WiRES are organising a site visit to the award-winning Gask Farm Biogas Plant in Turriff, Aberdeenshire, on 6 June 2014.
The event will include transport from Inverurie train station to Turriff, a networking lunch, and an introductory presentation on AD and biogas by a representative from Zebec Energy.
There will then be a guided tour at Gask’s AD plant and they will hear from Gask’s owner Andrew Rennie about the innovative process that turns waste into a resource. This event is organised in partnership with the Scottish Biofuel Programme.
Zebec works with leading organizations across the private, public and social sectors and since its founding in 2008, they have engaged in the development, engineering, construction, and management of Scotland’s largest anaerobic digestion facility.
Through their continuing role in the anaerobic digestion and hydro landscape, they aim to help develop and manage renewable energy production in a sustainable fashion for the health, livelihood and security of people nationwide.
As for the Rennie family farm in Aberdeenshire, as regulations for the use of abattoir and pig slurries grew tighter and tighter, they decided on ‘a little farm diversification’ that would help overcome these problems with an added bonus of selling electricity into the National Grid.
The pig slurry and feedstocks are fed into a digester – which is a 2500m3 tank – where under anaerobic conditions, in the absence of oxygen, bacteria will breakdown the material and produce a methane rich gas.
The quantities of each feedstock used are determined by the methane richness of the biogas produced. The temperature of the digester is maintained between 38oC and 40oC which is the optimum temperature for the bacteria to live and reproduce therefore it is the optimum temperature for the production of methane rich biogas.
If you would like to go and see for yourselves there is more information at WiRES or email where you will get all the information you want.