For the Bird in Hand project, EPCO designed and supplied the digester system which compromised sludge heating, sludge mixing with gas lances and a mobile gas holder roof. The mobile gas holder roof collects methane gas and uses it for heating the sludge via a boiler. The unique thing about this site is that we were not allowed to physically flare the waste gas and had to capture the excess that wasn’t used for heating.

As there were concerns over the potential for bushfires in the area, the system had to be designed so that the excess gas would be used to heat the water which would in turn go through a cooling radiator and circulate back through the digester system. The digester uses microorganisms to break down the biodegradable material in the treatment plant.

In this system the sludge comes to the digester tank on top of which is a mobile roof. The gas emitted by the digestion process builds up a pressure under the mobile roof so it can be moved to the water heating unit. The whole system is self-generating.