Access to biogas plant - Maaninka

The biogas plant operates in connection with a research barn, supplying its electricity and heat, and producing bedding material from slurry or digestate.

The facility allows testing of various plant-based inputs, either alone or as co-substrates with cattle slurry. With selected inputs and loading rates, it is possible to conduct measurements of gas yield and quality, energy and mass balances, and characterization of digestate properties and microbial populations.

Fertilizers, bedding materials, and substrates can be produced from digestate or raw slurry using two different screw press separators (feed flow rates 6–10 m³/h). Nutrient content of feedstocks and separation fractions can be analyzed, and energy consumption and mass balance of the separation process can be measured.

Further processing of slurry, digestate, and their separation fractions can be carried out at laboratory scale in the Biopaja.

It is possible to bring external or third-party equipment to the site for testing (e.g., gas and digestate processing, emission measurements).

The facility can produce data for LCA, mass balance, energy balance, profitability, and emission calculations.

The service includes access to the biogas plant for research purposes, as well as equipment and professional staff to support experimental setups. It covers the preparation of necessary equipment and the biogas plant, execution of agreed experiments and observations, sample and data collection, and, if needed, sample pre-processing and delivery of results.

Sampling of inputs, gas, and digestate.

Researchers, research groups, research communities, research networks, research projects, research organizations, companies.

• Physical, remote or hybrid access.
• The biogas reactor, gas utilization equipment, gas purification units, separators, or other individual equipments can be reserved together or separately.
• Minimum reservation period: 1 month for the entire biogas plant, 1 week for individual devices (e.g., separators)

• Animal-based feedstocks from outside Luke’s farm or any materials posing animal disease risks or hindering bedding production are not allowed.
• Separation and other equipment brought in for digestate processing from outside Luke’s farm must be thoroughly cleaned and disinfected, and approved by Luke’s veterinarian and responsible RI researcher before being brought to the facility.
• Use of chemicals must be agreed upon separately.

• Required equipment/systems, experiment duration, sample types, sampling intervals, analyses, and measurement/data collection needs.
• Desired inputs for the biogas plant, loading rates, and experiment duration (e.g., number of weeks or hydraulic retention time).
• For separation experiments: number of runs (repeats), additives to slurry or digestate, any chemicals used in separation, equipment settings, and desired properties of separation fractions.
• Bringing external equipment, biomaterials, or chemicals to the biogas plant must be approved by the responsible RI Principal Investigator before delivery.