Autumn 2022 EN

english issue 

German Biogas Association | ZKZ 50073 

www.biogas.org 

Autumn 2022 

The trade magazine 

Including Country Reports from 

Great Britain, 

the Netherlands 

and Croatia 

Paper and flower pots 

made of digestate 6 

Strip-Till: Row by Row 28 

GB: Already 10 biogas plants 

produce “Green CO 2 

” 40

BIOGAS TO BIOMETHANE! 

YOUR STEP TOWARDS THE FUTURE. 

BIOMETHANE – THE ALL-ROUNDER 

Upgrading existing biogas facilities to produce bio methane and 

building new plants to expand production capacity will provide a 

more resilient and sustainable energy network. 

Anaerobic digestion plants using high proportions of slurry and 

manure, organic waste and residuals can have a high economic 

profitability with lower input costs. Biomethane generated from 

slurry and manure also achieves the highest trading certificate 

prices based on the direct emission savings and energy recovery 

potential. agriKomp provides you with all the necessary 

technology, design, and components for your bio methane plant 

construction, including the provision of support and advice 

through the feasibility and planning stages. Operational support 

is also available locally with flexible service contracts! 

Original components and high degree of standardisation ensure easy 

operation and maintenance 

Latest, highly efficient EVONIK membrane technology 

Sophisticated heat recovery and cooling system 

Clever plant design; synergies are utilised through intelligent linking of 

modules and process steps 

Redesigned modular structure for easy extension of the system 

Modular unit: significantly reduced space requirement 

VISIT US ON EUROTIER 2022 IN HANNOVER! 

Hall 25 | Stand No. E12 

BIOGAS 2 PLANTS & COMPONENTS. efficient. flexible. sovereign. 

Contact us for more information: info@agrikomp.com | www.agrikomp.com 

Sounds interesting? 

Just click on it!

Biogas Journal | Autumn_2022 

Editorial 

Unleash 

biogas in 

Germany 

Dear Readers, 

2022 is already proving to be an eventful 

year, not least of all for the energy industry. 

The issue of uninterrupted power supply is 

still high on the political agenda in Europe 

and is likely to be the subject of much discussion 

in Germany over the coming weeks 

and months. Russia recently reduced the 

supply of gas to Western Europe and, at the 

same time, is threatening to cut off supplies 

of oil and gas completely if price caps are 

imposed by the EU on its energy exports. 

As a result, gas prices have skyrocketed and 

are posing an increasing economic threat to 

households and businesses. 

Although Germany’s gas storage facilities 

are now 90% full, gas shortages cannot 

be ruled out, particularly in the event of a 

cold winter. Besides easing the burden on 

citizens and companies, it is essential to 

press ahead with the exit from nuclear and 

fossil-fuel energy and finally utilize the full 

potential of biogas. In Germany, the biogas 

industry can generate 20 percent more 

energy in the short term, simply by cutting 

red tape. 

The initial steps taken by the Federal Ministry 

of Economic Affairs are moving in the 

right direction: Abolishing restrictions on 

maximum biogas production and ensuring 

greater flexibility in the use of substrates 

by biogas plants. Biogas output in Germany 

could be more than doubled in the medium 

to long term. The target presented by the 

European Commission for the EU member 

states entails increasing the production of 

biomethane to 35 billion cubic meters by 

2030 and even to just under 100 billion cubic 

meters by 2050. 

The current production of biomethane in the 

EU amounts to around 3 billion cubic meters. 

This issue of the Biogas Journal examines 

the current situation and the existing 

potential of biogas in Croatia, the UK and 

the Netherlands. I cordially invite you to the 

Biogas Convention Digital from 7 th to 11 th of 

November, at which the current and future 

role of biogas in Germany and at an international 

level will be discussed. The program 

will be available in both German and English 

(www.biogas-convention.com/en/). 

So far, 2022 has also shown that global 

warming is progressing at an unchecked 

rate. Extreme weather conditions, like periods 

of drought, occurred again more frequently 

this year in various regions around 

the world. This had adverse effects on 

power generation by nuclear plants, coal 

processors and hydroelectric power plants. 

Depending on how weather conditions develop, 

there may be a power shortage in the 

winter in addition to the gas shortage. The 

water shortage is already posing increasingly 

greater challenges for agriculture, as it 

causes yield shortfalls in arable farming and 

green areas. This Biogas Journal includes 

articles on various methods of minimizing 

the evaporation of soil water and improving 

soil fertility. 

Another important topic in the biogas industry 

is innovations. Some new approaches recently 

emerged, demonstrating additional 

methods of recycling residue materials from 

biogas production. Biogas not only means 

generating energy, it proves that recycling 

residual materials can also create added 

value. One of the articles in this Biogas 

Journal is about the sustainable production 

of organic wax for the cosmetics industry 

and for colors and lubricants, which is currently 

still often based on fossil petroleum. 

Another article shows how paper and flower 

pots are made out of digestate, which could 

reduce the use of synthetics in agriculture 

and horticulture. I hope you enjoy reading 

this issue of our Biogas Journal and discover 

many interesting new ideas. Biogas can do 

it, and can do it even better with more innovations! 

Warm regards, 

Your, 

Sebastian Stolpp, 

Head of International Affairs 

German Biogas Association 

3

English Issue 

Biogas Journal | Autumn 2022 

IMPRint 

HYDROGEN SULFIDE ? 

IMPROVED 

EFFECTIVENESS 

better performance 

NEW FORMULAS ! 

Internal Desulfurization 

® 

FerroSorp DG 

External Desulfurization 

FerroSorp ® 

S 

Phone: 0049 30 84 71 85 50 www.ferrosorp.de 

Double membrane gasholder | Emission protection foils 

Foil gas accumulators | Single membrane covers 

Leakage detection systems 

Publisher: 


General Manager Dr. Claudius da Costa 

Gomez (Person responsible according to 

German press law) 

Andrea Horbelt (editorial support) 

Angerbrunnenstraße 12 

D-85356 Freising 

Phone: +49 81 61 98 46 60 

Fax: +49 81 61 98 46 70 

e-mail: info@biogas.org 

Internet: www.biogas.org 

Editor: 

Martin Bensmann 


Phone: +49 54 09 9 06 94 26 

e-mail: martin.bensmann@biogas.org 

Advertising management & Layout: 

bigbenreklamebureau GmbH 

An der Surheide 29 

D-28870 Ottersberg-Fischerhude 

Phone: +49 42 93 890 89-0 

Fax: +49 42 93 890 89-29 

e-mail: info@bb-rb.de 

The newspaper, and all articles contained 

within it, are protected by copyright. 

Articles with named authors represent 

the opinion of the author, which does not 

necessarily coincide with the position of the 

German Biogas Association. Reprinting, 

recording in databases, online services and 

the Internet, reproduction on data carriers 

such as CD-ROMs is only permitted after 

written agreement. Any articles received by 

the editor’s office assume agreement with 

complete or partial publication. 

Baur Folien GmbH 

Gewerbestraße 6 

87787 Wolfertschwenden • Germany 

0049 (0) 8334 99 99 1 – 0 

0049 (0) 8334 99 99 1 – 99 

info@baur-folien.de 

www.baur-folien.de 

4

Biogas Journal | Autumn 2022 English Issue 

Editorial 

3 Unleash biogas in Germany 

Sebastian Stolpp, Head of International Affairs 


4 Imprint 

Germany 

6 Paper and flower pots made of digestate 

By Thomas Gaul 

16 For skin care: Wax made of biogenic residues 

By Dipl.-Journ. Wolfgang Rudolph 

22 Ideally placed digestate 

By Dierk Jensen 

6 

28 Strip-Till: Row by Row 

By Dipl.-Ing. agr. (FH) Martin Bensmann 

34 Working towards agriculture that is 

“fit for coming generations” 

By Dipl.-Journ. Wolfgang Rudolph 

Country reports 

40 Great Britain 

Already 10 biogas plants produce “Green CO 2 

” 

By Klaus Sieg 

51 Netherlands 

Biogas Treatment using CO 2 

By Eur Ing Marie-Luise Schaller 

22 

54 Croatia 

Biogas potential not yet exhausted 

By Dierk Jensen 

CoverPhotograph: Martin Egbert 

Photographs: Jörg Böthling, Volmer, Carmen Rudolph 

34 

5

English Issue 


Paper and flower pots 

made of digestate 

6


Creating added value from digestate. A biogas plant near Bremen is making tests to see 

how that can be achieved. Focus is not on the fertilizing effects, but rather on the fibres. 

They are being used to make paper and moulded pulp, which may diminish the use of 

plastics in agriculture and horticulture. 

Author Thomas Gaul 

Photographs: Jörg Böthling 

The residue left in digesters during fermentation 

is erroneously described as “digestate”, 

as the excellent fertilizing effect has 

long been acknowledged. But the digestate 

can also be used for material applications. 

“We first started making the tests ten years ago,” said 

Christoph Heitmann, who is the director of the Benas 

Group in Ottersberg, Lower Saxony near Bremen. “The 

aim was to find a wood-like material that can be used 

in industry, like MDF and also for the production of 

laminate.” 

But the initial idea was actually based on treating digestate 

that was provided with high nutrient loads. 

The Benas biogas plant went into operation in 2005, 

initially as a co-fermentation plant. In 2009, the plant 

was converted to an operation with renewable raw materials. 

“At that time, we used a lot of dry chicken manure, 

around 50 to 80 tons per day,” says Christoph 

Heitmann. Here, too, the biggest challenge was dealing 

with the high nutrient concentration. 

The purpose of the ammonia stripping that was developed 

and constructed by GNS in 2007 was to continually 

discharge the nitrogen after the conversion to renewable 

raw materials in order to maintain the standard 

at a healthy level. “In 2011, we then took the next steps 

towards material usage,” said Heitmann. “GNS has always 

acted as the scientific partner and we have always 

acted as the practice partner.” 

To make it suitable for use as a wooden tool, the strongsmelling 

ammonia still had to be eliminated from the 

digestate. In 2017 and 2018, the plant was upgraded 

and expanded. The fibres have to have a certain length 

for further processing. “That requires special crushing 

machines,” said the director of Benas. 

Preparing the fibres 

The challenge is treating the fibres that remain after the 

fermentation process with a method that makes them 

suitable for a number of uses. First of all, nitrogen is 

removed from the digestate using the so-called “Fibre- 

Added value from the biogas plant: Magaverde – 

magically green, biodegradable packaging and 

flower pots made of digestate fibres, which earned 

the 2021 Biogas Innovations Prize. 

After the ammonia 

has been removed, 

the odorless fibres 

of the digestate are 

turned into biodegradable 

Magaverde 

products. 

Plus process” and the fibres are then treated for further 

use. “It’s not a matter of cutting the fibres particularly 

short,” explains Christoph Heitmann: “It’s more important 

to cut them as narrowly as possible so that they 

interlock with each other more effectively.” 

After a retention period of 150 days, the fibres are 

taken out of the fermentation process with a TS content 

of 20 percent and land in the FibrePlus plant. 

The digestate is separated and pressed out. The ammonia 

nitrogen is removed from the digestate in 

7

English Issue 


Start of the process: Substrate 

from the company’s own fields for 

fermentation at the biogas plant 

in Ottersburg. 

+ In the FibrePlus process, the 

odorless digestate is fed to several 

separators, which separate 

part of the solids. 

Older CHP plant for standby 

operation. 

 

 

 

 

a modified stripping process 

(FibrePlus process) with the 

help of CHP heat. The digestate 

is then boiled in a huge 

container at negative pressure. 

Around 70 percent of 

the generated CHP waste heat 

is used in this way. 

Next, the ammonia is stripped. 

The sulphur that is added comes 

from a flue gas desulphurization power 

plant. Ammonium sulphate solution (ASL) is 

produced as a by-product in the process and is later 

used as a liquid fertilizer. Organic products that are 

completely compostable are made out of the fibres 

under the brand name of “Magaverde”. The name 

“Magaverde” is derived from the words “magical” and 

“green”. 

“We’re now at 75 percent 

digestate and 25 percent 

cellulose” 

Christoph Heitmann 

The products are used as 

packaging alternatives and 

perishable goods that can 

be used in horticulture or in 

agriculture. The proportion 

of fibers from the fermentation 

process has been steadily 

increased. “We’re now at 75 

percent digestate and 25 percent 

cellulose,” said Heitmann. Some 

products can even be made completely 

out of Magaverde fibres. 

The fibres are to be processed on two lines. For one 

thing, as moulded pulp: A fiber casting plant was 

built in the production hall on the company premises, 

where products like cultivation pots, plant pots, 

mulch mats or even transport trays can be made for 

horticulture. Tests have also been made to make 

8


BIOGASANALYSIS 

SSM 6000 

the classic for the discontinuous 

analysis of CH 4 

, H 2 

S, CO 2 

, H 2 

and O 2 

with and without gas preparation 

* proCAL for SSM 6000 fully 

automatic calibration 

without test gas 

for NO x 

, CO und O 2 

, several points 

of measurements 

* 

SSM 6000 ECO 

After the separation, the 

separated solids drop into 

the storage box. 

The odorless solid digestate 

is then taken out of the 

storage unit and goes into 

paper production or to the 

mould casting unit. 

FOS/TAC 

automatic titrator for the 

determination of VOA, 

TAC and VOA/TAC 

GAS ANALYSIS EQUIPMENT 

BIOGAS ANALYSIS EQUIPMENT 

WATER ANALYSIS EQUIPMENT 

AGRICULTURAL EQUIPMENT 

www.pronova.de 

PRONOVA Analysentechnik GmbH&Co.KG 

Granatenstraße 19-20 

13 4 0 9 BERLIN / GERMANY 

Tel +49 30 455085-0 I info@pronova.de 

9

English Issue 


The liquid mixture of Magaverde 

fibres, cellulose and 

water is then pressed into 

various moulded parts in a 

basin by two KUKA robots 

and are then air-dried in 

the hall. 

kidney shells used in the medical field. Heitmann 

initially ordered the moulds from China, but first attempts 

to produce the moulds on his own 3D printers 

have been successful. 

This makes it possible to adapt quickly to the requirements 

of future clients. Production of the mould pulp 

parts is largely automatic: A robot equipped with the 

hollow mould dips its arm into a basin filled with the fibers. 

The arm comes out of the basin after a few minutes. 

Then a second robot arm pulls the moulded parts out of 

the mould. The parts are then hung in racks for drying 

in the hall that was formerly used to dry the digestate. 

The racks are moved through the room, suspended on 

a curved track. The drying plant was specially re-insulated 

and cladded for that purpose. The drying time for 

the moulded parts is about two hours. 

Paper on a roll 

The second line is in another production hall that houses 

a huge 30 meter long paper machine that Christoph 

Heitmann purchased near Berlin. Nozzles are used to 

spray the fibers onto a screen belt. After it has run over 

several rollers, the fiber paper with a width of 2.30 meters 

is wound on a large roll at the end. Prospective 

buyers include several hardware stores. 

Mulch fleece, mulch mats and cardboard material can 

be produced on the paper machines. The annual output 

of 8,000 tons of organic fibres is enough to produce 

10


The robot arms can be made 

with different forms to make 

the moulded parts. 

Unique linear 

shuttle design 

AIR BLOWER FOR 

BIOGAS PLANTS 

9 models 

available 

615 million moulded pulp parts or 44 million 

square meters of organic paper/mulch 

fleece. The first small orders have already 

been produced. Tests in horticulture have 

already given rise to optimism, because 

the plants are showing good growth due to 

the fertilizing effect from the pots. “The 

moisture decomposes the material slowly, 

which produces the fertilizing effect in the 

digestate,” said Christoph Heitmann when 

explaining the process. 

