Advanced design and operations control strategies are a crucial part of developing successful anaerobic digestion projects and are the attributes most universally transferrable from site to site.
Nearly 25 percent of failed anaerobic digestion projects trace the root cause of project failure to inadequate system control and operation. Another 17 percent fail due to engineering deficiencies and an additional 16 percent due to biogas utilization problems. In total, over half of anaerobic digestion failures trace the ultimate cause of their failure to the areas where NLC Energy has applied relentless focus.
The NLC Energy team has studied and learned from the failure of others. Our team understands the underlying complexity surrounding anaerobic digestion technology and has developed countermeasures that directly address and mitigate these complexities as a key competitive advantage.
A multi-tiered operational control strategy to manage the complexity of anaerobic digestion operations, especially where high-strength waste substrates (HSW) are processed alongside dairy manure in parallel anaerobic digestion systems. This three-tiered system includes:
- Computational Modeling of the entire anaerobic digestion system (based on the ADM1da model)
- A monitoring & control platform that manages feeds and flows data in a quasi-real-time, web-based application
- Data acquisition and data analytics capability that enables rationalization of all incoming data and accurate prediction of operational outcomes
With increased understanding of the chemical processes in the anaerobic digestion process, we have enhanced the precision, safety and productivity of our process