Norvento unveils biogas innovation for UK market

Norvento, a Spanish manufacturer of on-site renewable energy systems, has launched a new integrated biogas innovation for agricultural, utility and industrial users throughout the UK.

Known as the Norvento-BioPlant, the system enables small and medium-sized companies and landowners to sustainably manage organic waste and turn it into renewable gas, electricity or both, allowing them to take a step towards energy independence.

According to the company, Norvento’s BioPlant is a medium-sized system for the agricultural and landfill waste sectors. The company claims that its innovation will benefit from "the Feed-in Tariff (FiT) and Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) sweet spots", which range between 150kWh for electricity and 600kWh for heat.

The system is a modular and automated anaerobic digestion (AD) plant that can be tailored to the energy and budget requirements of the end user, as well as the available fuel source.

It collects, stores and treats waste, creating renewable biogas, which is refined and then pumped into a boiler or cogeneration engine to produce heat and electricity when required.

‘Steady growth’

The UK AD market has shown steady growth in recent years, fuelled by FiT and RHI support. It continues to offer opportunities to a diverse range of industries, including farming, food processing, water and waste treatment, and the chemical and pharmaceutical sectors. 

According to Norvento, with a growing pipeline of sites scheduled for development in the UK, Norvento BioPlants have already been successfully deployed in Spain, where they are providing considerable benefits to agricultural and industrial users.

At Xustás Farm, an intensive dairy farm in Galicia with 110 cattle, a BioPlant system is converting slurry and plant waste into 280,000kWh of energy per year and meeting 100% of on-site heat and power demand. At Casa Macán Dairy, a cheese factory, also in Galicia, a BioPlant is directly supporting the cheese production process by covering 40% of total heat and electricity demand.

“The economics of small and medium biogas generation really stack up for users with energy-intensive on-site processes, especially if the energy demand is heat-based,” said Ivo Arnús, Norvento’s director of UK business development.

“Having supported UK landowners and businesses for some years with our nED100 wind turbines, we’re now enabling these users to further diversify their sources of income with a highly efficient AD system that delivers rapid return on investment and long-term energy cost savings.

“Wind turbines and biogas solutions share a similar customer base - plus these two technologies can work really well together in a micro-grid, which is the next step for on-site generation.”