In 2013, DairyGold, Ireland’s largest farmer owned dairy business, invested in an innovative anaerobic digestion system. The digester is designed to pre-treat a large portion of the process wastewater from DairyGold’s production facility. The reactor anaerobically digests the majority of the organic load. It converts the degradable organics in the wastewater into energy-rich biogas and generates a small amount of waste anaerobic sludge.
The new process has directly displaced the burning of natural gas, supplying 6% of site heat requirements from a renewable source, with an equivalent greenhouse gas reduction of over 2,700 tonnes per year.