2002 2012 2002 Ten years 2012 EnviTec Biogas at a glance 302,700 294,361 211,078 177,674 135,070 114,595 469 470 384 416 installed capacity 58,131 308 el 192 266 kW 21,969 85 9,634 39 6,194 15 24 2,761 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 Once upon a More is just The new EnviTec goes 40 modules/ Initial public Outside of Welcome on An era comes Change of time ... | 06 more.|18 EEG | 24 offshore | 32 20 MWel | 40 offering | 48 the box. | 64 board | 74 to an end | 82 decades | 98 17 MEN ON BOARD NAWARO THE FIRST ANKLAM ENVITEC SERVICE OUR FIRST SYSTEM THE OWN PLANT THE FIRST PLANT IN EXCELLENT CERTIFIED envitec’s next AND A LOT OF LAND OPERATION THE CZECH REPUBLIC The fi rst biogas plant The fi rst biogas park The fi rst operational OUTSIDE GERMANY EnviTec Feedcontrol Work comes fi rst, then DECADE IN SIGHT based on renewable in Europe management contract Via ROM, we went to More independence from Heat for a nursery gets „Machine of the the structure – ISO 9001 with ground-breaking The year of foundation input material Norway and America. plant construction and a primary school year 2010“ technology BIOGAS IN ENVITEC SERVICE CONTEMPORARY WHEN THE BIOGAS GERMANY CONTEMPORARY l‘orÉal has a CONTEMPORARY WITNESSES CONTEMPORARY How much power does WITNESSES CONTEMPORARY 25 CONTEMPORARY TURNED INTO NATU- 92 | The benchmark fi gures BEAUTIFUL | WITNESSES 10 a MW have? WITNESSES RAL GAS. WITNESSES 71 WITNESSES | el 44 | CO -BALANCE. | 92 from 2005 | 2 Olaf von Lehmden and The largest biogas With a biogas plant Erwan Porrot, Jürgen Tenbrink, MAY IT BE A LITTLE Roswitha Steinhaus Andreas Kemper, Horst David Krčál Thoughts regarding the processing plant from EnviTec. a Chinese man and Clemens Willenborg and MORE? Ostendorf, Walter Grever Roel Slotman anniversary from our team Horst Ostendorf More than 30 From 1997, 15 years of experi- “EnviTec” has ence in construc- stood for construc- History tion of sewage tion of plants. And biogas plant tech- Company > treatment plants. from 2000 for nology as well. Germany 2,761 kWel 6 2002 For already 30 years our employees have build 2002 7 sewage treatment and waste water plants. The building in Saerbeck Our first “Key-Visual” was taken over as the registered office of – the communicated “key frame”, a And since 2000, EnviTec also stands for state- EnviTec Mall Environmental Systems. How- tree – was derived from the elements ever in the beginning, the businesses were of the logo It was used in folder titles of-the-art biogas plants. also controlled from Lohne and Visbek. and image motifs. < < The sapling, the landscape and the cloud represent 2002. Once upon a time ... important elements of a complete natural cycle. … there wAS A SAPLING, A CLOUD AND A LOT OF GREEN LAND ... It all began in the year 2002. Olaf von Lehmden, Kunibert Ruhe and Tobias Schulz saw the potential of biogas and established EnviTec Biogas GmbH, headquartered in Lohne in Lower Saxony. The entrepreneurs combined their many years of experience in the plant engineering and project processing with their knowledge in the management of agricultural operations. At the same time the politicians with their law, setting out the priority for renewable energies (EEG) and the remuneration for feeding bio power into the local power grid included, levelled the path for them. Biogas became the attractive source of revenue, by which began the enterpreneurial success story of EnviTec Biogas. June 20, 2002: Saerbeck – 15 Foundation Germany Framework EnviTec Biogas von Lehmden, The company is contract History GmbH was Tobias Schulz and located in the started with a team with General Elec- Company > founded by Olaf Kunibert Ruhe Münsterland and of 17 employees. tric Jenbacher Germany 2,761 kWel 8 2002 EnviTec Biogas GmbH had only 2002 9 17 employees in the year when Contemporary witnesses > Olaf von Lehmden Kunibert Ruhe it was founded. Out of those, Before founding EnviTec Biogas, Olaf von Lemden was In EnviTec Mall Environmental Systems, Kunibert Ruhe has the managing partner in different medium-sized companies. already been able to gain experience in biogas technology. He 13 are still working there. He is responsible for the commercial sector. was responsible for engineering and marketing in the beginning. < < 17 men on board and a lot of land in sight … The first biogas 15 plant with 70 kWel was put into op- History eration in Albersloh The second plant Germany 2,761 kW Technology > (Münster) had 160 kWel el 10 2002 Parts of the history of the early days sound 2002 11 so bizarre that they can scarcely be believed. Contemporary witness > Jürgen Tenbrink is considered to be one of the pioneers in the field of bio- But one of these events was the key to gas technology. He was involved right