Good News Story – LUKE, Finland

VISIT TO A FARM-SCALE BIOGAS PLANT IN FINLAND

The HANDIHEAT-team of the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke) visited recently a farm-scale biogas plant connected to a dairy farm in Toholampi, Finland. The biogas plant was designed and built by Demeca Ltd in 2018 (https://demeca.fi/biokaasu/). The plant had a modular container structure, where the process steps (pretreatment, gas purification) take place in separate containers. The volume of the reactor tank was 600 m3. Cow slurry and excess grass silage were used as feedstock. Heat and electricity were produced from the biogas and used on the farm, but the farmer had even further plans with a possible biogas upgrading to biomethane. The digestate was separated into liquid and solid fractions and used as a fertilizer on own fields.

Combining food and energy production could improve the profitability of agriculture and provide a resource efficient way of producing renewable energy.