The „input“ for the plant grows on approximately 

1,000 hectares around Ottersberg 

– on both the group’s own fields and on 

Ammonia is removed from the 

digestate in the stipping unit. The 

ammonia here in the inspection 

glass is dissolved in water. 

leased fields. A second operation in northern 

Saxony-Anhalt supplies a large proportion 

of the substrate that is transported by 

ten of the company’s own trailer trucks. 

Combi-liners take the digestate back with 

them on the return trip. The Benas renewable 

raw materials biogas plant uses silo 

maize, grain-whole-plant silage, grass 

and grain cereal as a substrate. A total of 

120,000 tons of biomass from agricultural 

production and nature conservation areas 

is processed per year. A plant capacity of 

11.35 megawatts is currently installed. A 

biogas upgrading plant is also con- 

Benefits include: 

• Low sound level 

• Easy maintenance 

• Unrivalled performance & lifetime 

• Low running temperature 

• Weatherproof case IP54 

• Airflow up to 200l/min 

11 

+49 7157/989555-0 

info@nitto-kohki.eu

English Issue 


The manager of 

paper production 

Philipp Senn checks 

the quality of the 

paper in the lab. 

In the paper hall, there is a huge paper 

machine that makes paper, cardboard and 

mulch fleece from the Magaverde fibres. 

 

nected, which feeds 750 m³ of biomethane 

per hour into the natural gas grid. 

Two model 620 Innio 

Jenbacher units 

generate the 

energy out of biogas, 

among other 

things for paper 

manufacture. 

Using the company’s own source 

of energy 

A gas tank with a capacity of 36,000 m³ 

allows flexible operation of the plant. “We 

need that, because we are experiencing 

an increasing number of plant shut-downs 

in the region,” says Christoph Heitmann. The proportion of 

electricity and gas production currently stands at 60:40. 

With the new paper processing system, part of the energy will 

be used by the company itself. 

On the one hand, that includes a biogas burner to dry the 

products. 70 percent of biogas heat can be used for the FibrePlus 

process. But the largest power consumers are the 

production plants themselves. The director has calculated a 

power consumption of 150 kWh for the moulded parts and 

450 kWh for the paper machine. The aim is to have the production 

plants operate in three shifts. 

12


In the paper hall, Philipp Senn 

monitors the manufacture of the 

paper out of maize fibres from 

digestate. 

According to director of the 

Benas Group Christoph Heitmann: 

“The annual output of 8,000 tons 

of organic fibres is enough to 

produce 615 million moulded 

pulp parts or 44 million square 

meters of organic paper/mulch 

fleece per year”. 

Replace 

your agitator 

and cut your 

costs ! 

Improve the efficiency of your 

biogas plant and reduce your 

energy costs. Simply replace your 

old 18.5 kW submersible agitator 

with one of Stallkamp’s extremely 

efficient 11 kW models and save 

up to 4000 Euro p.a.* without 

losing any performance. In the 

majority of cases the exchange 

will pay off within the first year. 

Don’t hesitate and contact our 

specialists! 

| pump 

| store 

| agitate 

| separate 

* The total amount of savings depends on run-time and 

effectiveness of the existent agitator, cost of electricity, 

dry matter content and fermenter configuration. 

13 

Tel. +49 4443 9666-0 

www.stallkamp.de 

MADE IN DINKLAGE

English Issue 


“That eliminates the process of preheating, 

which is particularly energy-intensive,” 

says Heitman. Production using the internally 

generated power runs virtually without 

negatively affecting the environment. 

Five employees will then be added to each 

shift and machine. Benas Biopower GmbH 

currently employs a total of 50 employees, 

including welders and electricians.” 

If demand develops favorably, an option 

would be to let other biogas plants produce 

under license. That could be a business 

area for biogas plants after the term of the 

EEG tariff. Christoph Heitmann is optimistic 

about the market trend: “There is definitely 

interest in sustainable products, and 

it’s increasing. Our patented development 

also gives us a monopoly.” 

FibrePlus process: Three large 

silos with digestate and water 

are part of the ammonia stipping 

unit. 

A lot of activity at the large 

construction site. But Benas 

Biopower GmbH has its sights 

set firmly on the future. Administation 

building with gas 

coupling system and CHP plant 

building with the company 

logo. 

14


English Issue 

“Our patented 

development also gives 

us a monopoly” 

Christoph Heitmann 

Various products made of digestate fibres: 

Flower pots, moulded parts, paper, cardboard. 

All the products are biodegradable. 

The biodegradable products could replace 

plastics in agriculture and in horticulture. 

In addition to that, there are closed nutrient 

cycles. The innovative process was declared 

a prize winner at the 2021 Biogas 

Innovation Congress in the Economics category 

and won second place at the Innovation 

Award in Göttingen. 

Author 

Thomas Gaul 

Freelance Journalist 

Im Wehrfeld 19a · D-30989 Gehrden 

00 49 1 72/5 12 71 71 

gaul-gehrden@t-online.de 

PERFECTLY 

PERFECTLY 

A LL. R U N S. 

HIGH- 

PERFORMANCE 

LUBRICANTS 

made in Germany 

15 

www.addinol.de

English Issue 


Dr.-Ing. Erik Reichelt 

(left) and M.Sc. 

Ralf Näke from the 

Fraunhofer Institute 

for Ceramic Technologies 

and Systems 

IKTS in Dresden are 

pleased with the first 

hydrocarbons made 

with raw biogas. 

For skin care: Wax made of 

biogenic residues 

Biogas can be used for more than just energy. Green gas is tapping into new areas of application 

in material recycling. At a plant operated primarily with biogenic residues, scientists 

and experts are testing the sustainable production of ultrapure, blended organic wax for 

the cosmetics industry and also for environmentally friendly paints and lubricants. These 

products are currently often still based on fossil-based crude oil. 

Author Dipl.-Journ. Wolfgang Rudolph 

Dr. Erik Reichelt happily holds up a vial. 

Together with Ralf Näke, he is watching 

the liquid inside split up into two phases. 

“These are the first hydrocarbons to be 

made out of raw biogas,” Reichelt explains. 

The process for that was developed by the two scientists 

at the Frauenhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies 

and Systems (IKTS) in Dresden in cooperation with 

other research institutes and business partners. 

A corresponding demonstration unit was put into operation 

on the premises of the plant manufacturer Ökotec 

in Thallwitz, Saxony in mid-September. The raw biogas 

for the system components for wax production, which 

are housed in a container, is produced in digesters that 

are predominantly operated with residual and waste 

materials from the regional food industry, mostly grease 

separator contents (see description of waste biogas 

plant Thallwitz). 

Base for Creams and Cosmetics 

“The manufacture of high-quality organic wax is a viable 

option for the operation of existing and future biogas 

plants that are independent of government subsidies,” 

says the group leader of process systems engineering 

to explain the purpose of years of research in this field 

at the IKTS. 

The process-related purity of the raw waxes obtained 

from biogas made them particularly suitable for further 

processing into chemical products associated with 

high product quality expectations, such as creams and 

other cosmetics. This was confirmed by the analyses 

conducted by Prof. Sven Kureti at the Freiberg Uni- 

Photographs: Carmen Rudolph 

16


The control room provides access to the control unit of the fully 

automatic wax production system. 

Control valves and the reformer to generate the 

synthesis gas (background) on the left side of the 

demonstration unit for the production of wax. 

versity of Mining and Technology. Store-bought creams 

are often still based on petroleum derivatives that risk 

containing impurities, such as sulphur compounds or 

polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which can 

cause intolerances. Besides that, synthetically 

produced organic wax would 

also ensure consistency in properties that 

cannot be achieved with petroleum-based 

waxes when used as lubricants, as additives 

in paints and varnishes or in paper 

production. 

Use of CH 4 

and CO 2 

In addition to the consistent quality, 

Reichelt sees the potential organic 

qualification of finished products has 

a competitive advantage in marketing 

organic waxes and in this connection, 

points out another aspect of sustainability. 

“In contrast to the supply of energy, 

not only the CH 4 

, but also the CO 2 

, and 

therefore a much larger part of biogas 

is used in material recycling,” he says. 

The method used in the project would ultimately 

form ultrapure carbon chains, the 

lengths of which could be adjusted with 

different screws. In the current research 

project, the focus is on wax. However, 

kerosene, for example, could also be extracted 

from the sustainable raw material 

biogas in the course of the process. This could be 

gained both from the liquid hydrocarbons which, in addition 

to the wax, are one of the main products from the 

process, and from the waxes themselves when they are 

converted into liquid fuels by means of hydrocracking. 

Reichelt explains that this aspect played only a minor 

role at the beginning of the research project, but is becoming 

increasingly important due to the agreed sustainability 

quota for aviation fuel of 0.5 percent from 

2026 and 2 percent from 2030 onwards. 

The organic waxes are separated from the 

product mixture out of the Fischer-Tropsch 

reactor in the subsequent temperature traps. 

The synthesis gas in the Fischer- 

Tropsch reactor reacts to form 

different hydrocarbon compounds. 

17

English Issue 


Liquid fuels are produced at the end of the 

process, e.g. kerosene, and the actual final 

product organic wax (left). 

IKTS scientist Ralf Näke monitors the start-up of the demonstration unit in the container in 

Thallwitz. This can also be done via remote monitoring from the institute in Dresden. 

Synthesis gas – conversion to liquid 

and waxy products. 

The cooperative project for wax from biogas was 

launched in 2017 with the support of the European 

Regional Development Fund (EFRE). DBI Gas- und 

Umwelttechnik GmbH designed the reformer required 

to convert the biogas to synthesis gas. The synthesis 

gas is converted into liquid and waxen products in the 

Fischer-Tropsch reactor modified by the IKTS for wax 

production, to which the Chair of Reaction Engineering 

at the TU Bergakademie Freiberg contributed a new 

type of catalyst. These two units thus form the core of 

the process. 

The aim of the second project phase, which is subsidized 

from funds for structural change in the Central 

German coalfield, is to test the organic wax process in a 

demonstration unit under field-ready conditions and to 

verify their economic efficiency. 1 to 1.5 cubic meters 

(m³) of biogas are diverted every hour as input for the 

aggregates in the container via a bypass from the gas 

line to the combined heat and power (CHP) plants of the 

Profile of waste biogas plant 

in Thallwitz 

The biogas plant set up by Ökotec Anlagenbau GmbH and 

operated in Thallwitz primarily processes organic waste 

from the regional food industry, particularly fat separator 

contents. The co-substrates include manure and solid 

manure from the pigsties of a neighboring farm, residues 

from rapeseed production (mucilage) and green waste in 

the summer. 

Comprehensive repowering has been done twice since 

the plant was put into operation in 2000. In the process, 

the electrical output was raised from 160 kilowatts to 1 

megawatt, the gas volume doubled to a total of 5,000 m³. 

Before the fermentation, the input is hygienized at 70 degrees 

centigrade for at least one hour in a container with 

a capacity of 100 m³. The thermal energy for that comes 

from three CHP plants, and if that is not sufficient, from a 

steam generator that runs on biogas. In order to minimize 

the strong odor emitted during the sanitizing, the vapors 

from the heated fat separator contents are extracted from 

a strong exhauster and cleaned in two phases. 

Text: Wolfgang Rudolph 

18


Dr.-Ing. Erik Reichelt takes the first sample of the hydrocarbon mixture from the demonstration unit. 

Ökotec biogas plant in Thallwitz (district of Leipzig). 

After absorptive desulphurization, it gets to the biogas 

reformer, which is heated up to 800 degrees centigrade 

and where the conversion to synthesis gas takes place 

by adding water and with the help of a catalyst. The 

resulting mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide is 

cooled and dehumidified in the process. After being 

re-heated to 200 degrees centigrade and compressed 

to 20 bar, the dry synthesis gas flows into the Fischer- 

Tropsch reactor. 

Reaction to different hydrocarbon 

compounds 

“The reactor is filled with a special catalyst. The synthesis 

gas reacts with it to form different hydrocarbon 

compounds. The range extends from simple CH 4 

to up 

to very long-chain hydrocarbons, the hard paraffins,” 

says Ralf Näke when describing the operation. Näke, an 

electrical and automation engineer, designed the plant 

control system. Compounds that leave the Fischer- 

Tropsch reactor in liquid state turn into solid wax 

Compounds that leave 

the Fischer-Tropsch 

reactor in a liquid state 

turn into solid wax at 

room temperature. 

19

English Issue 


Markus Wigger (left), Technical and Commercial Manager and Gerhard Wilhelm (2nd 

from right) Managing Director of Ökotec Anlagenbau GmbH, with the researchers at the 

Fraunhofer IKTS Dr.-Ing. Erik Reichelt (right) and M.Sc. Ralf Näke (2nd from left) see 

organic wax production as an option for biogas plants. 

at room temperature. The gaseous components are fed 

to a cooled separator. Whatever condenses there (incl. 

gasoline, diesel oils, kerosene) remains liquid, even at 

room temperature. The remaining gaseous components 

(methane, ethane, propane) either flow back to the 

starting point of the biorefinery system, the production 

of the synthesis gas, or they are used as fuel to heat up 

the reformer. 

“After the successful ramp-up, we will be optimizing 

the plant over the next few months with regard to our 

target products, the delicately blended waxes,” says 

Reichelt. This can be influenced, for example, by the 

composition of the synthesis gas or by conditions in 

the Fischer-Tropsch reactor. Thus, a lack of hydrogen 

in the synthesis gas or a lower temperature in the reactor 

fostered the formation of the envisaged long-chain 

hydrocarbons. According to Reichelt, the organic wax 

plant operates largely automatically in test operation. 

Changes to parameters can be made via remote control 

by IKTS in Dresden. 

For a realistic assessment of the economic efficiency, 

the general average values of the composition of the raw 

biogas are taken into account in some test series and 

CO 2 

is added to the raw biogas taken from the biogas 

plant, which contains 60 to 70 percent methane due 

to the use of high-energy residual materials, in order to 

investigate the influence of low-quality biogas. 

One cubic meter of gas produces 0.5 liters 

of product mix 

“According to our calculations and lab trials, one cubic 

meter of biogas produces about 0.5 liters of product 

mix. It contains about the same proportions of liquid 

components and those that become solid at room temperatures,” 

explains the scientist as a rough indicator. 

It would be conceivable to adapt the amount of raw 

biogas to be recycled by means of a modular structure 

of the organic wax refinery. 

Gerhard Wilhelm, the owner of Ökotec Anlagenbau 

GmbH, which operates the biogas plant in Thallwitz, 

also has high expectations on the successful completion 

of the project. “On the one hand, I can offer our 

customers an alternative to power generation with this 

method of manufacturing sustainable product. In addition 

to that, we also produce cosmetic products based 

on algae ourselves at another location, where there 

would be a wide field of applications for high-quality 

organic wax,” says Wilhelm. 

Author 

Dipl.-Journ. Wolfgang Rudolph 

Freelance Journalist · Rudolph Reports – Agriculture, 

Environment, Renewable Energies 

Kirchweg 10 · D-04651 Bad Lausick 

00 49 3 43 45/26 90 40 

info@rudolph-reportagen.de 

www.rudolph-reportagen.de 

20


tige Komplettanlage 

der Messe: 

jegliche Art 

ei allen Drücken 

umenströmen. 

ber Erdgas bis 

esegasen – 

n Sie Maß 

We move any type of gases 

at all pressures and all 

volume flows. From biogas 

to natural gas to synthesis 

gases – for this you get 

tailor-made solutions with 

state-of-the-art control 

and sensor technology 

complete turnkey system 

according to SIL classification. 

Completely integrable 

We geschneiderte move any type Lösungen of 

solutions or as a with standalone state-of-systethe-art 

including control CE. and sensor 

gases mit modernster at all pressures Steuerung and 

all und volume Sensorik flows. nach From SIL technology according to SIL 

biogas Klassifizierung. Blower to natural including Vollständig gas to self-sufficient classification. control Completely 

synthesis integrierbar gases oder – als for StandaloneAnlage 

you get tailor-made inklusive CE. alone system including 

integrable or as a stand- 

this CE. 

