Carbon Partners – shifting organic waste treatment to higher order sustainability outcomes

The Carbon Partners technology, which is based on the well established, robust and proven anaerobic digestion process, provides leading edge sustainable resource re-use and best practice in the management of green waste, food organics and other commercial, industrial and agricultural organic wastes.  Rather than sending this material to land fill or composting, the anaerobic digestion process transforms organic waste into:

• biogas, which is used to generate base load renewable electricity;
• high value organic fertiliser delivering sustainable nutrient and soil carbon recycling.

The heat and water generated by the process is recovered and reused on-site, and can be exported for off-site use.

Carbon Partners Technology Partner - GBU

Carbon Partners has exclusive access under licence to an innovative and proven anaerobic digestion technology from leading German biogas company, GBU (www.gbunet.de).

Technology Overview

The core components of the GBU anaerobic digestion technology are outlined below:

• thermal hydrolysis (“CFHR”) pre-treatment;
• anaerobic digestion using an innovative hydraulic-mix, dual chamber digester design;
• electricity generation and heat recovery from methane combustion;
• digestate dewatering and further processing into a dried and pelletised organic fertiliser where applicable.

Attractive features of the GBU technology include:

• proven: it integrates a range of individual technologies with known characteristics, and can be supported by local maintenance suppliers and expertise;
  
  
• broad applicability and scalability: the technology has been applied to a range of organic waste streams across various project sizes;
  
  
• thermal hydrolysis: the incorporation of a thermal hydrolysis step enables the facility to process organic wastes normally not considered ideal for conventional anaerobic digestion processes, provides bio-security, and significantly higher energy conversion efficiencies;
  
  
• digester design: the innovative two-chamber hydraulic-mix anaerobic digester design, avoids the need for costly mechanical mixing and requires minimal on-going maintenance;
  
  
• highly efficient: The process is configured to ensure optimum heat recovery and ensuring that over 80% of total electrical generation is available for export off-site. Waste heat is also recovered and reused;
  
  
• transport fuel potential: The biogas generated can be purified and compressed to generate “biomethane” (which is near-identical to compressed natural gas or CNG) and is suitable for use in CNG converted vehicles.

The GBU technology platform is capable of being modified to suit smaller scale (particularly agricultural) projects. Such modifications include:

• anaerobic digestion tank operation without prior thermal hydrolysis;
• the use of lower cost digester designs such as lined lagoons or basic stirred tanks.