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GE Energy just announced that its Jenbacher biogas engines have begun powering China’s largest chicken waste biogas-energy plant. The plant features a digester system that consumes 300 tons of manure and 500 tons of wastewater daily to produce biogas that is then used by three GE engines that generate electricity for the 19,000 square-meter complex, as well as the local grid. The material leftover from the digester can later be used as fertilizer.
Having a gas: The Minhe Animal Husbandry facility is located six kilometers south of Penglai City in Shandong Province. It’s the biggest stud and meat chicken farm and the industry’s only stock-listed company in China.The company’s 23 chicken farms maintain a total of 1.5 million stud chickens and another 3.7 million chickens for meat production annually. Just to give an idea of how big the operation is, the facility produces 3 megawatts of electricity. That’s more than four times the amount generated by the Wisconsin dairy farm that uses GE’s technology that was featured in our video series in July.
In the process, the manure is circulated and anaerobic, or oxygen-free, digestion takes place. Microorganisms break down the organic waste, ultimately producing gas — mainly methane with some carbon dioxide. This gas can be burned just like natural gas, thus generating energy.
The use of chicken waste digester biogas to generate onsite power also is supporting China’s national economic goals to promote the use of renewable, distributed energy technologies to improve local reliability and reduce regional greenhouse gas emissions. Backed by the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the project is receiving financial support through the sale of carbon credits called Certified Emission Reductions (CERs).
Not only are GE Energy’s Jenbacher biogas engines popular within China’s animal husbandry industry, but their fuel flexibility and durability have established a following in other energy segments, including coal mine methane and landfill gas applications.
To meet China’s growing demand for GE’s onsite power technologies, in the last year GE has expanded its Jenbacher gas engine distributor presence throughout the country and opened a new regional gas engine packaging operation at GE’s manufacturing center in Hangzhou, the capital city of Zhejiang Province in southeast China.
