Wiley awarded for self-sustaining biogas plant

Food manufacturing specialist Wiley has been acknowledged at the Queensland Master Builders Association (QMBA) State Awards for designing and constructing a world-class biogas and water treatment plant for meat processing company JBS Australia.

Wiley Project Director Graham Harvey with the QMBA award.

The JBS Dinmore facility in the Queensland suburb of Ipswich processes 1675 beef cattle per shift, requiring a significant amount of energy. Wiley’s self-sustaining biogas plant captures cattle emissions to power an existing natural gas-fired boiler plant, reducing annual greenhouse gas emissions by 89% and saving more than $1 million a year on natural gas costs.

The project’s key solutions included:

• construction of a 20 ML covered anaerobic lagoon (CAL);
• covering of two existing anaerobic lagoons (AL) with high-density polyethylene (HDPE) to capture biogas, and then burn the gas through the boiler to provide energy for the plant;
• installation of a biogas train to pipe biogas from the CALs to a central flare and then to the existing 10 MW boiler;
• upgrade of wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) with a new dissolved air flotation (DAF) unit.

For its efforts, Wiley received the QMBA award for Innovation in Environmental Management, after previously winning the category at the QMBA Brisbane Regional Awards earlier this year. The company’s managing director, Tom Wiley, said the double-win is “an exciting achievement for the company and a great reward for the team’s hard work and out-of-the-box thinking”.