Visit us at the trade fair: 

in Stock! 

Biogas Convention 

& Trade Fair 

Biogas Jahrestagung 

& Fachmesse 

including 

Biogas Convention 

Biogas 

Biogas 

Biogas 

Biogas 

Jahrestagung 

Trade Fair 

Fachmesse 

2022 | 15 – 18 NOVEMBER | HANOVER, GERMANY 

INTERNATIONAL TRADE FAIR 

FOR INNOVATIVE ENERGY SUPPLY 

www.energy-decentral.com 

021 

Dec. 7th - 9th 2021 

an-umwelttechnik.com 



lin-Str. 36 | 91578 Leutershausen 

Johannes-Eberlin-Str. 

| Tel. +49 (0) 9823 

36 | 91578 

9263242 

Leutershausen | phone: +49 (0) 9823 9263242 

Johannes-Eberlin-Str. 36 | 91578 Leutershausen | Tel. +49 (0) 9823 9263242 

together with 

ED22_85x118_BiogasInternational_INT.indd 1 02.08.22 07:25 

Save the date! 

» the future of biogas worldwide 

» EU policy 

» biomethane and fuels 

» innovative approaches 

» digestate upgrading and 

marketing 

» case studies and best practice 

» country reports 

Lectures in German or English 

7 – 11 November 2022 

Biogas exhibition: 

15 – 18 November 2022 Hanover trade fair 

Programme and registration: www.biogas-convention.com 

Early bird 

discount until 

14 October 2022 

21

English Issue 


Ideally placed digestate 

Making optimum use of nitrogen from farm fertilizer is the order of the day. New 

application methods make this possible, as is frequently demonstrated by favorable 

user feedback. 

Author Dierk Jensen 

Who knows why the Volmer strip-till unit 

is called “Culex”, because Culex is the 

latin word for mosquito and has negative 

connotations. But anyway, the unit 

that can also lay two slurry bands into 

various depths at the same time has proven to be a 

trend-setting innovation in fertilizer spreading for farmers 

and contractors. 

“That’s a method for professionals in minimum tillage,” 

says the farmer Hannes Kuhnwald from Friedland in 

Western Pomerania. He has been working without a 

plough on his 1,000 hectare crop farm and biogas plant 

for over 20 years. And as a popular agrarian influencer, 

who regularly produces films on agricultural technology 

on YouTube, he has more than 100,000 followers. He 

has even been using the Culex with a working width of 

more than 6 meters since last spring. 

He was fully satisfied after just one season. “Our maize 

harvest was great. For me, this is the future of slurry or 

digestate spreading,” says Kuhnwald. He praises the 

benefits of applying underfoot and subsurface fertilizer 

in two precisely defined bands in the arable soil – in 

one single operation. “We save time-consuming stubble 

cultivation and we achieve much higher efficiency 

in utilizing nitrogen,” said the 32-year old Kuhnwald. 

Slurry band as an emergency reserve for 

long dry periods 

And he adds by way of explanation: “In addition to the 

underfoot fertilization, our crops receive an emergency 

reserve with the second application of slurry at a depth 

of 22 centimeters in particularly long dry periods.” This 

can sometimes be worth gold in our rather dry location 

with not more than about 450 millimeters of precipitation 

a year and our sandy soils. 

Kuhnwald and his employees spread around 35,000 

tons of liquid manure, solid manure and digestate on 

the entire area of arable land per year. Approximately 

Photographs: Volmer 

22


AD & BIOGAS 

FEED TECHNOLOGY 

English Issue 

VISIT US @ ENERGY DECENTRAL 

15-18 NOVEMBER 2022 | HALL 25 | STAND E24 

EXHIBITION CENTRE HANNOVER, GERMANY 

BIG-Mix 35 up to 313m³ 

12-row Culex in a stubble field. 

Effective feed rate at very low energy 

consumption 

Designed for 100% farm yard waste, 

grass silage, straw, green and food waste 

Including mixing and processing equipment 

All wetted areas are made of 

stainless steel 

BIOMIXER 12 up to 80m³ 

Six-meter Culex with 50 centimeter row 

spacing and raised transport axis. 



Proven technology with excellent 

mixing results 


Complete unit in stainless steel 

on request 

11,000 tons of digestate come from his 

own 600 kW biogas plant and he gets the 

rest from a neighboring cattle farm. With 

his strip-till machine that can break up the 

soil well due to the properties of its parabolic 

coulters, he worked 420 hectares in 

the first season, including 360 hectares of 

maize and 60 hectares of sunflowers. 

He finally spread around 14,000 tons of 

manure, respectively digestate, with the 

custom-built machine he ordered from 

Volmer with 50 centimeter row spacing 

instead of the usual 75 centimeters. Even 

though he had to make several improvements 

to the coulters, the distributor head, 

etc., his clear conclusion is: “This thing 

has a future.” 

Strip till saves mineral fertilizer 

Also around 400 kilometers further west, 

or to be more exact, in Bersenbrück, the 

Volmer strip till method is receiving good 

feedback. “It’s quite obvious why I chose 

this form of spreading,” admits Rolf Sandbrink, 

who farms 500 hectares of arable 

land and operates several biogas plants. 

“Artificial fertilizer is expensive and will 

become even more expensive in the future. 

In comparison, I make highly efficient use 

of the nitrogen from the farm fertilizer with 

precise underfoot fertilization. As a result, 

I need only very little mineral fertilizer for 

my maize,” says Sandbrink. He reveals that 

an increasing number of farmers in the vicinity 

are asking him if he would like 

23 

KOMBI-Mix 8 up to 12m³ 




Complete unit made of stainless steel 

Konrad Pumpe GmbH 

Fon +49 2526 93290 

Mail info@pumpegmbh.de 

www.pumpegmbh.de

English Issue 


Side view of the Culex: The disc coulter that breaks up the soil can easily be seen at the front of the machine. Behind it are two star disc wheels 

arranged in a V-shape, which clear aside the overlying plant material. That is followed by the parabolic coulter with the two manure dosing pipes. 

At the end are the rolling press wheels to reconsolidate the soil. 

to use his strip till machine with its working width of 

6 meters that requires a 360 horsepower tractor to do 

contract work on their land. 

Although Sandbrink staunchly believes in the method 

and technics of the Culex, he is advising farmers to exercise 

caution when they use it on heavier soils that can 

easily silt up. This is a result of his own experience. “We 

once applied the strip till method and then had about 

104 millimeters of rain per square meter the night after 

planting the maize. The rainwater flowed into the cracks 

and literally drowned the plants. It was a disaster!” 

He also warns farmers against hasty use of the machine, 

especially in heavy soils and, at the same time, in very 

cold weather conditions in spring because he thinks 

that the cold weather results in low temperatures in the 

unmoved soil in which a lower layer of slurry deposit can 

only be tapped by the crop very slowly. A phenomenon, 

which in the opinion of Sandbrink is not likely to happen 

in lighter, sandy soils. 

He would have liked to apply the strip-till method for potatoes, 

but the Culex is not really suitable on ploughed 

ground that is subsequently milled and hoed. The re- 

Biogaskontor 

Biogaskontor 

scratch-resistant 


special glass 

special glass 

Köberle Köberle GmbH GmbH Köberle GmbH 

Bull‘s eyes Bull‘s for eyes any for application any Bull‘s application eyes for any application 

DLG approved DLG components approved components DLG approved compo 

for biogasplants for biogasplants for biogasplants 


special glass 

With two With two 

inspection inspection 

glasses glasses 

Full control at a Full glance! 

control at a glance! 

With two 

inspection 

glasses 

Full control at a glance! 

r spacing tube For spacing or tube On steel or plate On with For steel spacing plate With with tube immersion or With On for immersion steel lookplate for with 

Over- look 

Underpressure 

With Over- immersion Underpressure for look 

Over- Underpressure Over- Underpressure 

ore drilled hole core drilled customizable hole customizable sizecore drilled size hole around the corner customizable around the corner size relief device around relief ÜU-TT the device corner ÜU-TT 

relief device relief ÜU-GD ÜU-TT device ÜU-GD 

Ø300 + Ø400 mm Ø300 + Ø400 mm 

Ø300 + Ø400 mm 

for membrane for cover membrane digestors cover digestors for for membrane hard top cover digestors for hard digestors top digestors 

quipment: Lamps, Equipment: rosettes, Lamps, lining rosettes, sleeves, Equipment: lining sun covers, sleeves, Lamps, etc. sun covers, rosettes, etc. lining sleeves, sun covers, etc. 

ore features: More 24Air features: dosing units Air dosing for desulfurization, units More for features: desulfurization, measuring Air dosing systems, measuring units warn for systems, desulfurization, signs warn signs measuring systems, warn signs 

www.biogaskontor.de • info@biogaskontor.de • 89611 Obermarchtal, Germany • Tel +49(0)737595038-0 

Over- Und 

relief dev 

for hard to 

www.biogaskontor.de www.biogaskontor.de • info@biogaskontor.de www.biogaskontor.de • info@biogaskontor.de • Germany • info@biogaskontor.de • Germany 89611 Obermarchtal 89611 Obermarchtal • Germany • Tel +49(0)737595038-0 

• 89611 Tel +49(0)737595038-0 

Obermarchtal • Tel +49(0)737


“This process 

enables the efficiency 

of nitrogen utilization in slurry 

to increase from currently around 

60 percent to 80 percent” 

Thomas Fehmer 

sults did not really fulfill his expectations because, although 

the slurry bands ultimately had a slightly higher 

yield at a depth of 27 and 16 centimeters below the 

potatoes, there were less potatoes, which is counterproductive 

for use as potato chips, because smaller varieties 

are required for that. 

Despite some misgivings and possible soil-related 

limitations, there is hardly any doubt: In the wake of 

climate protection requirements and also the new fertilizer 

ordinance, (conventional) agriculture will not be 

able to avoid using resources as efficiently as possible. 

Consequently, innovative manufacturers like Volmer 

are currently facing strong demand for new manure 

spreading machines like the Culex, especially by large 

farming operations. 

Incidentally, many large contractors like Otto Hamester 

in Eichsen Mühlen in north-west Mecklenburg, or 

Burkhard Mayer in Schneverdingen, are successfully 

using it for their agricultural clients or even for biogas 

companies. All in all, Volmer has sold 120 of them 

so far, ten of them abroad. “Demand is currently 

quite high,” says the product manager Thomas 

Fehmer from the Westphalian manufacturer 

in Hörstel-Riesenbeck, who is very 

pleased about the great response to this 

technology. 

What is crucial to the strip-till concept 

is exact spreading in strips. “This 

process enables the efficiency of nitrogen 

utilization in slurry to increase 

from currently around 60 percent to 80 

percent,” says Fehmer. According to Fehmer, 

this optimization is precisely what the 

society is currently demanding from the agriculture 

in terms of protecting resources, water and 

the climate. On top of that, it also helps the farmers 

to save on the cost of mineral fertilizers. Apart from 

these aspects, many farmers continue to emphasize the 

benefits of conserving moisture by depositing slurry in 

deeper soil regions in times of extreme weather conditions. 

It is a guarantor in particularly long dry periods 

The “SOFI” (Smart Soil Information for Farmers) project 

supervised by the German Federal Agency for Agriculture 

and Food (Bundesanstalt für Landwirtschaft 

und Ernährung, BLE), which aims to develop methods 

that enable farmers to obtain ad hoc information on the 

moisture content of their soils, proves that the 

nents 

VISIT US AT THE 

EnergyDecentral 

EuroTier 

Entry 

via the 

passage 

15. - 18.11. 2022 in 

hall 25 | booth J30 

erpressure 

ice ÜU-GD 

p digestors 

595038-0 

HEAVY-DUTY 

MIXERS 

PTM GmbH 

Zörbiger Straße 7 ⃒ 06188 Landsberg 

+49 34602 ⃒ 406960 

info@propeller-technik-maier.de

English Issue 


This photo shows the Culex without star clearing discs. 

View of the soil: Good view of the two applied slurry bands. 

issue of soil moisture is now of interest to science. They 

can then obtain information on how to plan the right 

agricultural measures for each location. 

Although that may still be more of a vision than a reality, 

articles on communication portals, such as www. 

klim.eco, which addresses issues of climate-positive, 

regenerative agriculture, also show the importance that 

experts already attach to this area. In an article on the 

Klim website, one farmer writes: “Hello! The soil on my 

farm is relatively light and sandy and I’m thinking of 

minimum tillage to cultivate potatoes. My plan is to do 

shallow tillage after a winter-killed catch crop and then 

add the slurry with a strip-till unit in strips of 75cm. 

After that, I only need to use the planter with a rotary 

cultivator running ahead to loosen the soil for construction 

of the dam …That way, I hope to obtain better deep 

root development and ultimately better drought tolerance 

… Do any of you have experience with that or have 

objections to why this may not work?” 

Ploughless for the past six years 

As a fellow potato grower, Dirk Neven from Pattensen 

would certainly appreciate some good tips. Besides 

grain and sugar beets, the farmer from Lower Saxony 

also grows potatoes in his light soils. With 300 hectares 

of arable land and 400 head of cattle for fattening 

Culex with a mounted 

Agrometer hose reel for 

powerful spreading of 

liquid farm fertilizer using 

the umbilical method in 

the strip till system. 

26


“The maize is excellent, 

the starch values have increased 

by 10 percent and the energy 

density is higher accordingly” 

Dirk Neven 

that are kept in a new stable with animalfriendly 

deep-litter bedding, he also operates 

a biogas plant with a total output of 

one megawatt. 

Six years ago, he got rid of his plough once 

and for all. Even before the time without 

ploughs, he was incorporating his digestate 

directly with a combination of slurry tanker 

and cultivator to minimize nutrient losses. 

Nor does he have any bare fields. Catch 

crops have been playing an important role 

on his fields, half of which are in water protection 

areas. 

In the spring, he sows a mixture of grass 

seeds in the maize stubble and in areas 

where he has harvested sugar 

beets, a large part of which he 

transports to his own biogas 

plant, and potatoes, he sows 

green rye, which he harvests 

in May of the following year 

for biogas production. “And 

this is exactly where Volmer 

strip-till come in. The 

digestate is placed just right 

in the stubble and we plant the 

maize straight after that,” Neven 

explains. 

52-year-old Neven has been doing it 

this way for the past two years and almost 

becomes ecstatic. “The maize is excellent, 

the starch values have increased by 10 

percent and the energy density is higher,” 

says Neven happily. Up to now, he only uses 

the Culex for maize, but he may try the machine 

out to grow beets or potatoes. But for 

that he would need different row spacing 

than for maize, meaning only 50 centimeters, 

which is the spacing that Kuhnwald 

from Western Pomerania currently uses as 

a custom-built version. 

Just like in Western Pomerania, Neven has 

reduced mineral fertilizer to a minimum; 

and who knows, perhaps he will not use any 

at all in the near future, which is in large 

part due to the Volmer method that requires 

a great deal of tractive power, yet accurately 

provides the valuable fertilizer for the demanding 

crops. What is amazing is that it 

has taken so long for the agricultural engineering 

industry to turn the philosophy of 

resource-friendly, clean application of farm 

fertilizers completely into marketable products. 

But good things take time. 

Author 

Dierk Jensen 


Bundesstr. 76 · D-20144 Hamburg 

00 49 40/40 18 68 89 

dierk.jensen@gmx.de 

www.dierkjensen.de 

Double Membrane Gas Storage 

Concrete Protection 

Container Cover 

AGROTEL GmbH 

www.agrotel.eu 

info@agrotel.eu 

+49 (0) 8503 914 99 0 

27

“The maize grains 

have to be placed in 

the right depth” 

Jörg Henke 

The Henke contracting 

company does striptill 

manure fertilizing 

with two machines 

made by Vogelsang. 

Here in a harvested 

field grass crop, for 

which only a minimal 

proportion of the soil 

is processed. 

