Member press release – Clarke Energy USA and BioTown Biogas Work on First Project to Diversify Energy Portfolios into Renewable Natural Gas (RNG)
- Clarke Energy has secured a major project to design, supply and install an integrated biogas upgrading system, including power generation and heat recovery, which will process agriculture waste to convert it to RNG at BioTown Biogas.
- The project is a key strategic renewable energy win for Clarke Energy’s USA. business after expanding their product offering with RNG solutions.
- A three-stage membrane system provided by TPI will inject over 1,000 scfm of RNG into the national gas grid.
- The fully containerized INNIO Jenbacher J420 gas engine will generate 1.4MW of renewable power, in either a prime or resilient isolated operation mode, and provide 5,388 MBTU/hr of renewable heat to the digesters.
Reynolds Indiana, USA, August 2021. Clarke Energy USA, Inc., a KOHLER Company, announces the agreement with BioTown Biogas to design, supply and install a biogas upgrading plant generating biomethane for the national gas grid, with the inclusion of a biogas engine generating renewable electricity and heat in Indiana.
BioTown AG is an existing renewable energy business with a long track record of success in the sector. BioTown is expanding into the generation of biogas to be cleaned to gas grid injection standards as biomethane.
Five farming groups from the locality close to the plant will supply agricultural waste feedstock for the digesters. This will help to reduce emissions from the farms and provide the 500-600,000 gallons per day of slurry from approximately 25,000 milking cows equivalent, for the biogas plant to operate on.
The biogas from the digesters will be used for two functions – firstly 460 scfm of treated biogas will fuel the INNIO engine to generate renewable electricity and heat to support the local operations. In addition, over 1,500 scfm of raw biogas will be cleaned and injected into the national gas grid where it will be marketed into the California Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) program and capturing D3 Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs). The installation enables the avoidance of 150,000 tons per annum of carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere.
The system will be delivered as part of a turnkey solution to the customer, backed up by Clarke Energy’s established local service network.
Chad Hoerr, General Manager of BioTown commented: “BioTown AG is delivering its first project incorporating technology to upgrade raw biogas into RNG. We selected Clarke Energy due to the high performance of the membrane-based solution and the company’s ability to deliver a full turnkey solution backed by local aftersales support. In addition, financial closure of the project was helped by to the fact that Clarke Energy is a wholly owned KOHLER company satisfying our lender’s concerns regarding our suppliers corporate strength to deliver this important large-scale and complex project.”
Jamie Clarke, CEO of Clarke Energy commented: “Renewable natural gas has the potential to support the decarbonization of the America’s gas distribution network and is an important part of our offering in the US market. To this end, we are honored to have been selected by BioTown to deliver our first RNG project alongside them in Indiana. BioTown have been an important customer over the past few years, and it is pleasing to see they have shown continued faith in Clarke Energy with the award of this contract”.
Notes to editors
- About BioTown AG
BioTown AG is a multigenerational farm with facilities to hold 5,500 head beef cattle and 800-head sow and swine. The business uses only natural, anti-biotic free and hormone free feed for their livestock. Beyond the production of pork and beef, BioTown’s operations already include an anaerobic digester that recycles animal waste and other organic by-products to produce biogas. BioTown uses the gas to power six Jenbacher J320 engine generators producing up to 6 MW of electricity mainly fed back into the electricity grid. Other co-products of the digester process include liquid organic fertilizer and some useful solids. For example, our process yields potting soil, as well as a bedding material that we use in the cattle pens to absorb more waste.
www.biotownag.com/
www.facebook.com/BioTownAg/
twitter.com/BioTownAg
- About Clarke Energy
Clarke Energy, a KOHLER Company, is a leader in the engineering, design, installation and long-term maintenance of gas based energy systems.
Internationally, the company is an authorised distributor for INNIO Jenbacher gas engines in 28 countries. Clarke Energy employs over 1,200 staff and has over 7.3 GW of gas engines installed globally, 1.4GW of which is from biogas, a renewable fuel.
In the USA, Clarke Energy USA, Inc. is an authorised distributor of INNIO’s Jenbacher gas engines and is a supplier of TPI’s membrane-based biogas upgrading products.
www.clarke-energy.com
www.coenergyamerica.com
www.linkedin.com/company/clarke-energy
twitter.com/clarkeenergyusa
www.facebook.com/ClarkeEnergyUSA/
- About TPI
Tecno Project Industriale is an Italian company which provides solutions to industrial gas markets – from the beverage industry to many other gas applications. In the past 30 years, TPI has become a global innovator in the biogas upgrading and CO2 recovery sector.
TPI’s biogas upgrading solutions have been deployed globally and are focussed on delivering high engineering quality products to their customers. Technical solutions include both membrane and selective-solvent based technology.
www.tecnoproject.com/
For more information, contact:
USA – Alan Howard, Sales Director, Clarke Energy USA, Inc.
+1 262 444 1436; alan.howard@clarke-energy.com
UK – Alex Marshall, Group Business Development and Marketing Director, Clarke Energy Ltd;
+44 (0) 7917 066242; alex.marshall@clarke-energy.com
