Cows and CHP driving the energy transition
Clarke Energy USA and BioTown Biogas Work on First Project to Diversify Energy Portfolios into Renewable Natural Gas (RNG). The project will help to reduce emissions from the farms and provide the 500-600,000 gallons per day of slurry from approximately 25,000 milking cows equivalent, for the biogas plant to operate on. The installation enables the avoidance of 150,000 tons per annum of carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere.
The biogas from the digesters will be used for two functions. Firstly, the treated biogas will fuel the cogeneration engine to generate renewable electricity and heat to support the local operations. In addition, raw biogas will be cleaned and injected into the national gas grid. Five farming groups from the locality close to the plant will supply agricultural waste feedstock for the digesters.
BioTown AG is an existing renewable energy business with a long track record of success in the sector. It is expanding into the generation of biogas to be cleaned to gas grid injection standards as biomethane.
Chad Hoerr, General Manager of BioTown, commented: “BioTown AG is delivering its first project incorporating technology to upgrade raw biogas into RNG. We selected Clarke Energy due to the high performance of the membrane-based solution and the company’s ability to deliver a full turnkey solution backed by local aftersales support. In addition, financial closure of the project was helped by to the fact that Clarke Energy is a wholly owned KOHLER company satisfying our lender’s concerns regarding our suppliers’ corporate strength to deliver this important large-scale and complex project.”
Jamie Clarke, CEO of Clarke Energy, added: “Renewable natural gas has the potential to support the decarbonization of America’s gas distribution network and is an important part of our offering in the US market. To this end, we are honored to have been selected by BioTown to deliver our first RNG project alongside them in Indiana. BioTown have been an important customer over the past few years, and it is pleasing to see they have shown continued faith in Clarke Energy with the award of this contract.”
Technical details
1 containerized INNIO Jenbacher J420 gas engine will generate 1.4MW of renewable power, and provide 5,388 MBTU/hr of renewable heat to the digesters.
A three-stage membrane system provided by TPI will inject over 1,000 scfm of RNG into the national gas grid.