Granja in PR (Brazil) turns chicken dung into fuel

Foz do Iguaçu - Before discarded or used as fertilizer without treatment, the great crap volume produced daily by 84,000 laying hens of Haacke Farm in the town of St. Helena, 110 km from Foz do Iguaçu (PR), today turns fuel automobiles. By participating in a program that turns waste into biomethane gas, the farm owner had several problems.

"The manure had strong smell bothered him, attracted flies and harmed the environment," says Nilson Haacke. He invested R $ 700,000 in equipment to decompose feces to turn biogas. Your partner in the project, the International Centre for Renewable Energy (CIBiogás), which has the Itaipu hydroelectric plant as the main sponsor, came to R $ 400 thousand in the installation of a biodigester, whose function is to purify biogas and turn it into biomethane.

Itaipu Binacional acquires vehicular gas Haacke to supply its exclusive fleet of 43 vehicles running on biomethane. The product is regulated by the National Petroleum Agency for about a year.

Being green fuel, biomethane attracts interest from automakers. Scania started producing a gas buses in São Bernardo do Campo plant (SP), with chassis imported from Sweden. A unit will be tested in Sao Paulo in May, but the group already has export contracts for Colombia and Mexico. A bus of the brand, also brought from Sweden, was run with biomethane at the end of 2014, the transport of Itaipu employees and other five states, and proved fuel efficiency.

Supply the fleet is not the only reason for the plant to spread the new alternative fuel. "Paraná is the largest producer of animal protein and in the containment process, is generated huge amount of waste that is disposed of improperly, pollute water, kill fish and reaches the plant reservoirs," says Rodrigo Regis Galvão, president of CIBiogás .

According to Galvao, the biomethane characteristics are the same as natural gas, but the source is green (comes from organic matter), while CNG is of fossil origin (comes from oil wells). In addition to chicken feces, the gas can be obtained from pigs, cattle, sugarcane bagasse and trash in general. As biogas is widely used in power generation.

After separate gas, liquid left over can go straight to the crop as a natural fertilizer. "Brazil imports 90% of chemical fertilizer used in agriculture," says Marcelo Alves de Sousa, manager of institutional relations CIBbiogás. The center develops project to transform the liquid into flakes to be resold on the market.

With chickens, which also provide eggs sold in local Ceasa, Haacke can produce 700 cubic meters per day of biomethane, which is stored in cylinders and taken to Itaipu, where there is a gas station. It also generates the energy used on the farm during the day by a power generator, resulting in monthly savings of $ 8000 on electricity bill. It also uses the fertilizer in corn and other products planting.

Haacke began producing biomethane at the end of 2014 and, for now, only provides for Itaipu. "When you have demand, will produce on a commercial scale," the farmer of 53 years. He started raising chickens at 28, with 600 birds. Today, it has 200 000 - of which 84,000 are confined to the project biomethane - and 900 head of cattle, whose waste also viewed biogas. It employs 28 staff and has a son's help, 25, and daughter, 20.

Fleet

The Itaipu fleet consists largely of Siena models, Fiat acquired by hydropower in Tetrafuel version - supports ethanol, gasoline with added ethanol, pure gasoline and CNG. Three Mitsubishi L200 and a Chevrolet Cobalt were changed to receive the gas kit.

According to Fiat, in the first quarter of this year were sold between 500 and 700 units of Siena Tetrafuel. The model has great demand among taxi drivers.

By the end of the year, the Itaipu plant will have 86 cars biomethane, and want to encourage the increased fuel production scale not only for your use. The country now has 1.18 million vehicles powered by natural gas, according to the Brazilian Association of Distributors of Gas Pipeline (Abegás). The vast majority are models that have undergone changes in workshops and can use biomethane.

According to Sousa, the cost of biomethane is on average 40% less than gasoline and 30% lower than the ethanol, and ensure greater autonomy. Compared to diesel, is 28% more into account, informs Silvio Munhoz, director of Scania. "When produced on a large scale, you can also compete in advantage with CNG," he says.

The idea is that CIBiogás biomethane is a regional fuel, especially in the areas of agribusiness. "It just is viable in a certain radius, because no demand structure of a pipeline, which is expensive," says Galvao. The information is the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo.
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