Hhnk Beverwijk

A MODEL FOR FUTURE PROJECTS

HHNK selected Pentair Haffmans’ biogas upgrading system to replace the already existing small-scale one. Pentair Haffmans designed a compact solution, housed in two pre-assembled 40-foot containers that were placed at HHNK near the biogas fermenters. HHNK and Pentair Haffmans calculated that after start-up more than 1.28 million cubic meters of biomethane per year can be produced at Beverwijk. This is enough to supply 700 households with their annual consumption. Because the biomethane has the same specifications as natural gas it can be fed into the national gas grid. The Dutch company Biogast provided its Bio2Net feed-in station to connect the system to the grid and guided the project through all procedures and permits.

“Beverwijk started as a pilot project and is now developing into a profitable installation, which is financially self-sufficient, even without governmental subsidies,” said Fred Duineveld, head of HHNK’s Beverwijk Beheer Waterketen division. “Thus, it has the potential to serve as a model for additional projects and promote the benefits of biogas upgrading in the Netherlands and beyond.”

Pentair Haffmans’ state-of-the-art biogas upgrading technology offers two benefits, which are unique in the industry. The technique used by Pentair Haffmans makes it possible to recover 100 percent of the methane, so the environmentally harmful ‘methane slip’ that usually occurs when other upgrading techniques are used, is completely eliminated. Besides ecological benefits, this also means that more biomethane can be fed into the grid. In addition, Pentair Haffmans’ biogas upgrading installation allows the customer to recover the CO₂ by-product. In Beverwijk, a part of the recovered CO₂ is used to adjust the ph value during the wastewater treatment process. The recovered CO₂ can also be sold for use in greenhouses or in food and beverage applications.