Biogas facility recognised for innovation at QMBA Awards

A biogas and water treatment plant has won the award for ‘Innovation in Environmental Management Construction’ at the Queensland Master Builders Association (QMBA) Brisbane Regional Awards.

Facility engineers Wiley partnered with Australia’s largest meat processing company JBS Australia to create a self-sustaining biogas facility at its Dinmore facility, capturing cattle emissions to power an existing natural-gas-fired boiler plant. The result led to an 89% reduction in the facility’s annual greenhouse gas emissions and a saving of more than $1 million a year on natural gas costs.

In accepting the award, Wiley Project Director Graham Harvey said: “This is an industry benchmark demonstrating the reality of environmental processing solutions for heavy-emission producers.”

The project’s key solutions included:

• construction of a new 20 ML covered anaerobic lagoon (CAL)
• covering of two existing anaerobic lagoons (AL) with high-density polyethylene (HDPE) to capture biogas, and then burn the gas through the boiler to provide energy for the plant
• installation of a biogas train to pipe biogas from the CALs to a central flare and then to the existing 10 MW boiler
• upgrade of wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) with a new dissolved air flotation (DAF) unit.