process bottle neck in your system,” says Ott. “We have seen this in Germany because roughly 30 per cent of the AD plants are said to be in economical critical situations because the maize price went up and we are also seeing this is in the UK. There was a huge fear across the industry as everyone cried for different feedstocks.” And while wet fermentation is less efficient, Agraferm is specialised in high load fermentation independent of input material, be it organic waste or agricultural residues resulting in a vast knowledge of suitable feedstock and important flexibility innovations.
Agraferm Technologies AG ORGANIC GROWTH It is widely acknowledged that biogas has a hugely important role to play in the global energy mix and Agraferm is of course looking to grow as more and more countries switch on to the benefits of efficient biogas plants. In the USA, the Environmental Protection Agency’s AgSTAR program reported in 2010 that around 8000 American farms could support biogas recovery systems, providing about 1600 megawatts of energy and reducing emissions of global warming pollution by about 1.8 million metric tons of methane - the equivalent of taking 6.5 million cars off the road. And Agraferm is ready to grow around the world, taking into account national operational differences, as Liekweg explains: “We are looking at markets outside of Europe. We believe that there are other areas in the world that will be growing including South Korea and Brazil but these are different in the sense that they don’t use energy crops, that’s more a European thing, so you’re dealing with dung, litter, manure and different kinds of waste and you have to build the plants more towards the national requirements which might include less automation, different climate conditions and so on.” And when the company does work on projects away from Germany, more than just clean energy is generated. Employment opportunities, knowledge and innovative thinking is created for local communities. Liekweg says that when Agraferm works in new regions, there will be a mix of experienced personnel and local contractors in place to ensure quality. “We like to have a mix of people,” he says. “Agraferm is an EPC contractor; we do the engineering, we do the procurement, and we do the commissioning. We source everything, we do assembly on site but we don’t actually produce anything. In any project we will
look for the right suppliers. We do have our regular suppliers of core equipment but when you look at a tank for example, this can be done locally and the majority is done by our subcontractors and we supervise and coordinate. If we were to build a project in South Korea, we would supervise and train operators so that they can run the plant on their own.” And this on-going maintenance and operation of the plant is important as some of the mechanical components do require upgrading from time to time but, as Ott mentioned previously, there are few high-tech components in an AD plant and service and operation of the plant can be trained.
“If you look at a biogas plant, you might have an engine if it’s a plant that produces electrical power and the engine requires maintenance but the rest is not so maintenance intensive. Our plants are very robust and do not need too much on-going service. “We do ensure we have service personnel available, we are opening a service base in the UK before the end of the year, because it’s a necessity to keep the plants running smoothly but it’s not huge business,” says Liekweg. “Nobody in the industry is installing rocket technology, one will always be able to find local guys to undertake the technical work of the pumps etc,” says Ott
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“On the biological side, it’s the opposite. With this, the client has to stay in touch with us as the deliverer of the plant if they want to develop feedstock mixes in the future as we know the plant and we can recommend switch over plans if a change in mix is required,” he adds.
‘NIMBY’ One thing that the energy industry, renewable and all, has faced over the years is opposition. Every sector and every idea faces opposition, sometimes from government, sometimes from local communities and sometimes from associations but when projects are managed correctly and all stakeholders are kept in the loop, opposition is easier to manage. In the biogas industry, because of the nature of activities, people often have reservations about new plants but Liekweg says there is nothing to worry about. “This is called the NIMBY effect – ‘not in my backyard’ – and you have that with any kind of energy plant. In Germany and in the UK we have a lot of wind farms and generally everyone says yes, wind farms are a good thing and we don’t want too much nuclear or coal but we don’t want to see the windmill so put it somewhere else. This is the same with biogas. The first reaction is that people don’t want it. They think it might smell, it might be dangerous, it might be noisy, it might create traffic but this is a matter for the project developer, to try and engage with the public as much as possible and show them that biogas plants do not affect people negatively. “Is it dangerous? No. These are professional industrial style plants. In the early days of biogas, there were some accidents but these were with unprofessional projects where farmers had tried to build their own biogas plants so today I don’t see a big risk at all,” he says. Ott says that the industry should
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come together to set standards of best practice for the construction and operation of biogas facilities to ensure that below-par plants are never even considered. “It is important in the UK market to not repeat similar mistakes that were made in Germany where in the first few years of biogas, people tried to build biogas plants on their own and not to technical standards,” he says. “I see the risk that this could happen in the UK, so I think it should be up to the industry and the various associations to define certain minimum standards of best practice otherwise you could have everyone trying to step into this business, with no idea about biogas, and you end up with good plants but also bad plants because the bad ones are cheaper. The UK Anaerobic Digestion and Biogas Association (ADBA) has addressed this and working groups are already active in this field. “People would not consider building a coal-fired power plant themselves but in biogas, people think it’s simple but at the end of the day, it’s still a power plant,” Liekweg adds.
BIOGAS FOR THE FUTURE? Today, biogas is widely used but its roots remain with agricultural consumers. However, biogas is always growing and becoming more popular and this is, in part, down to its multiple applications. “Some countries have understood the versatility of biogas; it can provide energy for electricity and also for heating and for the transport sector because biomethane chemically is nothing more than natural gas or CH4 and those countries that have seen these benefits are supporting biogas strongly,” explains Liekweg. “The UK has the RHI, where biomethane can be used for heating; Italy has a biomethane for transport law where natural gas is specifically used in the transport sector
and there is no competition to wind and solar so it’s well received. “Wind and solar are cheap but they need a stabiliser to balance during peak times and on the base load so biogas should always be considered as part of a wider system with all the technologies working together,” he says. And while the industry does continue to grow, garnering support with every extra megawatt produced, Agraferm
“We would hope that governments would be able to step into discussions with our local branches and have smooth negotiations about how to further grow the biogas industry” Technologies will be there to provide support and expertise as it too grows, ensuring that the industry is not overlooked. “We are the market leader in the UK by plain biogas volume. Across Europe, we are still a niche player as we don’t serve a mass market. Our power plants are unique, our technology is unique and everything is built to a very high standard so we are not the cheapest,” says Liekweg. “We would hope that governments would be able to step into discussions with our local branches and have smooth negotiations about how to further grow the biogas industry,” Ott adds. And is the organisation wellpositioned for the future? Ott is in no doubt: “We feel that our size is perfect right now as we are small enough to come through hard times but large enough to ensure quality and development,” he concludes
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Agraferm Technologies AG
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