Autumn 2023 EN

BIOGAS JOURNAL | AUTUMN_2023 ENGLISH ISSUE
The meat farm has no milking parlors that
need to be heated. In addition, temperatures
in January and February on Hokkaido
can be in the double-digit minus range. But
that is also the reason for another special
feature, an emergency burner for heating
in case the CHP units fail. Bussacker has
modified the model currently available on
the market so that it heats with biogas from
the plant.
Oona Farm in Obihiro: Interesting architecture of the biogas plant – the gas storage tanks are
located on the concrete roof of the fermentation tanks in the semi-circular metal huts.
in lower gas yield and puts more strain on
the agitators. “We closely monitor our facilities
because customers expect high utilization,
which we also meet with runtimes
of 97 to 98 percent.”
Sometimes Bussacker has to bear the brunt
of it. On the Oona Farm, for example, the
operators have also used another substrate
besides the manure, such as rice flour. That
lead to too much foam being produced in
the digester. “A biogas plant is a living entity
that you can easily mess up,” remarks
Carsten Bussacker with a grin. Then he
climbs up a narrow ladder and firmly steps
onto the roof of the first, large 3,400 cubic
meter digester. “We construct the walls
and roof panels using twenty-centimeter
reinforced concrete; after all, we are in an
earthquake-prone area. However, financing
such measures is only possible with
the appropriate feed-in tariffs,” Bussacker
explains.
On the roof, there is a sort of Nissen hut
made of sheet steel which houses the gas
storage tank. The waste heat from the two
CHP units is used exclusively for the plant.
Shikaoi has almost four times as many cattle as people. Every day, 130 tons of manure from
the cattles ends up in the biogas plant at the community’s environmental center. No wonder, that
the gas storage is always well filled.
Parts Made by German
Manufacturers
Tsuchiya Dairy Equipment & Systems obtains
most of the parts and machine for
their own designs in Germany, from PlanET
Biogastechnik in Gescher, Flygt, Vogelsang
or 2G, of which two hydrogen CHP plants
are in operation in Japan. German companies
are also present as local system providers.
Not far from Obhihiro, the agricultural
group Nobels Co. Ltd. operates two dairy
farms with a total of 36,000 animals. There
is a biogas plant in operation on both farms.
There is a 750-kilowatt system of electrical
capacity, one from a Japanese manufacturer,
and a 250-kilowatt plant from Weltec.
In March, another system from the manufacturer
based in Vechta, Lower Saxony,
will be commissioned for Nobels Co. Ltd.
on Honshū.
“We mainly want to treat the manure, even
if it’s not prescribed by law yet,” the operations
manager Yasuhiro Nishio explains.
“Without the favorable feed-in tariff, we
wouldn’t have made the investment in the
relatively expensive system from the Japanese
manufacturer.” The electrical energy
from the 2G CHP plant of the Weltec facility
on the smaller of Nobels’ two farms in
Hokkaido is directly consumed by the operation
for lighting and milking machines.
However, this is not a voluntary decision but
rather due to the inadequate power grid infrastructure.
Government Partially Subsidized
Biogas Investment Directly
“Of course, we would have preferred to pay
the utility 15-euro cents per kilowatt hour
for our consumption and feed it in for 30-
euro cents,” says Yasuhiro Nishio. In return,
however, the investment in the biogas
plant was partly subsidized directly by the
government. In addition, the fertilizer from
the residual materials produces good
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