The world's population is steadily increasing and along with it, the respective quantities of domestic, commercial and industrial waste. Worldwide, much of this is currently used as landfill but this solution cannot go on forever as the waste is exceeding the landfill sites available. In 1990, Professor Dr. Jochen Grossmann established his innovative engineering and consulting company, GICON, in Dresden, Germany and has invested in the research and development of solutions to this problem to create bio-energy from sophisticated biogas plants. Grossmann was recently in Jeddah and gave a presentation on the GICON bio-gas plants to the Saudi German Business Group. His interest in the field of the environment and energy goes back to the early 90s when he based his PhD thesis on this topic. “My father thought it was a great thing that I should go in the direction of the environment and energy, and so from the beginning, I was working in this field,” he explained. “I established my own company in 1990, and began with environment and energy. Right from the beginning, GICON started with environmental impact studies, engineering and safety engineering and we were using terms such as ‘energy efficiency'. We were dealing with waste, and energy, and we introduced the ‘renewables' at the beginning of 2000. In 2004, we progressed to the specialized field of ‘Waste Energy'. Now, with the change in climate strategy and energy policies all over the world, we have a great advantage because we have been researching and working on these issues for many years.” It is a brilliant concept, to use all the biodegradable waste – the supply of which is increasing worldwide – to generate energy. Grossmann described the step-by-step process which eventually produces the methane gas to provide energy. “We can use every kind of waste that can be converted by aerobic or anaerobic digestion into methane. That means we can use bio-waste, food waste, agricultural waste, and so on, but we can't use wood, or plastics, or tin. The waste arrives at the plant (complete with all the non-biodegradable items) and it is then separated. That is the basic idea. If you wanted to, you can simply take all this whole waste and put it into an incineration plant – but that isn't an efficient way of handling it because the incineration plant has to cope with the whole range of the waste. It is better to deal with optimized processes for different kinds of waste, and the important thing is that separating the waste is more efficient than incinerating all of the waste.” Many of GICON's processes have been patented, such as the process of separating the organic matter from the rest of the waste by washing it down: “All the waste – plastics and everything – goes into a huge ‘garage' and the water washes the organics out,” Grossmann explained. “This then goes out in pure, organic liquid form. In the next step of the process in the methane reactor, you produce the bio-methane and you can use it like natural gas.” The remaining water, which contains minerals and organic matter, is also useful as agricultural fertiliser. Grossmann has investigated ways in which this can be used to maximum effect with the production of algae. “Algae need a lot of minerals to grow, and they need light and carbon dioxide (CO2). The minerals are very expensive and the advantage of coupling these two processes is that you can use the minerals from the waster water from the rest of the biogas plant, and raise the efficiency of the algae production. Algae are the fastest growing plants all over the world – no other plants can produce organic material at such speed, or use such a lot of carbon dioxide (CO2) in such a short time. This makes them very interesting, on the one hand to produce organic materials (which are the basis for biogas), or for oil or cosmetics, and on the other hand, you can also reduce CO2. There are thousands of billions of different kinds, and then you can use the algae in a so-called ‘bio refinery' – that means you can start with manufacturing medicines, then you can use part of the algae for cosmetics or for food, and the remainder you can use to produce biogas, or oil, or kerosene. It is an important goal in the US to produce algae for producing kerosene.” GICON has made a rough estimation of the amount of municipal waste for Saudi Arabia: the whole amount is about twenty million tons a year. “Approximately 50 percent of that is bio waste,” explained Grossmann. “By using this bio waste for producing electro energy, it would produce enough energy for about 250,000 households.” GICON has constructed a large-scale bio-gas research and development facility in Cottbus, Germany. Through the execution of project-specific preparatory test trials with original material, a high degree of security for the design and planning of each individual client's plants can be achieved. Through use of this systematic procedure, a guarantee for gas yield can also be ensured. The setting up of such a plant will obviously involve significant investment but, as Grossmann pointed out, the disposal of waste matter is already an expensive business. “There are two important issues here: on the hand you have to accept that to deal with waste costs money; on the other hand, you have to accept that you have to do something for the climate. I think this is the most important aspect. We have to do something for the climate and we have to start with ‘renewables', and the cheapest way to start is to use the waste, because every country, everybody has a lot of waste, and they have to deal with it. For the business plan you will reduce the methane emission, and methane is twenty five times more dangerous than CO2 regarding the climate. There is a worldwide trade with CO2 certificates and you can get such certificates when you use the waste to produce energy.” For further information, contact GICON at [email protected] or log on to www.biogas.gicon.de