from the beginning and bore witness to not only the development of EnviTec, remarkable knowledge … but also that of the plant engineering in general. … a cowhorn, mayo … MORE THAN TEN YEARS AGO, when the term of sewage plants, since the ‘biogas’ was largely unknown, tank construction was our solution that we used was not actual main business. But this should change soon. We particularly well-known in the field of biogas devoted an ever-increasing amount of our time and energy technology. We then applied ourselves to to technological development and soon found out just how the process, which led to the birth of exter- optimisable the biogas process was. Flukes and coincidences nal desulphurisation. lent a hand, too. For example, one of our operating custom- Another operator once got in touch with us to let us know that ers, who used manure and by-products that came from his new pump had broken down. We arrived on the scene market gardens as input materials, was temporarily able to immediately – and found out that a cowhorn had been sucked use mayonnaise as waste material. Within a very short period into the pump. Usually, all cows are dehorned. The fact that of time, he was able to produce an incredibly large volume the herd contained a ‘horned specimen’, only one of whose of hydrogen sulphide. Naturally, the motors could not toler- horns was cut off and somehow managed to get through the ate that, and the issue had to be addressed quickly. Without cracks, fall into the manure cellar and then enter the pump further ado, we added appropriate amounts of ferric chloride, along with the manure, represented an unusual set of unfor- which helped matters immediately. In that case, we profited tunate circumstances. However, the pump was broken and, from the experience that we had gained from the construction much to the chagrin of the operator, had to be replaced. A COWHORN was found in a biogas plant’s pump, after the new pump broke down on account of congestion. Gas counter and Gas storage -analysis Integrated control mixing tank Qualitative control Gas engine Centralised control Tank made of pre- 15 Accurate weighing of gas and accurate Core of the plant, system which fabricated parts and homogeneous measurement of which transforms supervises and op- High quality History mixing of input the produced gas gas into electricity erates all actuators concrete tank with Technology > substances amount and heat and sensors short building times Germany 2,761 kWel 12 2002 13 2002 Dipping and paddling Contemporary Clemens Willenborg After several painstaking (the immersion into the fermentation substrate witness > was involved in the construction of the first biogas takes a lot of doing) and expensive repairs which were carried out by plant in Oldenburg Münsterland and is currently in divers from Hamburg who had plenty of experience when it came to diving charge of EnviTec’s biological services department. into the Elbe, the recovering rod for agitators was finally developed. < … and a rubber dinghy. IT WAS A SNOWY ROSE MONDAY, when the construction of our very fi rst plant required Jürgen to posi- tion an overpressure protection system on a platform. We had no service department, so everyone had to take care of everything. He suffered frostbite in one of his fi ngers when he had to fi ddle around with anti- freeze mixtures and other unpleasant liquids... and on a Rose Monday, to boot. But our second order had its fair share of problems, too. The person responsible for programming the control system programmed a path incorrectly, and the pump turned itself on. And presto! The protective cover sprang open, and the entire technical building got fl ooded with manure! We had to spend the whole night cleaning the building with squee- gees. The repairs that we carried out with our ‘MS digester’ had their moments, too. The MS digester was a rubber dinghy that was positioned on the biomass in the digester. Nowa- days, you wouldn’t do that, although the effort associated with pumping the digester empty wasted two days’ worth of electricity sales. But the risk of something untoward happening is just too high. That is something that really has undergone a sea change – namely, the fact that everything is more secure and subject to an acceptance test. And that’s just the way it should be. The “MS Fermenter” had been put to use in the digester. Today the dinghy is enyoing its retirement in the warehouse in Lohne. 15 Germany 2,761 kWel 14 2002 One of our first plants 2002 15 was characterised by Contemporary As a customer, Horst Ostendorf The biogas plant Ostendorf witness > was so impressed by EnviTec’s biogas plants that lucky coincidences and was one of the first facilities he procured a few more orders for the company.