Turning manure into gold

In June next year, chicken farmer Lars Ander­sson in Banke­berg will start deliv­ering 1,500t of chicken manure a year to Biokraft Biogas’ 125GWh gas plant outside Mönsterås. “My manure will no longer be a cost item on the income state­ment,” says Lars. “Instead, it will be a source of income.” The envi­ron­mental permits Lars currently has allow him to store the manure under cover on his 0.8-ha farm for 10 months. After that, he must dispose of it, and this requires long hauls with little in the way of earn­ings.

Once deliv­eries to Biokraft are under way, the manure will be collected eight times a year, and he will be able to expand his chicken produc­tion. He has little interest in taking back the digested manure. “I’ll get back a certain amount of the biofer­tiliser that is produced, but there’s also a finan­cial trans­ac­tion in my contract.”

Each supplier signs an indi­vidual contract with Biokraft. And as a partner in Biokraft Biogas Mönsterås’ 700-million-kronor (£51m) plant, he will also receive divi­dends on future profits. “It’s very exciting to be part of such an oper­a­tion.”

Chris­tian Strand­berg, project manager over­seeing construc­tion of the biogas plant, says that when fully oper­a­tional, it will produce almost 100% pure lique­fied biogas (LBG), equiv­a­lent to 12m litres of diesel, for customers both in Sweden and abroad.Like most large biogas plants being built now, Biokraft relies on manure as its main raw mate­rial, or at least 80% of the 260,000t of substrate that the plant will consume at full produc­tion. The remaining 20% is waste from the food industry.

Chicken farmer Lars Ander­sson in Banke­berg outside Mönsterås is a proud partner of Mönsterås Biogas AB, which will produce 120TWh LBG starting next year.

More Biogas has been oper­ating for just over 10 years and has its plant for vehicle gas outside Mönsterås. The local area is a big customer for the company.

Beyond the economic return, Lars Ander­sson finds it “exciting to be part of such a company.”

Live­stock farmers take the concept a step further

In Alböke on Öland, dairy farmer Stig Bertilsson and 50 other live­stock farmers have chosen a different path to produce biogas together with Dutch company Orange Gas. To minimise manure trans­port, they plan to build a network of pipelines from several farms that can also be used as satel­lite loca­tions. The manure is routed to the diges­tion plant, and the refined biofer­tiliser is returned to the farm.

The live­stock farmers, who also include a camel breeder, have invested SEK 16m (£1.17m) in building the diges­tion plant. From there, the raw gas (60–65% methane content) will be sold to a planned processing plant owned and oper­ated by Orange Gas, which produces LBG. From Alböke farm, Stig and his son Mattias will supply 15,000t of manure from their 800 dairy cows, out of the total 240,000t the plant is expected to consume. The plant will run 100% on manure. Others choose to build co-diges­tion plants and bring in other substrates, for example from the food industry, to increase the energy content.

Better biofer­tiliser quality in return

“We could produce gas solely from manure, but then the volumes would be a little smaller,” says Denniz Erol, CEO at More Biogas, which has been oper­ating for 10 years. The compo­si­tion and quality of the substrates which go into biogas produc­tion affect the quality of both the gas and the fertiliser that goes back to the farmers.

Pig farmer and More Biogas partner Daniel Juneberg also grows 350ha of rape­seed and wheat, and he praises the fertiliser he receives in return. “The nitrogen and liquid balance in the biofer­tiliser makes the nitrogen more avail­able; it is easier to spread and almost completely odour­less. Our neigh­bours say that prob­lems with flies have disap­peared,” he says.

Everyone agrees that the envi­ron­mental bene­fits of spreading the biofer­tiliser are a great advan­tage, but the agro­nomic bene­fits are just as impor­tant. “It is as good as and some­times better than the commer­cial fertiliser we have bought,” says partner and pig farmer Per-Göran Sigfridsson. “It has a better nitrogen-phos­phorus content, and the nitrogen is more readily avail­able. We’ve almost halved our purchases of commer­cial fertiliser.”

