The Digestion Plant in Ieper, started-up almost 10 years ago, is a well-known reference in Belgium for the successful operation of a biowaste methanization plant. 

The waste is fed to a shredder unit, which opens and roughly chops the delivered garbage bags and the green waste for its further separation in a trommel sieve with 150 mm sieve size. The overflow, rich in plastic contaminants, goes to disposal, while the sieve underflow is led to the BTA® Hydromechanical Pre-treatment for the removal of the impurities.

The cleaned organic suspension is processed in a mesophilic, wet anaerobic digestion step with full mixing of the two digesters with compressed biogas. The produced biogas is treated in 4 CHP units with a total capacity of 1200 kW_electric.  

The dewatered digestate is treated for its sanitation in an intensive and advanced first composting step with forced aeration in compost boxes covered with membranes. Then the material is moved into the curing building, where the material is further stabilized on forced-aerated windrows and then refined with a mobile trommel screen. Due to its very low content of impurities, the final compost meets the quality criteria from VLACO and is sold as high quality compost.