Strip-Till: Row by Row 

Strip-till is a tilling system in which the soil is broken up in strips with the area between the 

rows left undisturbed instead of the entire surface being broken up. The soil is loosened 

in each row down to a depth of 25 centimeters and the manure or fermented manure is 

deposited in a “band” about 12 to 15 centimeters deep. Depending on the method and the 

distance between the rows, the area between is also loosened or left undisturbed. It is a 

method that has many benefits, as long as some things are kept in mind. 

Author Dipl.-Ing. agr. (FH) Martin Bensmann 

Jörg Henke is an agricultural engineering 

contractor with 30 employees in Wagenfeld- 

Ströhnen south of Diepholz. The services he 

offers include spreading liquid farm fertilizer 

such as manure and digestate on maize using 

the so-called strip-till system. The essential benefits 

of the strip-till system are as follows: “We reduce odor 

emissions and ammonia losses because we bring liquid 

farm fertilizer in the soil. Compared to ploughing or cultivating 

the entire surface, that prevents soil water from 

photograohs: Agricultural service Henke 

28


Low-emission row fertilization 

directly into the soil in early spring. 

RePOWERING 

The contractor Jörg 

Henke has been offering 

slurry spreading 

with the strip-till 

method since 2011. 

He says that the 

customers have to 

be familiar with this 

fertilization system, and 

have to identify with it. 

evaporating. It’s very effective because we 

do a type of direct sowing or mulch sowing, 

so to speak, depending on the previous 

crop. That way, we avoid “wind erosion” 

on field soil qualities of 25 to 39 ground 

points that are common in our area,” Jörg 

Henke explains. 

And the farmers who are experts in striptilling 

could even do without mineral under-foot 

fertilization on maize completely, 

which is easier on their budget. The agricultural 

service provider explains that he 

purchased the first strip-tilling machine 

in 2011. It was a Striger model made by 

Kuhn, which was in use for several years. 

In 2014, he invested in the first Vogelsang 

XTill. Two of these machines are currently 

being used, mounted behind self-propelled 

Vredo slurry injectors in the three-point hydraulic 

system. 

The 450 horsepower 

self-propelled 

machines 

were acquired in 

2015 and 2019. 

They have two axles. 

The wheels on 

the rear axles can be 

hydraulically adjusted so 

that the rear tires do not roll in 

the track of the front tires, but rather beside 

it. That is also called “crab-steering”. 

The tire pressure on the field is reduced 

to 0.8 bar. The crab-steering and the low 

tire pressure means there is less pressure 

on the soil, therefore avoiding harmful soil 

compaction. According to Jörg Henke, the 

maize does not show any growth depression, 

either in the tracks or the headland. 

The liquid farm fertilizer is taken to the 

edge of the field by transport vehicle and 

transferred to the self-propelled transporter. 

If everything works smoothly, more 

than 1,000 cubic meters of manure or fermented 

manure can be spread in one day. 

The operating speed is between 10 and 13 

km/h. “We have 15 percent more effectiveness 

with the self-propelled transporters 

than we worked with a tractor-drawn drum 

system. We manage an average of 3 

We support you with 

extensive knowledge in 

plant operation. Together, 

we analyze your biogas 

plant for strengths 

and weaknesses and 

calculate future potential. 

Your advantages at a glance: 

• Evaluation of your biogas 

plant 

• Discover unused plant 

potential 

• Switch to future-oriented 

substrate flexibility 

• Secure reliable returns for 

the system‘s run-time 

• Efficiency measures for 

continued operation. 

Get in touch! 

+49 (0)25 42 / 86 95 60 

info@planet-biogas.com 

29 

PlanET Biogastechnik GmbH 

www.planet-biogas.com

English Issue 


For Henke, the strip-till season starts in mid-March – 

but not before the ground is firm enough. 25 to 30 cubic 

meters of manure or fermented manure are applied 

per hectare. The strip-till season ends after the green 

rye is harvested in early June. Maize planting begins in 

mid-April. It is then important to make sure that the 

soil in the strip-till row has thoroughly dried. This 

becomes even more important the closer maize 

planting gets to strip-till work. 

Close-up of the strip-till frame on the Vogelsang XTill. The cutting 

disk with the support roller that cuts open the soil is on the left. The 

two star wheel clearers that are arranged in a V-shape are mounted 

behind it. This is followed by the fertilizer coulter, which is flanked 

on the left and right by a notched, V-shaped disc coulter. Finally, the 

V-shaped pressure rollers follow and reconsolidate the soil. 

hectares per hour. The rows/tracks are drawn by satellite 

according to an RTK signal, are recorded and transmitted 

to the maize planters. The maize grains have 

to be placed in the right depth. That’s more important 

than the width of the placement in the row. For our customers, 

we plant 7 to 9 maize seeds per square meter,” 

the service provider explains. 

Jörg Henke stresses that the customers have to be familiar 

with this fertilization system and would have to 

relate to it. He himself is still convinced of the method 

and is gaining new customers every year. Henke makes 

the rows with 75 centimeters spacing with the Vogelsang 

XTill machine (8 rows, working width of 6 meters, 

foldable), thus only using it to fertilize the maize in 

the spring. The completed strip-till row is only 3 to 5 

centimeters wide on the surface of the soil. He says 

that a catch crop that is frozen over the winter is ideal 

as a rotation crop. If the ground is hard, he can drive 

straight into the dead catch crop without tilling it beforehand, 

he says. However, previous flat incorporation 

of the plant mass is also not a problem. 

For some customers, Henke has to make the strip-till 

rows after harvesting green rye or arable grass. What 

was originally carried out as an emergency measure 

has now proven to be a common practical procedure. 

That is because the little soil water that green rye and 

arable grass have left behind as plants with high nutrient 

demand is protected and is then available to the 

maize plants. In this case, ploughing the soil would be 

counterproductive. 

Maize roots grow into the 

fertilizer depot 

“In the soils in our region, we wait at least two 

days before we put the maize in the strip-till 

rows. We plant the maize 6 centimeters below 

the surface of the soil and the manure or fermented 

manure another 6 centimeters below 

that, so 12 centimeters below the surface of the 

soil. We’ve found that the maize roots grow into 

the deposit of fertilizer and feed from it until the 

maturity phase,” says Jörg Henke. 

Salt damage can occur to the radicles if the maize 

grains have been put in too deep and the slurry band 

is too shallow. Salt damage can also occur to the radicles 

if, for example, too much farm fertilizer is applied 

with a flat manure volume of 8 centimeters . It depends 

on every centimeter and the amount of slurry. Some 

customers use so-called nitrification inhibitors in the 

slurry. It delays the conversion of ammonium nitrogen 

(NH4-N) to nitrate and nitrite. 

That enables the plants to make better use of the nitrogen. 

Maize plants that are fed NH4-N form a particularly 

large number of fine roots, which makes the arable 

soil more accessible overall. Kieserite could be added 

to the manure or the slurry band instead of nitrification 

inhibitors. That would produce magnesium-ammonium-phosphate, 

better known as struvite. 

One of Jörg Henke’s customers grows maize several 

years in a row, for example. After the harvest, the stubbles 

are shortened by mulching and then grass is planted 

in the fall. The following year, the strip-tilled row 

is then moved by 15 centimeters. Jörg Henke points 

out that the strip-till maize grows more slowly than the 

plough maize, as the strip-till areas do not warm up so 

easily. The plough maize germinates faster and sprouts 

a week earlier. 

Plant microgranules in seed rows if underroot 

fertilization is not used 

Those who do without under-root fertilizers should put 

microgranules with plant nutrients in the seed furrow 

near the seed in order to help the young maize plants 

grow. However, according to Henke, the strip-till maize 

will catch up in the course of vegetation. Henke plants 

maize with the strip-till method on around 1,400 hectares. 

He says that there are also so-called bog areas in 

the region which are no longer passable in autumn if 

Photograph: Vogelsang GmbH 

30


YOUR PARTNER FOR CONVEYING, 

DOSING AND FEEDING 

they have been ploughed in the spring. Surfaces 

processed with the strip-till method, 

on the other hand, are resilient. 

The XTill machine is designed as follows: 

It has a basic frame with three-point coupling. 

The DosMat DMX uniform manure 

spreader is mounted on top. Two plastic 

hoses run from the spreader to each fertilizer 

coulter. The first structure is a disk 

coulter that has a kind of press wheel that 

controls the depth adjustment. The coulter 

cuts into the soil, cutting up plant residues 

and growth, which enables the processing 

zone to be processed more easily and accurately 

by the subsequent tools. 

The disc coulter is followed by a second 

structure, star-notched disk blades arranged 

in a V-shape. They clear the rows 

of plant residues. A little behind that, the 

loosening and fertilizing coulter loosens 

the soil. It is flanked on the left and right by 

notched concave disks, which keep the soil 

in the processing zone and form a furrow of 

finely crumbled soil. It can be adjusted on 

three levels in relation to the injector line. 

The loosening and fertilizing coulter loosens 

the soil at the required depth. At the 

same time, the manure is stored behind 

The contractor Dieter Terörde partially rebuilt the Evers 

strip-till machine, thus adapting it to his needs. 

that in the depot via a height-adjustable 

outlet tube. This segment is mounted in a 

parallelogram structure on the frame. The 

hydraulic stone protection makes sure that 

the coulter can go upwards in the event of 

overload and is infinitely adjustable. The 

fourth structure consists of the pressure 

rollers. They are at the end of every XTill 

unit. The rollers are mounted in a V-shape 

and form the required reconsolidation 

of the soil in the row. The Vogelsang XTill 

model Vario Crop is a unit with 45 to 75 

centimeter row spacing. Further information 

can be found at: 

https://www.vogelsang.info/de/produkte/ 

ausbringtechnik/bodenbearbeitungsgeraete/xtill/ 

Strip-till unit from the 

Netherlands 

The contractor Dieter Terörde from Milte 

in the district of Warendorf (NRW) has 

been offering slurry and fermented manure 

spreading using the strip-till system 

for 10 years now. But he has a slightly different 

approach. His strip-till unit is made 

by Evers in the Netherlands. It is his third 

unit made by the Dutch company. He has 

optimized it in several places 

for his needs – more on that 

later. Its predecessors are 

no longer in operation, he 

handles customers’ requests 

with just one unit. 

It was also the customers 

who requested this service 

from him. “In the first year – 

that was 2011 – we rented a 

Kuhn Striger made by Kotte, 

which was mounted in the 

three-point hydraulic system 

behind a slurry tanker. That 

year, we used it to fertilize 

about 60 hectares. It was not 

long before the first problems 

cropped up, such as tractors 

with engines that were too 

weak to pull the drum, or 

spreading too much manure, 

for example. And we were not 

happy with the overall quality 

of the work, either,” said the 

photograph: Martin Bensmann 

contractor looking back. 

A little later in 2011, Dieter 

Therörde was traveling in the 

Netherlands on business. It 

was there that he spot- 

VARIO DOSINGCONTAINER 

from 7m³ to 275m³ 

our unique Vario push bar system 

for 100% grass and muck 

in partial or full stainless steel 

low energy consumption 

VARIO GO 

Your customized dosing system for easy transport 

- Worldwide plug & play - 

60m³ | 80m³| 100m³ 

our unique Vario push bar system 

for 100% grass and muck 

low energy consumption 

MOBIL EMERGENCY FEEDING 

10x units for rent 

further products under at 

www.terbrack-maschinenbau.de 

31 

Terbrack Maschinenbau GmbH 

Tel.: +49 2564 394 487 - 0 

mail: technik@terbrack-maschinenbau.de 

www.terbrack-maschinenbau.de

English Issue 


Strip-wise slurry 

fertilization on maize. 

This is the Evers 

eight-row machine at 

the Terörde contracting 

company behind 

an 18,000 liter tanker. 

ted an Evers strip-till unit in action on a field as he drove 

past and he took a closer look at it in practical operation. 

He was immediately impressed by the quality of 

the work. He then organized the unit to be delivered to 

his business in Milte so that he could test it more closely. 

“We hitched this to an 18,000-liter slurry tanker and 

hitched a 230-horsepower tractor in front of it. Even on 

our sandy soils with field soil quality of between 18 and 

25, the quality of the work was good, so we bought the 

unit without further ado,” Terörde reminisced. 

Slurry band near the surface 

Today, the contractor, who also runs an agricultural 

machinery operation and is a dealer for Case tractors, 

makes rows on about 500 hectares to spread the liquid 

farm fertilizer in the soil. The unit has eight rows with 

75 centimeter spacing and can be folded. The soil is 

loosened in the track at a depth of about 25 centimeters. 

The slurry band is deposited relatively close to the 

surface at about 7 to 8 centimeters below the surface 

of the soil. The slurry tanker to which the Evers unit is 

hitched, was specially mounted with a booster pump. It 

ensures that more quantity per unit of time comes out 

of the unit and that even thicker slurry can be applied 

more evenly. 

“We strip-till either directly into a frozen winter catch 

crop or with a disc harrow after shallow processing 

of the soil or after deeper field cultivation or even in 

ploughed soil. In ploughed soil, it’s 50 to 60 hectares 

per year. We deliberately limit the speed to 7 or 8 km/h. 

If we drive faster, the unit gets too unsteady and placement 

accuracy decreases. In addition, the machine material 

wears out considerably faster at higher speeds,” 

Henke points out. 

The customers deliver the manure or digestate in their 

own transport vehicles or in ones leased from Terörde. 

They either transfer it directly to the spreader or it is 

pumped into a container at the edge of the field that 

acts as a buffer. The maize is either planted with a 

five-row machine mounted to a rotary harrow or with 

an eight-row machine without the combined rotary harrow. 

Not all the strip-till areas are treated with the rotary 

harrow combination. The maize grains are placed 

5 centimeters below the surface of the soil. The space 

between the maize grains and the slurry band is therefore 

only 3 centimeters. The maize is not deposited in 

the track until eight days after the strip-tilling. 

“The rotary harrow works so deep that the slurry band 

can easily be scratched from above. The manure and 

the soil get mixed slightly in the process. That’s how 

we prevent the radicles of the maize plants from being 

damaged by etching,” says Terörde when describing his 

experience with this method. The closer the slurry band 

is to the maize kernels, the better the crop harvest. 

Self-adjusted Strip-till unit 

The Evers strip-till unit is designed as follows: It has 

a very robust, foldable frame made of massive square 

section tubes. The strip-till units and the three-point 

attachment are mounted to that. The dosing unit for the 

manure with the Vogelsang distributor head is located 

on top of that. A hose with a diameter of 60 mm leads 

from the distributor head to the fertilizer spreader. Dieter 

Terörde optimized the transition from the hose to 

the tube on the fertilizer coulter. The hose is pushed 

into the pipe and sealed and is no longer pulled over the 

pipe on the outside. 

That enables even thicker substrates, like cattle manure, 

to be applied without causing bridging at the 

transition between the hose and the pipe or possible 

clogging. Every strip-till body on Terörde’s unit has a 

corrugated disk of 600 millimeters in diameter in the 

front that cuts open and prepares the soil. “We mounted 

the corrugated disk because that’s the way we prevent 

the sward from folding back in the slit when we work 

on grass surfaces, for example. The manufacturer originally 

installed smooth disks,” Dieter Terörde reveals. 

A little way behind it, there are clearing blades, which 

Photographs: Evers 

32


are also the contactor’s own clever invention. They are 

V-shaped disk coulters that are sharpened on one side. 

The contractor points out that the sharpened side of the 

disk always has to point inwards to the V, otherwise the 

track would be hard to clear. Dieter Terörde also re-positioned 

two of the four support wheels. The four wheels 

originally ran between the strip-till units. That always 

caused clogging. So, without further ado, he welded on 

two of the support wheels in front of the main frame and 

thus solved the problem of clogging. 

The fertilizer or soil loosening coulter is mounted in 

a parallelogram suspension behind the clearing coulters. 

