Norwegian paper mill gets biogas upgrade

A paper mill in Norway has installed a biogas upgrading system to process gas from its sewage treatment plant.

Norske Skog’s Saugbrugs plant in Halden, Norway, has a history dating back to 1575. The mill has three supercalendered magazine paper production machines with a combined 500,000 tons annual capacity. The plant’s new biogas upgrade system has been provided and installed by Pentair Haffmans.

An official opening for the biogas and nano-pulp plant was held at the site recently, and included a ceremony from King Harald of Norway. It is hoped that the facility will boost the mill’s competitiveness, provide new sources of revenue, and increase renewable energy usage in the region.

The biogas plant is connected to the existing sewage treatment plant and uses sewage sludge from the paper production. The Pentair Haffmans multi-stage membrane-based biogas upgrading system delivers a raw gas capacity of 600 Nm3/h that is upgraded to approximately 490 Nm3/h of biomethane. The biomethane is then turned into compressed natural gas, and sold to an external gas supplier for use in a fleet of buses and trucks in the region.

Pentair’s biogas upgrading system entered the market in 2010, and has already been used in 40 different projects, spread across the Netherlands, Germany, France, the UK, South Africa, the Philippines and the USA. The installation at Saugbrugs however, is the company’s first in Scandinavia.