The biogas produced from waste deposited in a sanitary landfill entered the Portuguese supply network for the first time this Tuesday, through an innovative project underway in Mirandela, in the district of Bragança.
The Minister of Environment and Climate Action, Duarte Cordeiro, attended the firstinjection of biomethane into the natural gas networkin the Autonomous Gasification Unit (UAG) of Cachão, in Urjais, in the so-called Environmental Park, where the Transmontano Nordeste landfill is located.
The official highlighted the innovation of this project developed by the Resíduos do Nordeste inter-municipal company and the Dourogás group, whose nearly 80 domestic customers and companies from the old Cachão complex will be the first in Portugal to be supplied by this renewable gas.
“It is very important that it happened here because it is a sign that we have throughout the country, in all regions, particularly in this territory, an enormous capacity for innovation and regional cooperation that allowed an extraordinary moment like this to happen in this region,” said the minister.
Duarte Cordeiro highlighted that “this project crosses several strategic objectives”for the country, since biowaste is used, the capacity of landfills to produce biogas and its transformation into renewable gases”, which will reduce the national dependence on gas imports.
The Government, as indicated, intends to generalize projects such as Mirandela, through incentives to the municipalities, namely, the reimbursement of part of the waste management expenses in landfill or come to finance the ton of waste collected.
The Transmontane Northeast was a pioneer, almost 30 years ago, in the creation of a common sanitary landfill, when garbage was still talked about, which was later treated as waste and is currently a natural resource, according to Paulo Praça, director of Resíduos do Northeast.
The sanitary landfill, which serves 13 municipalities, has been transformed into an Environmental Park, with a sorting center that separates all the garbage, including what is called undifferentiated, and for more than a decade it has been producing biogas with what is deposited there.
The use of gas produced by garbage has already generated a “savings of two million euros“, according to the president of Resíduos do Nordeste, Hernâni Dias, who said that the income from the supply of Dourogás for injection into the network will be variable and not yet estimated.
Resíduos do Nordeste, he said, has investments in the order of seven million euros to become self-sufficient in energy terms, specifically through projects such as photovoltaic panels in which 500 thousand euros are being invested.
Since 2011, in Monte de Urjais, where the landfill is located, a Dourogás unit has been installed to supply natural gas to vehicles, to which is now added the equipment that cleans the biogas from the landfill and transforms it into biomethane to replace it. . of natural gas, as explained by Nuno Moreira, of the group.
As he said, the coming times will serve to “test equipmentto understand if, by the end of the year, it will be possible to reach 100% renewable gas in this network” installed in the center of Northeast Trás-os-Montes.
The group has another project of this type in Loures, “ready to be inaugurated, in September”, which will produce about four times more than the one in Mirandela and will supply the equivalent of “around 40% of Carris’ vehicles”.
This, like another project in Bragança, is developed in the Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP).
The Mirandela teams supply, above all, the Resíduos do Nordeste garbage trucks, other heavy vehicles that pass through the site, the group’s own logistics fleet, and also light vehicles for tourists and emigrants.
Customer bills will not yet reflect the benefits of biomethane, which is currently cheaper than natural gas, as pointed out by the Dourogás technical manager, which adds up to more than 1.5 million euros of investment in the Cachão unit.
Source: Observadora
