STUDY VISIT TO BIOGAS PLANTS IN OSLO

The study visit of the POM-BIOGAS project partners to Oslo was organized on 7th-9th May 2014 by the

Norwegian Partner – Aquateam COWI AS. The main objectives of the tour were:

1. Visitation of two Norwegian power plants, deriving biogas from municipal waste;

2. Introduction to the sorting and recycling system in Norway;

3. Conducting the working project meeting due to project progress review, cooperation amongst

the project partners and programming of the future project activities and tasks.

The following two biogas facilities were visited:

Romerike biogas plant located in Esval Nes,

Hadeland og Ringerike Avfallsselskap AS (HRA) located in Musmyrvegen 10.

The Romerike biogas plant was designed and built up to the highest specifications in the biowaste

sector. Its capacity allows to treat 50 000 t/a of food waste. In addition, the plant is able to produce

approximately 27 000 t/a of nutritious biofertilizer to serve about 100 mediumsized farms.

The production line also includes a facility to produce upgraded fuel liquid biogas for buses in Oslo,

to replace fossil fuels. Replacing diesel with upgraded biogas to fuel 135 buses or similar vehicles will

reduce fossil CO2 emissions by 10’000 tons a year. Biogas in buses means cleaner air and less noise

for Oslo’s 500’000 residents.

However, the route of waste to become a valuable biogas is pretty long. Firstly, it has to come

through the sorting facility in order to separate organic fraction from inorganic bulk. Innovative

optical sorting facilities are employed to separate bags containing food waste from those containing

plastic.

Then food waste (in green bags) is being transported to the biogas facilities, where biogas is

produced during the organic fraction of municipal waste fermentation process, that consists of three

following stages:

hydrolysis/liquefaction,

acidogenesis and

methanogenesis.

Raw biogas produced from digestion consists roughly of 60% methane and 29% CO2, with trace

elements of H2S, thus it is not of high enough quality to be used as fuel gas for machinery. The

corrosive nature of H2S alone is enough to destroy the internals of a plant.

Methane in biogas can be concentrated via a biogas upgrader, to the same standards as fossil natural

gas (which has to undergo a cleaning process as well), and eventually – becomes biomethane.

Meeting the employees of both biogas plants allowed the project partners to ask many important

questions and dispel doubts concerning the anaerobic decomposition of organic waste and other

technological aspects of the manufacture and distribution of biogas.

The study tour was an excellent opportunity to visit and investigate well-designed and organized

waste management processes in Norway, leading to significant reduction of the amount of landfilled

organic waste. The Polish partners could observe the processes employed and the equipment used

on various stages of the biogas production process as well as the solutions and systems employed

while sorting and recycling waste.