As with the Vogelsang XTill, outwardly convexed, 

notched hollow discs are mounted to the left and right 

of the fertilizer coulter. They keep the soil in the processing 

zone and form a furrow of finely crumbled soil. 

This 21 centimeter wide furrow is further shaped by a 

specially moulded castor roller/trailing roller that consists 

of small metal rods. It is shaped like an egg timer 

placed on its side. 

Revised version available since last summer 

In the summer of 2021, Evers presented a revised 

version of the Quarter Strip-Till Injector. According to 

Evers, the advantage is that even more tanks can be attached 

due to its mountable hitch. The lower weight also 

enables this Quarter to be used behind lighter tanks. 

The reduced weigh is about 300 kilograms (kg). Thus, 

the new Quarter (version with 8 rows) only weighs 3,000 

kg. Another new feature is also that the elements are 

hydraulically suspended, which is intended to improve 

ground hugging. Evers also advertises improved serviceability 

as the elements can be adjusted more easily. 

It remains to be seen whether the strip-till method will 

become more popular in maize cultivation or as a fertilizer 

and cultivation system in other arable crops. Even 

today, sugar beets or winter oilseed rape are partly being 

placed in row spaces of 45 or 50 centimeters. As 

a result of rising mineral fertilizer prices and fertilizer 

restrictions, more attention will have to be placed on 

liquid fertilizer with low-emission application. If higher 

nutrient utilization of the liquid farm manure can be 

used in this fertilizer system, it will take the burden off 

other farm areas. 

Author 

Dipl.-Ing. agr. (FH) Martin Bensmann 

Editor Biogas Journal 

Fachverband Biogas e.V. 

00 49 54 09/90 69 426 

martin.bensmann@biogas.org 

Quarter strip-till machine 

made by Evers. 

Here, the manure for 

the maize is directly 

applied to the soil in a 

dead catch crop. 

VISIT US AT ENERGY DECENTRAL IN HANOVER 

15 – 18 NOVEMBER 2022, HALL 25 BOOTH H21 

YOUR RELIABLE PARTNER FOR COMPONENTS, REPOWERING AND BIOGAS PLANT CONSTRUCTION 

PUMPS 

MIXERS 

SEPARATORS 

REPOWERING 

33 

UTS Products GmbH Phone: +49 2923 - 610940 www.anaergia-technologies.com

English Issue 


Never without a 

spade. Soil inspections 

are part of the 

work routine of the 

Managing Director 

Heiko Hölzel and Crop 

Production Manager 

Phillip Weinitzke. 

Working towards agriculture that is 

“fit for coming generations” 

If it helps the soil and the environment, the farmers from Marienhöher Milchproduktion 

Agro Waldkirchen GmbH are prepared to carry out numerous experiments. They are never 

discouraged by failures. 

Author Dipl.-Journ. Wolfgang Rudolph 

Diversity is the order of the day here. You can 

already see that when you approach the Marienhöher 

Milchproduktion Agro Waldkirchen 

GmbH. On the way to the farm’s administrative 

headquarters on Marienhöhe in the 

Waldkirchen district, just under 500 meters above zero 

in the middle of the Saxon Vogtland region, visitors pass 

a sheep pasture, a large farm store with adjoining meat 

processing facilities and a cheese dairy with shelves 

with large round wheels of cheese in the windows. Apart 

from that, an older biogas plant, judging by the construction, 

and a few dairy cattle sheds. 

Meat, sausage and cheese primarily made of sheep’s 

milk are directly marketed by way of a closely cooperating, 

commercially independent company. The farm 

keeps 680 dairy cows that can feed freely from ten 

milking robots, as well as 180 Friesian dairy sheep and, 

as we found out later, 150 fallow deer in a deer park. 

The farm also cultivates 1,000 hectares of arable land 

and has 500 hectares of pastureland for the production 

of fodder and food crops. Except for the past three dry 

years, yields range from 60 to 70 decitonnes (dt) per 

hectare for cereals and from 350 to 400 dt per hectare 

for maize. For the pastureland, the aim is four cuts per 

season for the production of hay and silage. 

The landscape with its many, frequently wooded hills is 

beautiful, but cultivation conditions are difficult. The 

sandy surfaces on the heterogeneous weathered soils 

come to only eleven soil points. The arable land index 

indicates a 36 under this heading at the best locations. 

On the other hand, with 700 millimeters per year, there 

is adequate rain, at least in normal years for East German 

conditions. But there is also the risk of erosion 

during heavy rainfall, especially on v-shaped, incised 

Photographs: Carmen Rudolph 

34


The triticale on this 39-hectare field was sown directly after the undersown grass had to be sprayed off. 

Crop Production Manager Phillip Weinitzke: 

“Renewable agriculture 

definitely has to allow for local 

conditions.” 

slopes. Farmers counteract this by not tilling 

the soil, by planting catch crops and by 

taking other measures – successfully, as the 

Managing Director Heiko Hölzel assures us. 

Extensive avoidance of pesticides 

But the company, with its conventional 

setup, wants much more. “There are two 

things we’ve been focusing on very closely 

for years now,” says 48-year old Hölzel. One 

of them, he says, is sustainable improvement 

of soil fertility, and the other is largely 

dispensing with herbicides and insecticides 

by using natural plant protection. Cultivation 

measures in this context include adjusting 

the crop rotation, increasing catch 

crop cultivation to foster permanent greening 

as well as co-sowing and undersowing. 

The Claydon Hybrid T6 direct seeding drill 

provides the direct strip seeding technology 

for this purpose. With its split 5,500 litre 

tank and double row of tines, the 6-meter 

wide unit enables either two different crops 

to be planted in different soil horizons at 

the same time or one crop to be planted 

in combination with underfoot fertilization. 

The machine is also equipped with an 

APV seeder with baffle plates, which can 

be used to apply fine seeds for co-sowing 

and undersowing. For the drilling, cutting 

discs first open the soil in the root and seed 

zone and then loosen it. The spaces between 

the seed rows stay untouched. That 

enables earthworms to thrive in the existing 

tunnels. The untreated spaces also act 

as a moisture reservoir for the plants. The 

Claydon Hybrid T6 can be used for almost 

any sowing scenario. Catch crops are partly 

cultivated with a Lemken power harrow with 

a mounted seed drill. 

Fertilizing requirements: 

Determining essential and micronutrients 

To achieve their goals in crop productions, 

farmers in Waldkirchen also experiment 

with compost tea and enzymes. Before they 

did that, they consulted Dietmar Näser. 

Näser, who manages the “Grüne Brücke” 

consulting agency that is located nearby 

in the Erz Mountains in Saxony and is networked 

throughout Europe, is one of the 

pioneers of renewable agriculture. He was 

also the one who encouraged soil tests according 

to the Kinsey method, in which the 

determination of the relationship of the 

main nutrients and micronutrients to each 

other plays a vital role. The resulting fertilization 

recommendations aim at setting 

the best possible nutrient ratios for plant 

nutrition. 

“Among other things, the analysis showed a 

high level of magnesium in the soil, which 

in turn causes a calcium deficiency,” says 

32-year old Phillip Weinitzke, who has a 

degree in agriculture and has managed the 

area of crop production since 2015. Consequently, 

he plans to apply larger amounts of 

magnesium-free lime after harvesting the 

rapeseed and threshing the winter barley 

just before the visit to the farm in mid-July. 

The contractor AIS provides services for 

this work, offering liming specific to the site 

based on soil samples. 

“We break up our diversified crop rotation 

with various grain varieties like spelt and 

oats, maize, rapeseed and leguminous 

crops like peas, beans and lupine with 

catch crops whenever possible,” says the 

head of Crop Production. Besides promoting 

the main crop, erosion protection and 

meeting greening requirements, he keeps 

the formation of humus and improvement 

of the soil structure in mind, saying that 

the earthworms use the organic matter introduced 

into the soil via the intercrops as 

food, which in turn produces stable soil aggregates 

with continuous pores to absorb 

precipitation. 

Sudan grass: Successful 

emergency solution 

“Sometimes, we make quick decisions, out 

of necessity, so to speak,” says Hölzel. As 

an example, he mentions the Sudan grass 

he cultivated last year. That was initially an 

emergency solution. Late frosts had damaged 

the winter barley, so a decision was 

made to harvest the affected crops early as 

whole crop silage and to sow Sudan grass 

for the first time as a bridging crop until the 

planned subsequent crop of rapeseed. 

35

English Issue 


You can see the 15 centimeter (cm) wide band placement with the Claydon 

no-till drill by the stripes in the crop. The 15 cm wide areas in between 

remain untouched. 

Before the well-developed wheat on this field, there was initially a catch 

crop mixture, which was sown after the preceding winter rapeseed crop was 

harvested. The subsequent supply of nutrients by the catch crop can be 

clearly seen in the fruit development of the wheat. 

Pea crops undersown with spring barley and camelina to harvest fodder. 

Before that, vetch rye had been incorporated into the field. 

Renewable agriculture has already enabled the farmers to attain a better 

soil structure in many field. Here is a plant stock of peas and rye. 

It was a fortunate decision. After eight 

weeks, the crop that comes from the species 

of sorghum millet was 2 meters high. 

The harvest of “corn without cobs”, as was 

criticized by some villagers, provided abundant 

substrate for the biogas plant, while 

the corresponding equivalent of “real” corn 

was reserved for the cattle as additional 

feed. 

“We could hardly have made better use of 

the time until the rapeseed sowing,” said 

the managing director with conviction. 

“We’re now going to use the Sudan grass 

whenever suitable, especially since the 

crop doesn’t require much maintenance or 

use of herbicides, which is exactly what we 

are aiming for,” says Weinitzke. This season, 

the Sudan grass is growing in a 42 hectare 

field. It was sown in the second week of 

June after the vetch rye harvest. The cut will 

be followed by winter rye in September. The 

same motives for planting the Sudan grass 

led to the cultivation of a batch last year 

to take advantage of the prolonged period 

between harvesting rapeseed and sowing 

wheat in one field. 

In this case, it was the oil crop that was harvested 

very early because of frost damage 

and beetle infestation. “After six weeks, 

we incorporated the catch crops that had 

grown to 1.50 meters and sowed the wheat 

in the first week of October,” Weinitzke 

explained. The re-supply of nutrients was 

clearly noticeable. He said that the wheat 

on that field was much better than that on 

all the other fields. 

Sometimes two consecutive 

catch crops 

On the farm, two catch crops are sometimes 

planted consecutively, such as after 

the barley harvest. “We cultivate the batch 

in the fall and sow the vetch rye, which we 

then incorporate in the spring before we 

sow the corn,” the crop production manager 

explains. He says that that really helps 

increase the humus, especially if enzymes 

(which will be mentioned again later) accelerate 

the rotting of the catch crops. 

“However, measures like that are always 

connected with higher costs that the farmers 

usually have to bear,” Hölzel adds. It is 

all very well to talk about compensating the 

storage of CO 2 

through humus growth, but 

he does not think it has been practicable 

36


The Claydon Hybrid 

T6 direct seed drill is 

primarily used to sow 

market crops with and 

without undersowing 

and to plant catch 

crops and mixed crops. 

so far, due to the fact that there has to be 

precise proof of the storage effect of CO 2 

. 

Considering the changing political moods, 

he says it is not certain if additional investments 

will pay off in the end. And talking 

about the costs. It is essential for Hölzel 

not to lose sight of them, 

despite his commitment 

to an agriculture 

that is “fit for the next 

generations”. The farm 

has to be able to hold its 

own in a volatile market 

environment. The 35 

employees need their 

wages every month. 

The rent has to be paid, 

necessary investments 

have to be made. 

A break for undersowing 

Cost considerations were also the reason why the managing 

director pulled the emergency brakes on undersowing. 

The Waldkirchen farmers primarily see undersowing 

with grass-clover and camelina in cereals as a 

way of saving herbicides by covering the ground quickly 

and counteracting the growth of weeds. 

Other aspects include promoting soil fertility, avoiding 

erosion and conserving nutrients by the absorption 

of atmospheric nitrogen via the root nodules of leguminous 

plants. By contrast, the fast emergence of an 

already established fodder crop after the main crop is 

harvested plays only a minor role because of the abundant 

grassland. 

“Besides the difficulties in threshing caused by more 

moisture in the crop and more cleaning work, we’re 

mainly concerned with getting a grip on the remaining 

undersown plants on the field to make sure that 

no problems arise in the subsequent crop. As we want 

to do without glyphosate and because we don’t use a 

plough because of the risk of erosion, we are only left 

with a complex mechanical removal of sprouting, for 

example with a milling machine, although the tools of 

these machines are exposed to enormous wear in our 

sandy soils. We saw that in tests we made,” says Hölzel 

when explaining why he is temporarily skipping undersowing. 

Hölzel says he was only able to remove large 

areas of the grass by using a rented skimmer plow. 

However, the high investment costs and low efficiency 

The Claydon Hybrid T6 seed drill has a double row of 

tines for the application of different seeds or seed in combination 

with fertilizer (front) and by way of an additional 

sowing unit for small seeds via baffle plates (above right). 

für Feinsämereien über Prallteller (rechts oben). 

would hinder extensive use. Last autumn, the farmers 

finally used glyphosate as a last resort on a 30-hectare 

field of wheat undersown with wheat and sowed triticale 

directly in the sprayed grass cover, which did well 

after some initial difficulties. “We didn’t completely 

get rid of the undersown plants. Perhaps we’ll still find 

a way of eliminating sprouting that best fits local conditions,” 

Hölzel says hopefully. 

Mixed crops do well with leguminous crops 

There are also evident advantages and disadvantages to 

intercropping with co-sowing. In addition to the objectives 

pursued with undersowing, the idea that the corollary 

plants that remain as green manure will benefit the 

main crop during the growing season is even more pronounced 

here, for example, when their taproots loosen 

the soil or by repelling pests with odor irritants or by attracting 

beneficial organisms and thus acting as natural 

plant protection. 

“At best, there are cruciferous plants, leguminous 

plants and a species of grass in the field,” says Weinitzke. 

While this has proven to be impractical, for example 

in mixed crops of spring barley with phacelia and 

camelina or maize with field beans due to difficulties in 

handling crop management, harvesting and post-harvest 

treatment under conditions specific to Marienhöhe 

in the Vogtland, the combination of understoreys cosowing 

and coarse legumes has helped avoid herbicides 

for the past three years. 

37

English Issue 


The Claydon drill during practical application. 

Enzymes for soil improvement are produced from 

various feedstock in a converted old milk tank. The 

required heat is supplied by the biogas plant. 

A Claas combine with 

a cutting width of 7.5 

meters is serviced 

just before the grain 

harvest starts. 

Co-sowing with the main crop 

Hölzel explains that this was triggered by the fact that 

the cultivation of leguminous crops was initially generally 

considered to be a greening measure. But then the 

rule was tightened by the regulation of herbicide-free 

cultivation. “A lot of farmers gave up then. But it works 

for us because we use the grown forage on our own farm 

and the harvested crop needn’t be cleaned as it’s not 

sold,” says Hölzel. He says that peas are supplemented 

with spring barley and camelina. Grass-clover, oats and 

camelina are suitable to be co-sown with beans and 

lupine. 

The Vogtland farmers have now gained expertise in compost 

tea and enzymes, both of which can be produced 

in large quantities on the farm itself. The compost tea 

is produced by dipping a net filled with compost, rock 

flour and micronutrients into an aeratable water bath 

heated up to 28 to 30 degrees centigrade for 24 hours. 

At Marienhöhe, an appropriately equipped 1,000 litre 

shuttle is used for that purpose. The “steeped” compost 

tea contains significant amounts of bacteria that 

promote soil life. 

The Managing Director of the Marienhöher Milchproduktion 

Agro Waldkirchen GmbH Heiko Hölzel: 

“More soil fertility, less chemicals. 

