BMW's Rosslyn plant partly run on cow dung

Waste not, want not. BMW partly powers Rosslyn plant on poop.

Ever wondered whether your waste that ends` up in landfill sites, could be put to good use?  BMW says yes, it sure can.

The BMW Rosslyn plant, where more than 60 000 3 Series sedans are built per year, is using methane gas to generate around 30 percent of the electricity needed to power their operations. By teaming up with startup company Bio2Watt, BMW is able to use renewable energy that comes from the Bio2Watt biomass plant. By 2020, BMW aims to have the entire Rosslyn plant run on carbon neutral energy.

Cattle dung and biological waste from the region is processed in large biogas digesters, where it is mixed with water and micro-organisms. The result? Chemical reactions that create methane gas, which is then converted into energy (and electricity) by being fed into gas engines. The Bio2Watt plant was built in 2014 and the rainwater dams and 20 000 cattle nearby, are key to the chemical process. The Bio2Watt plant also has plans to work with another potential supplier of methane gas: a landfill site run by the City of Tshwane not far from the Rosslyn plant.

Bio2Watt CEO Sean Thomas says that the biomass plant creates an environmentally friendly opportunity for local waste and food companies to dispose of their organic waste, which include fruit and vegetable leftovers, fat from restaurants, abattoir waste, yogurt, discarded dog food and expired carbonated drinks. At full production, manure deliveries of about 160 metric tonnes from the surrounding feedlots will arrive daily at the Bio2Watt plant. The biomass plants other main source of waste, is paper sludge from American toilet-paper manufacturer Kimberly-Clark.

"You are looking at around 500 tons of waste coming onto the site every day being processed at the plant," Mr Thomas says. "A lot of the consultants, the waste companies, are knocking on the door."

The Bio2Watt plant is designed to generate up to 4.4 megawatts of power. Not a bad way to solve our national power shortage, don’t you think?

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