GE engines power chicken waste biogas-to-energy plant

GE Energy announced September 24 that its ecomagination-certified Jenbacher biogas engines have begun powering China’s largest chicken waste biogas-energy plant. The plant, which began operating in July, supports China’s national economic and environmental goals to increase local energy reliability and improve air and water quality.

The Minhe Animal Husbandry facility’s three-megawatt (MW) chicken waste biogas power generation project is located six kilometers south of Penglai City in Shandong Province. The plant features three of GE’s 1-megawatt, JMS320 Jenbacher engines, which are generating electricity for the local grid.

The site’s new biogas plant features an anaerobic digester system that consumes 300 tons of manure and 500 tons of wastewater daily. The resulting digester biogas is then delivered to GE Energy’s durable Jenbacher engines to generate electricity for the 19,000 square-meter complex, as well as the local grid. Residual material in the digester can later be used as fertilizer.

“We are very pleased to support Minhe Animal Husbandry Company’s biogas energy project as China and other countries in Asia seek to harness their own diverse renewable and alternative resources to create cleaner sources of energy,” said Prady Iyyanki, CEO of GE’s Jenbacher gas engine business.

Minhe Animal Husbandry Company is the biggest stud and meat chicken farm and the industry’s only stock-listed company in China. The company’s 23 stud chicken farms maintain a total of 1.5 million stud chickens and another 3.7 million chickens for meat production annually.

GE Energy’s Jenbacher engines can help farm customers overcome the operational and environmental impacts of their operations. By consuming the waste in the digester to create biogas electricity, GE’s technology can greatly reduce the site’s greenhouse gas emissions and dust created by the chicken waste, which in turn helps improve regional air and water quality.

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, Iyyanki noted.

One of GE’s four official Jenbacher gas engine distributors in China, Jebsen & Company Ltd. of Hong Kong, supplied the three biogas engines and engine control equipment for the Minhe Animal Husbandry Company project.

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.

These initiatives are supporting GE’s broader corporate strategy to increase its local business presence throughout China. GE currently operates two regional headquarters in Shanghai and Beijing. In September 2008, the company also announced it would open five additional regional centers in Shenyang, Wuhan, Chengdu, Xi'an and Guangzhou, the provincial capitals in the country's northeast, central, southwest, northwest and south regions.