These are our goals.” 

The dilution ratio for the application with the field 

sprayer, which has to be done within a few hours after 

the compost tea is ready, depends, among other things, 

on the extent to which a crop has already been established 

in the field. “The process is complicated by the 

short expiry dates. And apart from a few noticeable effects, 

we weren’t really very impressed by the results,” 

says Hölzel. 

The situation is different with enzymes. The farmers 

produce them in an old 6,000-liter milk tank, in 

which they converted the cooling system to heating. 

The make-up solution consisting of various parts (lactic 

acid bacteria, yeast fungi, molasses, herbs and the 

like) purchased from EM-Chiemgau has to ferment for 

38


“We apply the enzymes, 

for example, before we 

incorporate the catch crops, 

to accelerate the rotting process 

and prevent decay” 

Heiko Hölzel 

Corn without cobs. Farmers use 

free spaces in the crop rotation 

by planting Sudan grass. 

about a week until it reaches a pH level of 3.8. If stored 

in a cool place, the finished fermentation broth can be 

kept for one year. “We apply the enzymes, for example, 

before we incorporate the catch crops, to accelerate the 

rotting process and prevent decay that would impede 

the formation of humus,” says the Hölzel. The different 

field color and its crumbliness show the positive effect 

this has on the soil structure. 

One important aspect of the nutrient supply of crops 

and grassland is also the plant-animal-soil cycle. At 

the Marienhöhe Agro Waldkirchen dairy plant facility, 

it goes via the biogas plant, where the total amount of 

cattle manure, which is about 16,000 cubic meters 

per year, is utilized as fuel. The neighboring farm applies 

the digestate – partly in standing crops – with a 

15-meter wide Bomech trailing shoe unit. The farmers 

spread the 4,000 tons of solid manure produced each 

year as fertiliser themselves with their own equipment 

made by Annaburger and Bergmann. Weinitzke lifts a 

clod of earth with a spade from a field of peas co-sown 

with summer barley and camelina. A fat earthworm can’t 

decide whether to jump off the shovel blade or disappear 

into the crumbly clump of earth. “Not all our attempts 

were as successful as the mixed crops with the leguminous 

plants. But now we know what works for us and 

where the procedures still have to be adapted to local 

conditions,” says Hölzel. “We’ll stay on the ball,” Hölzel 

adds. Next year, for example, he wants to test Cultan 

fertilization in cereal crops, which entails injecting liquid 

nitrogen fertilizer. 

Author 

Dipl.-Journ. Wolfgang Rudolph 

Freelance Journalist · Rudolph Reports – Agriculture 

Environment, Renewable Energies 

Kirchweg 10 · D-04651 Bad Lausick 

00 49 3 43 45/26 90 45 

info@rudolph-reportagen.de 

www.rudolph-reportagen.de 

POWERFUL 

PUMPING TECHNOLOGY 

WANGEN 

THE ORIGINAL 

WANGEN BIO-MIX pumps have been integrated for many years in the energy 

production process and undergone continuous further development and 

optimization. Also available with WANGEN PUMPEN‘s developed and patented 

X-LIFT quick change system. 

quick change 

system 

The Experts in Anaerobic Digestion. 

MEET US AT THIS YEARS 

EURO TIER 

energy decentral 

Hall 25 | Booth C23 

Nov 11-15 | Hannover 

39 

WWW.WANGEN.COM

English Issue 


Great Britain 

London 

Already 10 biogas plants 

produce “Green CO 2 

” 

The UK has potential, a well-developed gas grid and the courage to innovate. But biogas 

barely features in the British government’s strategy to deal with the climate crisis. Brexit 

and sharply rising prices of raw materials are affecting this sector. It is nevertheless worth 

taking a look at the island. 

Author Klaus Sieg 

Hedges, narrow roads, rolling hills and green 

meadows still covered with the hoarfrost 

of a cold November night in 2021. Cottages 

with unusual chimneys and Anglican 

churches made of natural stone pass us 

by. In the villages there are pubs with names like The 

Crown, The Hunter’s Room or The Three Horseshoes, 

manicured lawns, holly trees, as well as red phone 

booths and pillar boxes made of cast iron. The idyllic 

southwest of England is a haven of British tradition. The 

United Kingdom’s oldest pillar box is said to stand here 

in the county of Dorset. You wouldn’t necessarily expect 

to come across one of the UK’s most innovative biogas 

plants in this part of the country. 

Rainbarrow Farm is not easy to find. It is tucked away in 

a dip that had to be dug so as not to spoil the landscape 

on construction – a rule that also applies in many other 

places on the island. “We were the first plant with biogas 

treatment and feed into the grid in Great Britain”, 

says technical manager Sebastian Ganser, welcoming 

us to Rainbarrow Farm. At the time cleaning with membranes 

was a prototype. Biomethane was first fed in on 

11 October 2012. “Today we supply 9,000 households 

in neighbouring Poundbury in the winter months,” 

Ganser nods, looking northwards. If the biogas plant 

weren’t in a dip, the community of Poundbury on the 

outskirts of Dorchester might just be visible. This model 

town of predominantly classical buildings follows prin- 

Photographs: Martin Egbert 

40


Top left: Storage tanks for green CO 2 

. Below: The tanker 

truck comes to Rainbarrow Farm almost every day as the 

demand for Green CO 2 

is so high. 

ciples of sustainable design and development dreamt 

up by Charles, now the British King. King Charles was 

also instrumental in developing the concept for its construction. 

One condition was that at least 20 percent of 

the energy used in Poundbury must come from renewable 

sources. 

King Charles involved in biogas plant 

Thanks to Rainbarrow Farm, this figure has now risen to 

40 percent, mainly due to biomethane, but also thanks 

to the surplus electricity from the farm’s combined heat 

and power plant, which otherwise produces mainly for 

the facility’s own needs. The King is also 

the most important shareholder of JV Energen, 

the operator of the biogas plant, along 

with four farmers from the local area. 

It is their 1,800 hectares of land that supplies 

the feedstock from rye and oats as 

whole plant silage, as well as maize. “The 

soils here are very chalky.” Sebastian Ganser points to 

the edges of the dip, which offer a clear picture of the 

soil profile. “This restricts the cultivation of maize.” 

Initially, a quarter of the feedstock consisted of food 

waste, including from a muesli producer and a chocolate 

manufacturer in the area. “But we changed that to 

increase the methane yield, especially after the local 

food producers ceased operations,” explains Ganser. 

One tonne of food waste yields 120 cubic metres of 

biogas, while this is 210 cubic metres for energy-rich 

maize. With the switch to exclusively renewable raw 

materials and some technical modifications, the 

The membranes alone 

for turning biogas 

into biomethane cost 

several thousand 

euros. 

41

English Issue 


Before being stored in external 

tanks, the CO 2 

must be cooled and 

compressed. 

Blooming Amazing, 

the fertiliser made 

from the fermentation 

residue of Rainbarrow 

Farm, is sold at many 

garden centres. 

“We’re aiming for a 

club of Green CO 2 

producers” 

Sebastian Ganser 

Nick Finding, one of the operators, has 

been instrumental in developing their own 

fertiliser brand. 

operators were able to increase their feed-in capacity 

from 365 cubic metres per hour to 450. Following extension 

of the plant last year, it now feeds in 650 cubic 

metres an hour. 

CO 2 

extraction system put into service 

Like the “ideal city” of Poundbury, the biogas plant at 

Rainbarrow Farm also serves as a model. Advancing 

green ideas is a priority. “We bring the plant up to a new 

level every two to three years – that’s very exciting,” 

comments Ganser, who used to work at Agrarferm in 

Pfaffenhofen, the builder of the biogas plant at Rainbarrow 

Farm, seven years ago before moving to Dorset. 

And as if to prove the point, a tanker truck pulls up 

behind Ganser at the CO 2 

separation and storage system 

commissioned just a few months ago, its sparkling 

tanks glinting in the morning sun. Even the concrete 

ramp is still shiny and new. With a loud hiss the driver 

connects the trailer train for filling. 

The CO 2 

treatment system with storage tanks and a separate 

certification unit cost the equivalent of almost 2.4 

million euros. This investment is designed to ensure 

economically viable operation of the biogas plant, even 

when the subsidy for feed-in expires in eleven years’ 

time. “We started out in 2012 with a comfortable 16.6 

euro cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) of biomethane,” explains 

Ganser. Under the UK government’s Green Gas 

Support Scheme a plant connected to the grid now has 

to get by on barely 6 euro cents per kWh. 

Added to this figure is the current market price for gas, 

which is only just 8 or so euro cents per kWh. In 2021 

a new plant received around 14 euro cents per kWh – 

that’s something we can live with. In 2020 however, 

the market rate was barely 0.6 euro cents per kWh. We 

can’t manage on that. The storage and marketing of 

CO 2 

is governed by a British regulation that limits the 

climate gas footprint of these plants. The annual report 

for the regulator Ofgem includes diesel consumption 

for feedstock delivery, as well as the use of fertiliser – as 

well as the CO 2 

emissions from biogas treatment. 

This is also one of the reasons why ten of the 90 plants 

in the UK supplying the natural gas grid are already 

storing and selling their CO 2 

instead of emitting it into 

the atmosphere. Most of them market it as Green CO 2 

via the French gas giant Air Liquide. Not so Rainbarrow’s 

JV Energen. With Biocarbonics the consortium 

has founded another joint venture to directly market 

42


Green CO 2 

. “We’re aiming for a club of Green CO 2 

producers,” 

says Ganser. Biocarbonics currently supplies 

a cider brewery and a local fruit farm that uses CO 2 

as 

fertiliser in its greenhouses. 

CO 2 

, which is needed in the food industry in numerous 

ways, is highly sought-after on the island. The tabloids 

recently startled readers with the announcement 

there’d soon be no more beer due to a shortage of CO 2 

. 

The background to this claim: CO 2 

is a by-product of 

fertiliser production, which on the island mainly takes 

place at two factories owned by US company CF Industries. 

They had temporarily relocated production to 

other sites due to the high energy prices. 

The company was only prompted to resume production 

by an assurance of many millions of taxpayers’ money 

– the exact sum has not been disclosed. But the price 

of CO 2 

remains high. At present, 350 to 450 euros per 

tonne can be achieved instead of the 120 that was once 

the norm. “So we put the plant into service at the right 

time,” says Sebastian Ganser with satisfaction. 

CO 2 

for the food industry 

Every hour the Biocarbonics plant produces 700 to 

750 kilograms of green CO 2 

. Due to its purity of 99.7 

percent, this is not just suitable as a fertiliser in greenhouses, 

but also for use in foodstuffs. The two tanks, 

in which the CO 2 

is stored at a pressure of 20 bar and 

a temperature of minus 20 degrees Celsius, represent 

four days’ production. “So we can’t store much,” comments 

Sebastian Ganser. But they don’t have to. “We 

can always quickly sell what doesn’t go to our two contracted 

purchasers on the open market.” 

When it comes to fertiliser, Rainbarrow Farm also has 

an alternative to offer. With a fertiliser made from digestate, 

the four farmers have been able to increase yields 

by 2-4 percent on their own fields and to save two-thirds 

of bought-in mineral fertiliser. And the high proportion 

of organic matter improves the soil in a sustainable way. 

As a mulch, it provides moisture. In particular, Rainbarrow 

Farm has developed another pioneering product by 

coming up with the fertiliser brand Bloomin Amazing. 

A packaging machine is rattling away in one of the 

barns once used by the farm for dairy operations. Every 

hour, a robot stacks over 400 green-brown bags containing 

50 litres or 10 kilograms onto pallets. They are 

then delivered to garden centres in England, Scotland 

and Wales. Of the 12,000 tonnes of digestate produced 

each year, an impressive 3,000 tonnes now goes this 

way. The farm sells another 3,000 tonnes to a local 

composting plant. 

Digested fertiliser for 450 garden centres 

“We have put a lot of time and money into developing 

the brand,” says Nick Finding, one of the farmers 

involved in the biogas plant. Finding has been instrumental 

in production and marketing of the fertiliser. 

“At the beginning, three years ago, we supplied three 

Above: Laying pipes in Attleborough, one of Bioconstruct’s two ongoing sites in the UK. 

Below: In Evercreech desulphurisation nets are already stretched over the digesters. 

garden centres, now it’s 450 and includes branches of 

the biggest chains.” This boom was helped by the trend 

towards gardening during the Covid-19 pandemic. In 

the shops a bag costs the equivalent of around 7 euros. 

And even if this doesn’t offer much of a margin, Finding 

knows about the key benefit here: “We sell our residue 

instead of having to pay to dispose of it.” 

The UK thus has promising approaches and solutions to 

offer. But is the country sufficiently exploiting its potential 

for green energy? The UK wants to become climateneutral 

by 2050, for example by shutting down its last 

coal-fired power plant as soon as 2024. Nuclear power 

is supposed to close the gap as a transitional technology. 

At the same time the country wants to become 

the “Saudi Arabia of wind energy”. The plan is 

43

English Issue 


The storage facility for compressed 

biomethane at Nottingham’s bus depot. 

Unpacking and filling at Bore Hill Farm, one 

of England’s first food waste plants. 

to quadruple its current wind power capacity of 10 gigawatts 

by 2030, mainly by expanding offshore wind 

power. Biogas has to date featured little in the strategy 

of the Conservative government. 

At the global COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, the 

British biogas association Anaerobic Digestion and Bioresources 

Association (ADBA) wanted greater support 

for a technology that it estimates could account for 6 

percent of the climate gas reduction planned by the 

year 2030. 

Theoretically, biomethane for 1.3 million 

households 

To date the UK’s 685 biogas plants make up just one 

percent of this reduction, producing 16 terawatt hours 

of biogas per year. Part of this is fed into the national 

grid as processed biomethane, used for heat and fuel. 

Theoretically, this would at present be sufficient for 1.3 

million households in Britain. If however, the potential 

were to be fully exploited, 6.4 million homes could be 

supplied here. 

But instead of promoting this well-developed technology, 

the British government has done away with the 

feed-in tariffs for electricity from biogas and constantly 

reduced those for methane injection. Traffic emissions 

could also be reduced with biomethane. At 27 percent, 

the transport sector is responsible for the lion’s share 

of climate gas emissions in Britain. Trucks and buses 

account for one fifth of this. According to the ADBA, 

this share could be reduced by 38 percent with biomethane. 

“Municipalities and major retailers are already successfully 

using biomethane-powered vehicle fleets to 

decarbonise their operations – why aren’t policymakers 

more supportive of this option?” asks Charlotte Morton. 

The head of the ADBA criticises the lack of a legal 

framework, too little support through funding and chaos 

in government. “Ministers have announced plans to triple 

biogas production by 2030, yet anaerobic digestion 

doesn’t even feature in the current plan to decarbonise 

the transport sector.” 

Nottingham – a city of biogas buses 

There are some extremely successful examples here. 

One can be found in Nottingham, a city located in 

Middle England. “Our double-decker buses running 

on biomethane avoid 8,000 tonnes of CO 2 

emissions 

per year compared with diesel vehicles to the Euro 6 

standard,” says Gary Mason, technical manager of Nottingham 

City Transport. “We also avoid 81 tonnes of 

nitrogen oxides and 1.6 tonnes of particulate matter.” 

Behind Mason, the town’s bus depot is bustling. The old 

tram tracks can still just be seen in the asphalt of the 

yard. The building was constructed in 1926. Nowadays 

there are modern filling stations for biomethane and a 

compression plant. “The gas exits the grid at a pressure 

of 25 millibar,” explains Mason. “We compress it to 

300 bar to give the buses a range of 250 miles (about 

400 kilometres), which is sufficient for their average of 

150 miles a day.” 

