What is the methanisation, in the context of biogas?
Methanisation is the process that turns organic matter from co-products, by-products, waste, and wastewater into biogas, thanks to the absence of oxygen. This process is also known as anaerobic digestion, which produces a decentralised renewable energy.
What is Veolia’s offering to manage the landfills biogas?
The biogas generated from landfills is a mix of methane and carbon dioxide. Although they offer a very effective way of managing waste, landfills therefore generate large amounts of methane, which is a powerful greenhouse gas (GHG) that is twenty times more damaging to the climate than carbon dioxide. This explains why we can observe more and more regulations to ban many inadequate landfills.
Veolia can extract and recover the gas generated by landfills in order to produce energy, instead of letting the large amounts of methane go into the atmosphere and harming the environment. Today, there is a pressing need for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Making use of the landfills’ gas generation is a way to reduce them. Additionally, using our waste to produce energy is both an innovative and sustainable way to preserve resources and improve access to them.
Therefore, if managed well and properly valorized, waste and the biogas produced from the streams can be valuable sources of energy.
What is Veolia’s unique value for landfills biogas management?
Biogas is a resource that is difficult to capture reliably. The added value of Veolia is precisely in the control through the whole process from the capture of biogas up to its recovery with the best techniques available. With nearly 30 years of expertise, Veolia has proven to be a reliable partner for the implementation of this solution, thanks to:
- A reliable technique to guarantee high energy productivity with better global efficiency
- An experience backed by the feedback of more than one hundred units of biogas recovery
- A competitive solution to control energy costs
- A well-trained and skilled staff to operate the biogas recovery plant
- Ability to take charge of the project throughout its term, on the whole value chain
- High knowledge of the stakeholders involved in the process
Veolia’s biogas recovery services ensure full regulatory compliance, sanitary safety, cost control and environmental performance in every step of the process. As an advocate of a circular approach, we ensure this biogas recovery solution makes it possible for territories to be their own producers of renewable energy at a local level. This enables governments to reinforce their resilience and high environmental performance, thanks to a substantial reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
What can Veolia do with the biogas extracted from wastewater treatment plants?
Wastewater sludge management is an economical and environmental challenge for our clients, and biogas recovery is a way of adding value to operations. It consists of digesting the sludge in order to reduce its volume and to produce biogas, which can create renewable energy.
Depending on the local regulations and incentives, the energy can be used directly onsite in electricity and heat forms via a combined heat and power (CHP) process, or the biogas can be cleaned to produce biomethane, which can then be injected it into the gas network, where available.
In the case of co-digestion of external bio-waste, it can bring additional revenues to the facility, depending on the applied business model. This is especially significant if the facility is able to charge disposal fees for external parties, who require bio-waste management.
How does using the biogas from wastewater treatment plants contribute to the circular economy?
There are a few elements, with the main ones being:
- Biogas is a renewable energy that will globally lower CO2 footprint, as fossil fuel consumption will be reduced
- Biogas production can reduce the pollution potential in wastewater by reducing the oxygen levels required by the organic matter. Nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorous are conserved in the digestate, which is the material remaining after the anaerobic digestion. This can then be used to displace fertilisers in crop production and can also be turned into compost.
Want to learn more about Veolia’s biogas solutions?
Both our Woodlawn and Ti Tree landfills are fit with bioreactors, which are key examples of how successful landfill biogas solutions can be.
If you wish to learn more, please follow the instructions below:
In Australia
Please submit an online enquiry to our customer service team or call us at 132 955.
In New Zealand
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For all other general enquiries, please submit an online enquiry to our customer service team or call us at 0800 325 542.