Cooperl, one of the world's largest pig producers, is creating biogas, biofertilizers and algae feed from animal waste.
Cooperl is an agricultural pig breeding cooperative based in Brittany (France) that has a turnover of over 2.000 billion euros per year and 7.400 employees. It has 2.950 pig-producing members and the majority are small family farms with an average of 200 sows.
Always thinking about the circular economy, and to the extent possible, the outputs of each process are reprocessed and used as inputs for another. This means that pigs are just one aspect of their business: the cooperative also makes high-value products from waste, converting nitrogen and phosphorus recovered from manure into mineral fertilizer and biogas.
Last year, Ramón Armengol of the European General Confederation of Agricultural Cooperatives said that agricultural cooperatives are especially good at adding value to waste. This activity can feed “energy, manufacturing, and technological and digital systems.”
In 2019, Cooperl inaugurated the largest non-spreading methanizer in Europe, Émeraude Bio-énergie, to process pig manure from 100 of its farms. 25% of the input to the digester is pig manure, 40% is wastewater from its slaughterhouse and the rest is recycled water from plant processes and pig urine.
The first step to produce biogas is to collect the raw material. This is done using the Trac system, a proprietary technology that immediately separates urine and manure as it falls to the ground. Liquid waste is washed along a gentle slope, while solid waste is mechanically removed from the vessel. 100 farms have already installed this system and collect around 34.000 tons of solid manure. By moving waste out of pig houses, it reduces concentrated ammonia emissions allowing it to comply with European gas emissions regulations. Farms sell their waste for around €20 per ton.
The plant produces 7,5 million cubic meters of biogas per year by using microorganisms to decompose waste in the absence of oxygen. The biomethane obtained is then introduced into a gas distribution network, providing 60 million kWh per year, equivalent to the energy needs of 6.000 homes.
The methanizer also creates biofertilizers using the digestate. The plant produces between 80.000 and 100.000 tons of pelleted biofertilizer per year. Biofertilizer is in demand throughout the year.
However, they have a surplus of bionutrients due to strict EU directives that limit the application of fertilizers, and as a result, Cooperl is experimentally redirecting some of its 156.000 tons of digestate annually to a microalgae culture capable of metabolizing this product. The cooperative trusts that algae animal feed will be an important boost for the circular economy of its processes, being able, for example, to reduce soy imports. Trials like this are essential to finding energy-efficient ways to produce food-grade algae.
This content comes from BIO MARQUET INSIGHTS
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