Taiwan’s newly opened and first-ever biogas plant to use livestock manure as its feedstock is benefiting from a proven digester mixing system made by Landia.
For the project in Hualien County on the east coast of Taiwan, the new Pushige Biomass Energy Center (from a plan implemented by the Yexing Environmental Technology Company), features six of Landia’s externally-mounted GasMix systems, which have a verified track record of enhancing biogas yields.
The 18.5kW units, which were ordered by Fluid Power Co, LTD of Tainan, are helping generate what will amount to approximately 876,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity each year for the Taipower grid (equivalent to the electricity capacity of 250 households) from 300 tons of livestock manure wastewater every day in the breeding area of Sanmin, Yuli Town where eight livestock farms are home to almost 10,000 pigs and close to 700 cows.
Benefitting from the Landia Chopper Pump (which the company invented in 1950), the digester mixing system draws thick liquid from the bottom of the 6,000 cubic meters tank, where solids are chopped to accelerate the digestion process and prevent clogging of pipes and nozzles.
The Landia Gasmix System with Chopper Pump: This digester mixing system in Taiwan draws thick liquid from the bottom of the 6,000 cubic metre tank discharges it back and mixes the substrate.
In the first stage of the mixing process, the livestock wastewater is injected into the upper half of the digester, whilst biogas is aspirated from the top of the tank and mixed into the liquid.
This biogas digester tank mixer not only has the benefit of reducing buoyancy at the surface of the liquid but also sees the rising gas bubbles continue to mix after the pumps are switched off.
Manufacturer Landia is no stranger to mixing hard-to-handle liquid manures/wastewaters. In fact, the company was established way back in 1933, making slurry pumps.
Mark Lo, Managing Director of Fluid Power Co, commented:
The early results already prove conclusively that the Landia digester mixing system is the very best for producing high levels of methane – and quickly. It is also extremely reliable and very easy to maintain.
Landia’s externally mounted biogas digester mixing system in Taiwan
As well as producing biogas and creating top-quality organic fertilizer from biogas residue, the $3M Pushige Biomass Energy Center (49% financed by Taiwan’s Environmental Protection Administration) will also help reduce the discharge of the unprocessed manure slurry which is high in potentially polluting:
- COD (Chemical Oxygen Demand),
- BOD (Biological Oxygen Demand) and
- Nitrogen above safe levels.
This helps to avoid pollution from livestock wastewater, which would otherwise be discharged into irrigation channels and the Xiuguluan Creek, amounting to almost 110,000 metric tons each year.
In addition, carbon dioxide emissions will be reduced by approximately 3,000 metric tons.
Rice farmers are already using the nutrient-rich, organic biogas digestate for their farmland.
The feedback received suggest that they are immediately seeing a vast improvement in their crops, compared to the chemical fertilizers used previously.