It’s 7:00 pm. Most of the bus routes in this university 

town are now thinning out, with lots of buses turning 

up to refuel at one of the five filling stations. Drivers in 

black uniforms underneath their safety vests are climbing 

out with tired expressions. Most say the buses now 

run more quietly on gas, a result that is greatly appreciated 

by both drivers and passengers. Gary Mason first 

put biomethane buses into service in 2017, and 120 

double-deckers from Nottingham City Transport have 

been running on gas since 2019. Another 23 buses 

should be purchased in February 2022. “Then half of 

our entire fleet of double-deckers will be run- 

44


Gary Mason has converted a large part 

of the double-decker fleet at Nottingham 

City Transport to run on biomethane. 

Thomas Minter, who has already won 

many awards, is a pioneer of Britain’s 

biogas industry. 

The yields at Bore Hill 

Farm show that constant 

optimisation pays off. 

Your specialist for double 

membrane roof systems 

NEW! 

Thermal insulation and convection reduction. 

Visit us! energy decentral 

EURO TIER, Messe Hannover, 15.–18.11.2022 

See you in hall 25, booth M13 

dbds – Deutsche Biogas Dach-Systeme 

45 

www.dbds-gmbh.de

English Issue 


“The running costs are 

the same as for diesel, 

but that’ll change given the 

rapidly rising fuel prices” 

Gary Mason 

ning on green gas,” says Gary Mason with satisfaction. 

Nottingham is the town with the largest fleet of biogas 

double-deckers in the UK, closely followed by Bristol 

with 100. 

And the costs? The infrastructure, which was partly subsidised 

by the government, came to the equivalent of 3 

million euros. Not much compared with the purchase 

price of 300,000 euros for a double-decker running on 

diesel. Converting a bus costs around 50,000 euros. 

“The running costs are the same as for diesel, but that’ll 

change given the rapidly rising fuel prices,” says Gary 

Mason, “and then we’ll probably get off far cheaper 

with biogas.” He nonetheless wants to negotiate with 

supplier Air Liquide for a share of the revenue from the 

46


STIRRING – PUMPING – MOVING 

AND MORE 

In bustling Nottingham biogas is helping to give public transport a new image. 

Where trams once used to park, there is now a high-tech facility for refuelling buses. 

For staff, handling gas-powered buses became routine long ago. 

Agriculture, biogas, sewage and wastewater, 

and industrial applications 

CO 2 

-certificate – to date Nottingham City 

Transport has come out empty-handed. 

The biomethane for the buses currently 

comes from a plant in Gloucester, around 

150 miles away. Such bilateral agreements 

between the producer and consumer are 

possible in Great Britain. Soon the gas will 

come from a plant just outside Nottingham 

that runs on brewery residues and food 

waste. “That’s an even smaller cycle,” says 

Gary Mason. 

To encourage the use of organic waste in 

biogas plants, operators will only receive 

the feed-in tariff from the Green Gas Support 

Scheme if they get half the methane 

from food waste. ADBA calculates that 

45 million tonnes of organic waste is currently 

used in biogas plants. At 170 million 

tonnes, the potential here is almost four 

times that. Thomas Minter is something 

of a pioneer in the sustainable use of organic 

waste. Originally from the real estate 

sector, he came to biogas via sustainable 

construction. 

Bore Hill Farm – Britain’s first 

biowaste facility 

“Our plant was one of the first in the UK to 

run solely on organic waste,” says Minter. 

It stands in the yard of Bore Hill Farm, a 

winner of multiple awards. His plant, with 

two 400 m 3 digesters and a 300 m 3 holding 

tank, has been supplying methane since 

2012. Minter obtains organic waste from 

dairies, abattoirs or food processing plants 

in a 50-mile radius. He no longer takes organic 

municipal waste. The reason behind 

this can be found in his office: Iron chains, 

bits of plastic, soft toys, batteries and trainers 

all lie on the window sill overlooking the 

hall with the unbaling machine. “It was too 

much work separating out all that.” 

Initially, 17,000 tonnes of waste went 

through the digesters each year – today it’s 

almost twice as much. The dwell time is 

between 30 and 34 days. “We’ve managed 

to achieve this by constantly optimising our 

processes,” says Minter, fingering the radio 

clipped to his yellow safety vest. For example, 

new feedstock is added to the plant 

every 15 minutes. “This trains the bacteria 

and promotes gas production.” 

Minter and his staff are constantly improving 

preparation and mixing of the various 

feedstocks, pump efficiency and many 

other factors. The plant repays them with a 

methane content of 60 to 64 percent in the 

gas. Minter uses this to operate two combined 

heat and power plants, feeding in 

the electricity generated. A recent study by 

the University of Bath has proved that producing 

electricity at Borehill Farm 

Components for various needs 

Agitators for your requirements 

Pumps for your requirements 

Different components for your system: 

agriculture, biogas, 

sewage or waste water 

and industrial applications 

ARMATEC-FTS.COM/EN 

Designed, 

developed and 

made in Germany 

47

English Issue 


doesn’t just not cause climate gas, but saves some 200 

grams of CO 2 

per kWh generated. 

To start with, Minter received 19 euro cents per kWh 

for his electricity, now it’s 7. The surpluses of biogas 

at the plant would allow electricity production to be 

expanded. Since the government abolished the feedin 

tariffs for electrical energy from biogas, new plants 

have to do with the market price. “At the moment it’s 

pretty good, but that is very uncertain.” There is no 

facility near Borehill Farm for feeding into the gas grid. 

Treatment also requires high investment. That is why 

Minter has been flaring off his surpluses so far – which 

means valuable resources are not being exploited. 

Corporations, banks and joint-stock 

companies recently emerging as investors 

The British government’s commitment to biowaste as 

a feedstock and the preferential feed-in of biomethane 

is determining what is being built on the island – so 

attracting new actors to the scene. Instead of farmers 

and other small-scale investors, it is now infrastructure 

businesses, banks and joint-stock companies that are 

investing in biogas plants. This is also demonstrated by 

the two latest projects of Bioconstruct from Germany. 

With 25 completed plants to date, Great Britain is 

one of the most important markets for this company 

from Melle near Osnabrück. Bioconstruct has built two 

bio methane injection plants, one at Attleborough in 

Norfolk and the other at Evercreech in Somerset, both 

powered by organic waste. The one in Attleborough 

will provide heat for most of the town’s nearly 4,500 

households. The Evercreech plant will even be slightly 

bigger, with a total digester capacity of 9,000 cubic 

metres and a secondary digester facility with a volume 

of 8,500 cubic metres. 

Both plants are scheduled to feed into the grid from 

March 2022. In winter this means working to the max 

under floodlights on site once it’s dark. Several agitators 

have already been installed in Evercreech. Green 

desulphurisation nets are stretched over the digesters, 

soon to be followed by the double-membrane storage 

tanks. Beside them, men in safety vests and helmets 

are roofing the gigantic unbaling hall. 

The client in Attleborough is Privilege Finance, which 

says it has financed 30 biogas plants to the tune of 

some 350 million euros over the last 18 years. In Evercreech 

it is the global player Macquarie Capital that 

is involved. Both plants will be maintained and operated 

by Bioconstruct’s English sister company. This is a 

challenging task due to the feedstock. 

In general, things have become more difficult in Great 

Britain. Firstly, the British pound fell sharply after Brex- 

BIOLNG PRODUCTION PLANT 

Modular concept for Biogas Plants of 500 kWe and up 

• Integrated Polishing & 

Liquefaction Plant 

• Compatible with all Biogas 

Upgrading Technologies 

< 2% CO 2 

• Low power consumption 

• Turn-key solutions 

• CO 2 Liquefaction with 

food- grade quality 

optionally available 

48 

Gas purification equipment by: 

Stirling Cryogenics BV 

Science Park Eindhoven 5003 

5692 EB Son, the Netherlands 

T +31 40 26 77 300 

info@stirlingcryogenics.eu 

www.stirlingcryogenics.eu


Brian Harper and his 

biogas dog toilet. 

it. This was followed by tariffs on steel. New 

building standards apply from 2022. “None of 

this exactly helps,” says Andreas Bröcker, in 

charge of the English market at Bioconstruct. 

On top of that, raw material prices have risen 

sharply, and this increase cannot be passed on. 

“The high prices for steel and concrete might 

also jeopardise the financing of projects still in 

the pipeline,” reveals Andreas Bröcker. 

Mobile biogas plants in containers 

That would be a shame. The UK has potential, 

a well-developed gas grid and the courage to 

innovate. This is also demonstrated by the 

ideas of multi award-winning company SEaB 

Energy, whose biogas plants in containers bring 

the technology to the feedstock instead of the 

other way around. The containers are transported 

fully manufactured to the site, where they 

are assembled in just a few days. “This cuts 

climate gas emissions as well as the costs of 

construction and transport,” says the founder 

Sandra Sassow. 

Just Premium 

Ultra Premium Efficiency 

Submersible mixer GTWSB 206-E and 

NEW: GTWSI-EX 206-E 

· With energy efficiency motor: efficiency > 96% 

· GTWSI-EX 206-E for EX zones 1 and 2 

· Maximum efficiency even at low speeds 

· Corresponds to efficiency class IE5 

· Enormous energy savings and longer service lives 

· Approved up to 65°C substrate temperature 

Franz Eisele u. Söhne GmbH & Co. KG 

Hauptstr. 2-4 · D-72488 Sigmaringen · Phone +49 7571 109-0 

www.eisele.de 

Knowledge in 49 motion

English Issue 


the maximum feedstock infeed of 2,500 

kilograms of food waste, the plant is set to 

supply 40 kWh of electricity and 70 kWh of 

heat per day after deduction of its own requirements. 

However, it above all saves the 

operators disposal costs. The exact price is 

not being revealed. Nonetheless, according 

to SEaB it should pay for itself after only two 

to six years. So far SEaB Energy has been 

able to sell twelve systems, seven of them 

abroad. Customers include supermarkets, 

hospitals or large companies with their own 

canteen. 

A literally shining 

example of the value 

of dog excrement: 

Brian Harper’s gas 

lantern. 

If a minimum of 400 kilograms of food waste or manure 

is available, it should be worth operating such a 

modular plant with a minimum of three containers, a 

digester, a control centre and a CHP unit. This system 

can be combined with a fertiliser production unit. This 

lets people owning or leasing such plants change their 

location or the number of digesters depending on the 

feedstock volumes. 

The system does not need agitators as movement in 

the feedstock is provided just by the pumps. Nor is any 

additional water needed because the moisture contained 

in the feedstock circulates in the system. With 

Dog excrement for gas lanterns 

At the end of the journey, we now meet an 

innovator who is probably the most outlandish 

of all. “I’m not the crazy inventor you 

think I am,” says Brian Harper by way of 

greeting. In the picturesque town of Malvern 

in Worcestershire, he is up a ladder 

outside his house, busy illuminating a gas 

lantern. It is powered with methane from 

his home-made digester for dog excrement. 

Around 30 paper bags of excrement are sufficient 

for an hour of light. “This makes dog 

owners realise the value of what their pets 

leave behind,” explains Brian Harper. And 

will also make them pick it up from paths, 

grass and streets. 

“Some are even training their dogs to do 

their business as close to the facility as possible.” 

It was a group of students from Massachusetts 

Institute of Technology (MIT) 

who first came up with this idea. Brian 

Harper has put it into practice with financial 

support from the countryside conservation 

agency Malvern Hills Area of Outstanding 

Natural Beauty. 

The 70-year-old electrical engineer, who 

used to run an internationally successful 

company for high-sensitivity camera systems, 

has already appeared on Japanese 

television with his mini-biogas unit. It’s certainly 

not just a bit of fun. Harper plans to 

sell the system to municipalities, park authorities and 

dog associations through his company Sight Designs. A 

bit mad, the British, eh? Certainly not! 

Author 

Klaus Sieg 


klaus@siegtext.de 

www.siegtext.de 

50


Tamarah Swensen 

standing in front 

of the processing 

container. 

Netherlands 

Biogas Treatment 

using CO 2 

The biogas plant WABICO in Waalwijk, Holland, is an example of the 

comprehensive utilization of waste or residual materials in a biogas plant. 

Besides biomethane and digestate, the carbon dioxide that occurs in biogas 

purification is marketed there. The utilization of CO 2 

is becoming increasingly 

significant. Not only is it interesting from a climate protection point of 

view: users, like nurseries, currently have problems procuring CO 2 

. 

Author Eur Ing Marie-Luise Schaller 

Amsterdam 

Photograph: Marie-Luise Schaller 

There are more than 270 biogas plants in the 

Netherlands. 169 biogas plants with a total 

capacity of 194 megawatts (MW) supply 

biogas for power generation. That includes 

157 combined plants with a total capacity 

of 447 MW that supply biogas for the generation of 

power and heat. Otherwise, there are 23 biogas plants 

that only operate for the production of heat, and also 15 

landfill gas plants with a total capacity of 10 MW that 

produce biogas to generate heat. In 2019, 60 plants 

were registered that supply biogas for the production 

of biomethane. 

The Ecopark in Wallwijk in the Dutch province of Noord- 

Brabant is one of the most advanced industrial areas 

in the Netherlands, where the generation of renewable 

energies is an important feature. A solar system on a 

dike, several wind turbines and a biogas plant are used 

for local energy supply. The builder and operator of the 

biogas plant WABICO (Waalwijkse Biomassa Combinatie) 

is HoSt, which claims to be the largest Dutch supplier 

of bioenergy systems. 

In October 2021, the Holding had been in place for 

30 years. Biogas plants, biomass gasifiers, biomass/ 

wood boilers and biomass cogeneration plants 

51

English Issue 


WABICO: CO 2 

tanks and 

transport in trucks. 

Heat exchangers - 

Efficient. Reliable. Customized. 

Exhaust gas heat exchangers 

Gas heat exchangers 

www.enkotherm.de 

(BCHP) with cogeneration (CHP) are part of the product 

portfolio. The subsidiary Bright Biomethane offers the 

appropriate processing technologies. The HoSt Group 

operates the plant both commercially and as a “field 

test” to gather practical experience for the development 

of their wide range of technologies in everyday production. 

The groundbreaking was in 2014, and operation 

began in as early as 2015. Since then, the plant has 

been enlarged several times. 

Well Thought-out Sustainable 

Value Creation 

The Communications Manager of Bright Biomethane 

Tamarah Swensen leads the way around the plant and 

first introduces the companies. An essential feature of 

the companies of the HoSt Group is the comprehensive 

approach. She explains that they have vast experience 

in processing a large variety of waste streams 

from the food industry and from agricultural residue, 

like straw, chaff and grass. “Brigth Biomethane always 

strives for optimal utilization of the materials used. 

WABICO is a flagship project for that”. 

WABICO thus recycles only 

residues such as vegetable 

waste, flotation sludge 

and extracted supermarket 

waste. The plant generates 

up to 2,000 standard cubic 

meters (Nm³) of raw biogas 

per hour (h) by using anaerobic 

fermentation. This is 

processed into biogas in a 

membrane unit. The treatment 

capacity is 1,200 

Nm³/h, and the quality 

meets the requirements for 

lower calorific value gases 

applicable to Dutch grids. 

Every year, around 10 million 

(million) Nm³ are fed into the 

natural gas grid. 

The digestate is drained and 

used as compost. A biological 

water purification system, the 

so-called “Sequencing Batch 

Reactor” (SBR), was added by 

constructing a further fermenter 

and a secondary fermenter as 

well as larger treatment. The 

purified water is discharged into 

the sewer system. In addition to 

that, external heat exchangers 

were installed to optimize the 

intrinsic energy footprint. This 

innovative heat recovery system 

for biogas treatment covers the 

heat supply to the digesters. 

Another advantage: The carbon dioxide removed from 

the biogas is not discharged into the atmosphere, it is 

collected and liquefied in a further process step. Thus, 

the plant produces and markets three products: biomethane, 

fermented manure and carbon dioxide. 

