Solutions for agriculture

Agriculture is by nature a biomass production and transformation industry. Many agricultural by-products or waste can be processed by anaerobic digestion to produce energy and fertilising sludge: breeding effluents (solid or liquid manure), crops residual waste. It is possible to complement these effluents and waste from agriculture with food processing waste. In most cases, the biogas produced by on-the-farm aerobic digestion plants is used to generate electricity in a heat and power cogeneration (CHP) module.

On-the-farm plants are the most common application of anaerobic digestion in Europe and North America. Several countries, of which Germany and France, have integrated biogas as part of their plans to develop renewable energy from biomass; they have enacted a sponsored electricity purchase price by the national grid for power produced from biogas CHP. The condition to benefit from the sponsored price is that the overall energy efficiency of the CHP must be greater than 75% ; this means that most of the heat produced must be employed in a useful manner. Agriculture also provides an economic and ecological disposal of the residual sludge coming out of the anaerobic digestion plants : the sludge, rich in organic matter and in minerals, can be used as a substitute for chemical fertilisers, and generates almost no smells.

In this area, Valbio has been selected as the designer and construction coordinator, in partnership with 3 construction and civil works companies, of the anaerobic digestion plant of the " Pôle de Lanaud ", the Centre of selection for the famed Limousine cow breed.