About the plant
The Corbiere Renewables plant, run by Bio Capital, is a truly circular process. Corbiere Renewables is located on the Raynham Estate, which farms some 4,200 acres of crops and supports a beef herd.
Part of this farmland is dedicated to crops such as whole crop maize and rye along with sugar beet, these crops contribute directly to the supply of 40,000 tonnes pa of feedstock to the AD plant.
The resulting digestate is then used as fertiliser on the estate’s arable and grass land, which has reduced its reliance on chemical fertiliser by 50 percent. The plant produces 40,000 tonnes of bio-fertiliser each year in both liquid and solid form.
The biogas produced by Corbiere is upgraded to biomethane and has a generation capacity of 2.5Mwe. It is injected into the gas grid. The plant has a ring main that spans the Raynham Estate, this delivers the bio-fertiliser straight to field removing the need for additional transport.
Situation
Four years into its operation, the plant managers wanted to increase the gas yield and install a more effective feed system. The original auger system was replaced with a Vogelsang PreMix solid matter feed system. The new feed system was carefully retrofitted between the digester line and the existing Konrad Pumpe hopper.
Dougie Hingley, plant manager, said: “Originally, we fed our feedstock directly into the digester via an auger system. This was not the most efficient method of delivery, as the feedstock was bulky and caused a build-up of undigested feed in the tanks due to not being chopped beforehand. Given the volume of cereal, we were feeding, and its fibrous nature, Vogelsang recommended the PreMix feed system.”
Result
The auger was replaced with a Vogelsang PreMix RCX68, which was retrofitted to the Konrad Pumpe hopper.
“The PreMix has been a game-changer for us at Corbiere Renewables. With one machine we can chop, mix, pump and separate out any foreign matter which we don’t want to get into the pipework and cause damage. It’s reliable and easy to maintain which means we have little downtime,” said Dougie.
“We also had a lot of foreign objects causing problems in the machinery and pipework, such as stones or concrete from the field clamp, or items from the chicken sheds, that we wanted to separate out and remove from the system to protect the digesters. The PreMix does a brilliant job of protecting our equipment from this foreign matter and removes it easily.”