Compact Container Modules 

All the components at Bright Biomethane are of compact 

modular container design. This means that the 

systems can be set up and put into operation quickly, 

as no buildings have to be constructed. The processing 

unit consists of: a compressor, membranes, a control 

panel, a heat recovery system, odorization and an analysis 

facility. All the elements are stored in three containers 

near the fermentation tanks. The membrane system 

could be expanded to three times the size. 

The carbon dioxide collected there is passed through an 

oil-free, two-stage compressor to two activated carbon 

filters, which eliminate residual impurities and odorous 

substances. The filtered gas passes through an automated 

molecular sieve dryer, which removes the residual 

moisture. From there, it is conducted to the CO 2 

condenser. While CO 2 

condenses in the condenser, the 

traces of non-condensable gases, like oxygen, methane 

and nitrogen remain gaseous. They are removed in the 

stripping tower and returned to the membrane preparation. 

“This allows the plant to achieve exceptionally low 

methane slip,” explains Tamarah Swensen. The pure 

liquid CO 2 

flows into isolated storage tanks. 

Recyclable material for the production of 

food and beverages 

The plant generates liquid carbon dioxide at the rate 

of 600 kilograms per hour, with a purity of more than 

99.97 percent that is therefore suitable for food. It is 

transported in tankers to the customers. These are, for 

example, greenhouses in which the CO 2 

is used as plant 

fertilizer. But it can also be used in refrigeration unit 

Photograph: Marie-Luise Schaller 

52


Photograph: Bright Biomethane 

in food and beverage production, 

or at abattoirs. In 

addition, there are wastewater 

treatment methods that 

work with CO 2 

. 

Tamarah Swensen points 

out the good marketing prospects. 

Last year, there was 

a shortage caused by the 

breakdown of two large CO 2 

production plants. Starting 

production in numerous 

smaller biogas plants would 

also have the advantage of 

greater independence from 

the large producers that 

dominate the market. 

“Bright Biomethane is continuously 

improving its technologies 

at WABICO, be it in terms of the fermentation 

of various waste materials, digestate treatment or 

biogas upgrading and now in the liquefaction of CO 2 

,” 

says the former planning engineer and current sales 

engineer at Bright Biomethane Jeffery Kruit in his marketing 

jargon. 

CO 2 

liquefaction: worthwhile from 500 

Nm³/h upwards 

The use of CO 2 

as feedstock perfects the circular economy 

approach in biomethane production and opens up 

new value creation opportunities for plant operators. 

Kruit says that, according to the current status, CO 2 

liquefaction could already be worthwhile for biogas 

plants with a capacity of 500 Nm³/h. The individual 

conditions at the location, such as the market price for 

CO 2 

, are decisive. 

Kruit says that in the meantime they have developed 

their own CO 2 

liquefaction plant and offer everything 

from a single source as a complete systems manufacturer. 

The company is also working on its own LNG condenser 

in order to complete the product portfolio. There 

are also plans to get into the hydrogen production business, 

and Bright Biomethane is currently investigating 

various concepts for that. 

All in all, the carbon footprint is showing it can be improved 

by means of continual technological advances 

and pilot projects that are consistently implemented in 

practice. In the long run, technologies for the extraction 

of CO 2 

from exhaust gases or air and subsequent recycling 

will be crucial to climate protection. But even the 

current shortage of CO 2 

can motivate plant operators to 

think about this additional product. 

Author 

Eur Ing Marie-Luise Schaller 

ML Schaller Consulting 

mls@mlschaller.com 

Photo taken of 

WABICO (Waalwijkse 

Biomassa Combinatie) 

by a drone. 

COMPONENTS FOR BIOGAS PLANTS 

QUALITY 

FROM 

RESPONSIBILITY 

■ Agitators for digesters with roof and wall installation 

Robust and powerful construction energy-saving + highly efficient. 

■ Separator for biogas plants Mobile and fixed installations 

■ Panorama windows 

■ Pump technology 

PAULMICHL GmbH 

Kisslegger Straße 13 

88299 Leutkirch 

Tel. 0 75 63/84 71 

Fax 0 75 63/80 12 

www.paulmichl-gmbh.de 

53

English Issue 


Croatia 

Zagreb 

Biogas potential 

not yet exhausted 

Zagreb: Trams in 

Croatia’s capital 

still run on grey 

electricity. 

The biogas sector in Croatia may still be small, but in rural areas it’s already visible in many 

places. However, the operating concepts are not designed to optimum effect in all cases. 

Improvements are still needed if the biogas sector is to play a role in shaping transformation 

of Croatia’s energy system in a sustainable way. 

Author Dierk Jensen 

The farmland is surrounded by a fence. Visitors 

first have to wade through a disinfection 

bath at the gate if they want a close-up 

of the large factory in Mala Branjevina near 

the town of Osijek. At the facility, which is 

owned by the conglomerate Žito Grupa, 800 cows are 

milked in several large barns. Five years ago a biogas 

plant was put into operation at this site. A location that 

was home to an agricultural cooperative in days when 

Yugoslavia was a socialist state. 

“Every large farm should have a plant like ours”, says 

Jakob Zvonarić confidently, standing in front of the containers 

housing two combined heat and power plants 

(CHP) made by Jenbacher, each with an electrical output 

of 2 megawatts (MW). They feed electricity into 

the power grid of the state-owned utility HEP (Hrvatska 

Elektroprivreda d.d.). The biogas plant, which boasts 

three digesters and two large slurry pits, is fed with 

maize as well as solid and liquid manure from herd of 

cows and offspring. 

18 euro cents per kilowatt hour 

of electricity 

Making electricity production more flexible is not yet 

an issue at this biogas plant in the eastern part of Slavonia, 

the agricultural heart of Croatia, not far from the 

EU’s external border with its eastern neighbour Serbia. 

“Our engines run at full power for 24 hours”, comments 

Zvonarić as he says goodbye. The guaranteed feed-in 

tariff is 1.35 kunas per kilowatt hour, the equivalent of 

just under 18 euro cents. 

While there is no other biogas facility in the wider surroundings 

of Branjevina, two large plants can be found 

on the outskirts of the town of Slatina – curiously, just a 

few hundred yards apart. Both are mainly supplied with 

energy crops. This means traffic is heavy on the road 

when maize is being harvested in the middle of September. 

Brand-new harvesting equipment, large tractors 

with sizeable loader wagons, tirelessly ply between 

the fields and the silos next to the biogas plants. Even 

into the night. 

Large front loaders propel the chopped material to dizzying 

heights. Even in the early evening temperatures in 

mid-September still almost reach 30 degrees Celsius – 

after a very hot and dry summer in Slavonia. Only farmers 

who managed to irrigate their fields sufficiently saw 

yields of just over 40 tonnes per hectare. At the plant 

run by Bioplin Proizvodnaja d.o.o. with an electrical 

output of 1 MW, the unit is maintained by manufacturer 

MWM at harvest time. As there is no capacity to store 

gas, the biogas produced here has to be burnt off. Its 

flame rises high into the blue evening sky of Croatia. 

Photographs: Jörg Böthling 

54


“Every big farm should have a plant like ours,” 

says plant manager Jakob Zvonarić. 

Energy maize – prices have risen 

While the duty technicians routinely go about maintaining 

the gas engine and its peripheral equipment, plant 

employee Ivan Osniak tells us a bit about his workplace. 

“We need around 10,000 tonnes of maize per year”, 

he reveals, pointing to the large sign “Otkup Silaže”, 

which translates as “We buy silage”. This is because 

substrate prices in recent years have also soared in 

Croatia’s agricultural sector while prices for meat and 

milk have simultaneously tended to slide down. “We 

currently pay 230 kuna (about 29 euros) per tonne, 

whereas three years ago it was 210 kuna (about 26 

euros)”, says Osniak, highlighting a price pressure that 

is a burden on biogas production facilities without efficient 

heat utilisation. 

Next door at the Agro PMD plant, where a large banner 

of the Alliance party faces the road, the situation is not 

much different. Except that it is twice the size; boasting 

two MWM units, each with an electrical output of 

1.2 MW. “Of that, we need around 0.4 megawatts just 

to run the facility”, explains operations manager Josip 

Butka. Although his plant does not have any heat utilisation 

for third parties either, it at least dries fermentation 

residue with the large quantities of heat produced 

via the requisite heating of the digesters – after all, this 

is a region where winters can be bitterly cold. 

The plant has been operating since 2016, 30-year-old 

Butka tells us during a tour of the facility. He trained as 

an electrical engineer and is seemingly a master of the 

technology involved. He runs his plant on around onethird 

liquid manure and two-thirds maize. Every day 

some 90 tonnes are fed into the fermentation process, 

in total around 30,000 tonnes per year. For example, 

the plant has contracts with many local farms that provide 

the harvest over an area of approx. 500 hectares. 

Lack of acceptance through a lack 

of knowledge 

Biogas production is apparently not very popular with 

inhabitants. “Their acceptance of our work and energy 

generation is almost zero at this locality”, sighs Butka, 

adding, “Most people don’t even understand what we’re 

doing here.” Butka thinks this is simply due to a lack 

of knowledge about biogas among most of its critics, 

believing the issue is just not covered sufficiently in the 

media, at school or in politics. 

Nevertheless, the conditions for a heedful expansion 

of biogas production could undoubtedly be satisfied, 

especially in the densely forested central and eastern 

parts of Croatia. They offer major potential with areas 

of agricultural land that are currently unfarmed. 

Above: Siloing of 

maize at the biogas 

plant of Bioplin 

Proizvodnja d.o.o. near 

Slatina. 

Below: Biogas plant 

belonging to Žito 

Grupa. 

55

English Issue 


Tesla Museum 

in Smiljan: 

wireless power 

transmission. 

Biogas plant near 

Osijek: Large dairy farm 

with sizeable slurry pit. 

Renewable energy 

is on the rise: like 

here, at a vegetable 

seller’s stall in the 

Neretva valley. 

This is partly due to migration during and after the 

Croat-Serb war in the 1990s, when many Serb families 

living here left their homes and farms for Serbia. 

The cultivation of energy crops would be perfectly 

conceivable on such land without usurping previous 

agricultural production. Particularly given that the soil 

is fertile in many places and the climate favourable, as 

long as it is not extremely dry and hot as in the summer 

of 2021. A publication by the German-Croatian Chamber 

of Industry and Commerce (dated February 2020) 

states that besides energy crops such as maize, etc., 

Croatia also produces 4.8 million tonnes of liquid manure 

per year. According to the document, this would 

in theory result in a biogas potential sufficient to operate 

plants with an installed capacity of 104 MW. 

A total of 42 biogas plants in operation 

In fact however, as of October 2021 only 42 biogas 

plants with an installed capacity of approx. 47 MW are 

operating in the whole of Croatia. Five are in the waste 

56


When the flame rises 

into the air, the plant 

is not operating to 

optimum effect. 

sector, where they are busy fermenting several thousand 

tonnes of biowaste. There are also some, like those 

in the northern region of Me imurje, which are used 

to ferment e.g. rejected potatoes and other vegetable 

leftovers. They have been incorporated in agricultural 

production in an exemplary manner. 

A contract with fixed feed-in tariffs has been concluded 

for other biogas plants yet to be built (total capacity 

8 MW) by the end of the third quarter of 2021. As a 

market premium model for renewable energies was introduced 

in Croatia a few years ago, a premium is used 

to close the gap with conventional electricity prices. 

However, whether the Croatian biogas sector will continue 

its dynamic development and ultimately realise 

the potential of 360 biogas plants cited by certain experts 

remains to be seen – caution is advised here. On 

the other hand, it is absolutely clear that Croatia must 

significantly boost the expansion of renewable energies 

if it is to achieve the ambitious climate protection goals 

by 2030. 

And the gas tanks 

are full. 

Your partner for green gases 

Longterm bankable contracts 

Support certification process 

Meet us at the E-world 

in Essen, Germany 

at stand 425 in hall 1 

bmp greengas is Europe‘s leading marketer of biomethane and the expert for green 

gases. We support companies in producing and switching to a sustainable energy supply. 

Our goal is to make the energy transition economical and plannable for our partners. 

We purchase biomethane of any 

feedstock types: Energy crops, 

agriculture residuals, industrial 

waste, organic waste. 

We buy biomethane 

regardless of regulatory 

conditions in your country. 

We are the partner for reliable 

transportation across 

national borders and fail-safe 

delivery of biomethane. 

Working together for a green future! 

www.bmp-greengas.com 

+49 89 309 05 87 804 

purchasing@bmp-greengas.de 57

English Issue 


Service technicians working on 

a unit manufactured by MWM. 

Maize harvest at 

a Croatian biogas 

plant. 

It looks like in Germany, 

but to date only 

around 50 MW has 

been installed. 

A new Green Book, issued by the energy institute Hrvoje 

Požar, sets targets and directions for development during 

the period until 2030 with an eye on 2050. The document 

paints two scenarios. In the first, fast-track scenario, 

renewables dominate with a share of 32 percent 

in total energy consumption by 2030 and 52 percent by 

2050, while the second envisages 46 percent by 2050. 

One-third hydropower, one-third fossil-fuel 

power plants 

Whichever scenario finally wins out, this western Balkan 

country undoubtedly faces major challenges. In 

this state of almost 4 million inhabitants, its energy 

supply is still largely rooted in fossil fuel. Although hydropower 

with an installed capacity of 2.2 gigawatts 

(GW) covers over one third of the overall electrical 

power generation mix of 6 GW, around one third of the 

electricity, or more precisely 2.1 GW, still comes from 

thermal power plants based on fossil fuels. In addition 

to biogas, the country also has just over 700 MW of 

wind energy and around 60 MW of photovoltaics. All 

this is however not nearly enough to cover its current 

domestic demand for electricity, which is why Croatia 

continues to import (nuclear) electricity from its neighbours 

Bosnia and Slovenia. 

But Klaudia Oršanić -Furlan, MD at the German-Croatian 

Chamber of Industry and Commerce in the capital 

Zagreb, nonetheless believes her country is well on the 

way to advancing a climate turnaround. “In July 2021 

Croatia was awarded grants of around u 6.3 billion by 

the European Union’s Recovery and Resilience Facility 

Programme. This corresponds to 11.6 percent of the 

country’s gross national product in 2019,” she says, 

highlighting the huge importance of this financial injection 

from Europe, which will be mainly used to modernise 

the energy infrastructure. “This will help Croatia 

to come out stronger from the Covid-19 pandemic,” 

hopes Klaudia Oršanić -Furlan. And perhaps Croatia’s 

biogas sector, which is still finding its feet, will also 

benefit from these grants here and there. 

Author 

Dierk Jensen 


Bundesstr. 76 · D-20144 Hamburg 

00 49 40/40 18 68 89 

dierk.jensen@gmx.de 

www.dierkjensen.de 

58


EXPERTISE IN 

BIOGAS 

WE TURN PROBLEMS 

INTO SOLUTIONS 

ANALYTICS & CONSULTING 

ON SITE EVERYWHERE 

AND AT 

ENERGY DECENTRAL 

IN HALL 25 

STAND B12 

ENSILING AGENTS 

ENZYMES 

NH 3 

Ni 

Se 

BIOGAS IS OUR TRADE 

TOXIN BINDERS 

DESULPHURIZATION 

MICRONUTRIENTS 

BIO 

SPECIAL PRODUCTS 

ORGANIC CERTIFICATION 

PRODUCTS 

Schaumann BioEnergy Consult GmbH 

www.schaumann-bioenergy.com 

59

English Issue 


GENUINE & OEM GAS ENGINE PARTS 

spark plugs, filters, cylinder heads, pistons ... 

search 

SPARE PARTS SUITABLE FOR JENBACHER ENGINES 

SPARE PARTS SUITABLE FOR MAN ENGINES 

VISIT US! 

15 - 18 NOV 2022 - Hanover 

H25 F24 

GAS ENGINE PARTS 

60 

FAST. FAIR. RELIABLE.

Autumn 2022 EN

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?