Superior Mixing Matters At Taiwan New Biogas Plant

For the project in Hualien County on the east coast of Taiwan, the new Pushige Biomass Energy Center (from a plan implemented by the Yexing Environmental Technology Company), features six of Landia’s externally-mounted GasMix systems, which have a verified track record of enhancing biogas yields.

The 18.5kW units, which were ordered by Fluid Power Co, LTD of Tainan, are helping generate what will amount to approximately 876,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity each year for the Taipower grid (equivalent to the electricity capacity of 250 households) from 300 tons of livestock manure wastewater every day in the breeding area of Sanmin, Yuli Town where eight livestock farms are home to almost 10,000 pigs and close to 700 cows.

Benefitting from the Landia Chopper Pump (which the company invented in 1950), the digester mixing system draws thick liquid from the bottom of the 6,000 cubic meters tank, where solids are chopped to accelerate the digestion process and prevent clogging of pipes and nozzles. In the first stage of the mixing process, the livestock wastewater is injected into the upper half of the digester, whilst biogas is aspirated from the top of the tank and mixed into the liquid. This not only has the benefit of reducing buoyancy at the surface of the liquid, but also sees the rising gas bubbles continue to mix after the pumps are switched off.

Landia is no stranger to mixing hard-to-handle liquid manures/wastewaters. The company was established in 1933, making slurry pumps.

‘The very best for producing high levels of methane – and quickly’

Mark Lo, Managing Director of Fluid Power Co, commented: “The early
results already prove conclusively that the Landia digester mixing system is
the very best for producing high levels of methane – and quickly. It is also
extremely reliable and very easy to maintain”.

As well as producing biogas and creating top quality organic fertilizer from biogas residue, the $3M Pushige Biomass Energy Center (49% financed by Taiwan’s Environmental Protection Administration) will also help reduce the discharge of high COD (chemical oxygen demand), high BOD (biological oxygen demand) and high nitrogen from livestock wastewater into irrigation channels and the Xiuguluan Creek by almost 110,000 metric tons each year.

In addition, carbon dioxide emissions will be reduced by approximately 3,000 metric tons. Rice farmers are already using the nutrient-rich, organic biogas digestate for their farmland, immediately seeing a vast improvement, compared to the chemical fertilizers used previously.