New biogas plants also sepa­rate the phos­phorus during diges­tion, which gives live­stock farmers the oppor­tu­nity to increase stocking rates without exceeding phos­phorus appli­ca­tion limits to their land. In Sweden, farmers are allowed to spread a maximum of 22kg/ha per year of phos­phate. “This allows us to sell phos­phorus to cereal regions where it is needed more,” says Stig.

From left to right: Pig farmer and partner of More Biogas, Daniel Ljuneberg, and Per-Göran Sigfridsson, together with the company’s CEO, Denniz Erol.

The diges­tion takes place at 55 °C in two digesters with a capacity of 8,000 m³ and 2,000 m³ each..

Substrate samples at the More Biogas facility. Residues from live­stock farming make up the majority of the inputs intended for meth­a­niza­tion.

Strong polit­ical support

There is a greatly increased demand for biogas from heavy goods vehi­cles and industry today, and a bonanza is expected when the energy-inten­sive marine sector starts taking a serious interest. However, the icing on the cake is the polit­ical support the biogas industry has, both in Sweden and across the EU, as natural gas in general and Russian natural gas in partic­ular is to be replaced. The Swedish programme Klimatk­livet (The Climate Leap) provides a maximum of SEK 150m (£11m) in invest­ment support for biogas plants, and there is a produc­tion subsidy of 40 öre/kg (2.9p/kg) of gas produced from manure. According to Erik Woode, who is respon­sible for biogas produc­tion at Finnish gas company Gasum, Pres­i­dent of the Euro­pean Commis­sion Ursula von der Leyen has said that the EU should aim to produce 350TWh of biogas by 2030 as part of the RePow­erEU plan.

Different ways to get involved

Not all farmers get the chance to become part­ners in the final biogas produc­tion and thus in the value of the gas to the end user. Gasum does not allow any part­ner­ship; instead, farmers have the role of raw mate­rial suppliers. Dag Arvidsson, an organic milk producer and pig farmer, is one of around 50 contracted farmers who will supply manure to Gasum’s Göten 120GWhLBG plant, which will start produc­tion in September this year. The Göten plant is one of five of the same size that Gasum plans to build.

From his 5,000 slaughter pigs and 500 dairy cows, Dag will supply 30,000t of manure to the plant, which will consume 400,000t of substrate each year. He sees many advan­tages to the contract. “It’s fantastic to be part of such a posi­tive envi­ron­mental initia­tive, to produce fuel from an already existing product and get better fertiliser in return,” he says. “It’s a big boost for us here.”

Compe­ti­tion forraw mate­rials is increasing

What started with gas producers hoping for a pure exchange deal with farmers – manure for the gas plant and fertiliser in return, has changed as demand for manure has increased. Now a finan­cial trans­ac­tion is always included in the contracts which are long-term, up to 20 years. “Manure in exchange for fertiliser is the basis of the deal, but now it is a combi­na­tion of that and a finan­cial trans­ac­tion,” says Dag, whose slurry pits are full and ready for the first deliv­eries. “We started this 12 years ago. For nine years, there was no demand at all.”

Many live­stock producers still choose to build their own biogas plants on their farms to produce their own elec­tricity, and industry consul­tant Stefan Hall­dorf esti­mates that around 140 such plants will be built in the coming years. From being the initia­tors of such projects, farmers are now being sought out by gas compa­nies who want to sign long-term supply contracts with them to justify their invest­ments in billion-kronor plants. “But that’s not a problem for us,” says Lars. “Agri­cul­ture is about the long term, and 70 years is long-term for us, not five years.”

The market for substrate streams from the food industry, with higher energy values, already exists, and biogas compa­nies compete there with other buyers like the animal feed industry. But farmers’ manure is becoming increas­ingly valu­able in line with the vigorous expan­sion of the biogas industry, which can no longer be based on food-grade crops. “We’re already seeing it,” says Erik. “It is becoming increas­ingly clear that we will see enor­mous compe­ti­tion for the raw mate­rial.”