The wastewater anaerobic digestion biogas project is part of the Living Danube programme, which is Europe’s largest environmental investment currently under implementation.
ENER-G has installed a 4.5 MWe anaerobic digestion biogas cogeneration system, together with three 2.5 MW Loos boilers for additional hot water generation using natural gas, or biogas. The company also manages the operations and maintenance services.
The plant could increase the amount of biologically treated wastewater in Budapest to 95% by 2010 – treating an average 350,000 m3/day waste water from most of Buda and part of Pest, serving approximately one million people.
Construction of the plant took more than two years and cost nearly €0.5 billion, which was financed by the EU, the Hungarian state and Budapest municipality.
The wastewater biogas energy centre will run at up to 80% per cent capacity until September 2010, when it will be fully commissioned. It will supply up to 4.5 MWe of renewable electricity to the site which provides more than 50% of the plant’s total electricity consumption.
The maximum 8.5 MW heat generated by the combined heat and power (CHP) unit is utilised in the digester process consuming 563m3/h biogas per unit.
“The Budapest wastewater treatment plant is a vivid example of how effective anaerobic digestion is as a commercial and environmental solution for large-scale projects such as this,” says Balazs Marialigeti, Director of ENER-G.