"We are proud to receive this prestigious European award" said Gottlieb Hupfer, Chairman of the EnviroChemie Management Board. Our excellent water technology is making a contribution to the sustainable use of resources, by turning wastewater into a commodity from with biogas is generated, thus saving mineral oil."

On 5 June 2012 at the UN Environment Day all the national winners of the Energy Globe Awards will be presented online, to publicise to a wider audience the most innovative ideas to protect earth, water, fire (energy) and air (www.energyglobe.com).

The jury has spoken:

Mother Earth urgently needs our protection – in everything that we plan, build, or dispose of. Today’s waste water becomes tomorrow’s valuable and renewable energy source. The National Energy Globe Award for Sweden goes to the Project:
Energy through waste water from dairies. Mr. Gottlieb Hupfer from EnviroChemie GmbH

EnviroChemie was awarded the prize for its Biomar process for biological treatment of wastewater which both cleans the wastewater and generates biogas. This process is used, for example, in the food and beverage industry, the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, and the paper industry.

At the Swedish dairy company Norrmejerier, based in Umeå, an economically and environmentally successful anaerobic wastewater treatment and energy recovery approach has now been in operation for more than five years. This has also enabled disposal costs to be reduced.

One of the dairy company’s problems was the handling of the large quantities of whey created every day. Around 90% of the milk used in cheese production ends up as the high-energy by-product of whey. The high costs of disposal of whey have been reduced by marketing a whey-based drink and by selling it as a feedstuff for livestock.

But the volumes created are so huge that the marketing approach on its own was not enough. So a decision was taken to not only separate out the valuable proteins in the whey, but also to make productive use of the remaining organic materials in the form of energy as part of the wastewater treatment. By taking a holistic energy approach, a part of the heat energy stored in the wastewater is recovered using heat exchangers and heat pumps.

The biological wastewater treatment at the large-scale dairy is done using the EnviroChemie Biomar AWR process. Each day up to 250 m³ of whey or whey permeate is created at the dairy, which is then transferred to the wastewater treatment system. Each day in 2009 up to 10,000 m³ of biogas was produced with a methane content of 65 to 70%. The energy from the biogas which is produced is then used to generate steam.

More than 2,000,000 m³ of biogas are created, which saves over 1,200,000 l of heating oil. Moreover, thanks to the high biogas yield, the investment costs of this EU supported project were amortised sooner than expected.

The Norrmejerier dairy company described the project as an economic and ecological success. The intelligent process technology combination of biological wastewater treatment, biogas/energy recovery and whey disposal creates a clear economic benefit for the dairy company, as well as significantly improved energy efficiency.