Microelements for biogas plants

Microelement should not be confused with enzymes. This is a completely different product. Enzymes target raw materials, and microelements target the bacterium itself. Microelements (also known as micronutrients or trace elements) are what bacteria is made of and what it lacks in raw materials. Without microelements, a biogas plant at best works halfway, and at worst does not work at all.

Microelements are different. There are, for example, in a powder form, the most available on the market. They sediment to the bottom and do not react completely. In the contrast, our mixture of microelements is in a special chelated (jelly) form. Microelements are bound with organics, float throughout the entire volume of a biogas reactor and are several times more efficient. Moreover, the organic shell is a kind of edible packaging and helps microelements absorption.

Here are two real cases of using microelements from our practice.

CASE 1

Biogas plant "Okny-1".
Electric power: 1,2 MW
Raw material: corn silage 100%
Use of DFA 1000 trace elements: 1 liter/day
Start of trace elements use: 2019

After starting-up the biogas plant, the operator was not able to reach capacity 50% for 3 months. Acidification of raw materials occured. And with the addition of a larger amount of raw materials, even more acidification took place. And not an increase, but a decrease in the biogas yield happend. The plant owner considered even suing because on his opinion the biogas plant was incorrectly designed and would not provide the promised prefromances. The proposal to use microelements was met skeptically. Moreover, the Customer tried some powder mixtures himiself, which did not help. With the beginning of DFA100 addition, the biogas plant stabilized in 4 days and certanly began to increase power output. Operator managed to reach 100% capacity in 4 weeks.

CASE 2

Biogas plant "Korsun"
Electric power: 7,5 MW
Raw materials: pressed sugar beet pulp
Use of DFA 1000 trace elements: 6 liters/day
Start of trace elements use: 2019

The plant manager is an experienced process engineer, CEO and a specialist with a great life- and 40-year managerial experience at a sugar mill, a top-level food industry veteran. He reacted with a great doubt about using microelements. On his opinion, the engineering company offered a placebo and the biogas plant could operate without chemical additives. Of the three reactors, 1st reactor was started-up without additives, and the 2nd was with the microelement additives. It was decided to start up the 3rd reactor after the start-up results of the first two. The 2nd reactor (with microelements) was started-up 3 weeks later than the 1st. 2 weeks after the start of the 2nd reactor, the 1st reactor had already been tried to be accelerated for 5 weeks and did't reached 50% capacity. The  2nd reactor overtook the 1st reactor. Any doubts have disappeared. The customer only works withmicroelements now.