=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1152/paper20
|storemode=property
|title=Implementation of BiogasWebPlanner(R) System for Analysis of Biogas Plants Market In Poland
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1152/paper20.pdf
|volume=Vol-1152
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/haicta/PilarskiKDBK11
}}
==Implementation of BiogasWebPlanner(R) System for Analysis of Biogas Plants Market In Poland==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1152/paper20.pdf
Implementation of BiogasWebPlanner® system for
analysis of biogas plants market in Poland
Krzysztof Pilarski, Tomasz Kluza, Jacek Dach, Piotr Boniecki, Adam Krysztofiak
Institute of Agricultural Engineering, Poznan University of Life Sciences, Poznan, Poland,
e-mail: jacek.dach@up.poznan.pl
Abstract. The paper presents the internet tool for decision support and data
acquisition for Polish biogas market. This system helps investors to plan the
size and potential power of biogas plant with usage of selected, own substrates.
Because of open access via internet, the BiogasWebPlanner® allows to create
one of the biggest database about future Polish biogas market.
Keywords: biogas, Polish market, data acquisition, Internet, modelling.
1 Introduction
In Central Europe, the biomass will be the main source of renewable energy in
the horizon of 2020 (Pilarski et al, 2009). The biogas production (and further
electricity and heat production) will be one of the most important aims of biomass
usage (Igliński et al. 2011). What is also very important, the biogas plants are very
efficient in deodorization of slurry and other malodorous wastes. However, in Poland
the new anti-odour regulations will be implemented soon, the European Commission
works also with the anti-odour directive project. Looking on this fact as well as the
Polish target for electricity production from renewable source of energy (15% in
2020), the perspectives for development of biogas market in Poland are huge (Krzak
2009). That is why in 2010 the Polish government established the national program
for biogas plant development (2500 installations with the power of 1-3 MWel built
before 2020). With additionally 15-30 thousands of small installations (below 0,4
MWel) planned to build before 2030 by farmers, Poland seems to be actually the
biggest future biogas market in Europe (Popczyk 2011).
However, currently there are 13 agricultural biogas plants working in Poland and
several hundreds localization for future installations. Looking on the targets
mentioned above, the Polish biogas market is still almost empty (Pilarski et al. 2010).
But thousands of investors (big international companies, Polish businessmen, farmers
etc.) are interested in planning of biogas plants and they need some support. Poznan
University of Life Sciences has got a unique in Poland Laboratory of Eco-
Technologies, where the research on biogas production are largely developed. Within
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235
last 4 years, the amount of questions and inquiries concerning substrates usage and
biogas plant planning from private sector increased significantly. That is why we
decided to create the BiogasWebPlanner® (BWP) as a tool for decision support for
private investors.
The BWP project came to life as an idea to create a web based application that
can help farmers and investors interested in entering the biogas market to simulate
and calculate potential Return On Investment and provide answers for the entry-level
questions that they were asking during conferences and via e-mail or phone calls. On
the other hand, from the scientific perspective we wanted to gather the data about the
potential biogas industry in Poland and to be able to point out the key regions of
Poland actively interested in such development.
The aim of this study is to check the potential of data collecting from Polish
biogas market with usage of BWP as a free internet tool. Moreover we want to
analyse the structure of planned market, including size of the planned installations,
their geographic distribution in Poland and the substrates taking into account for
future biogas plants. This study is also the part of two scientific projects:
Technologies of reduction of methane emission from animal production and manure
management in the context of GHG taxation” and “Technologies of management the
wastes from biofuels production” (research projects financed by the Polish Ministry
of Science and Higher Education, Contract numbers: N N313 271338 and N N313
050036).
2 Material and methods
At the beginning of the project we have decided how the overall architecture of
the solution should look like. We wanted to keep the link between the Excel
Spreadsheet (which contained the model and the basis for the calculations) and the
new Web Application. This allows us to do frequent updates of the BWP whenever
the underlying model changes or develops. The BWP was also designed to be placed
on the website of The Laboratory of Eco-Technologies
(http://www.ekolab.up.poznan.pl ). Furthermore, we decided, that we will maintain a
database of substrates that we have been experiment with or read about in
publications along with the ability for the users to provide their own substrates or
mix those two categories in a single simulation. With all that in mind, we also
thought about the usability and the user-friendly interface during the design of the
interaction.
As a part of the solution we are using the Spreadsheet Converter®
(http://exceleverywhere.com) which does the conversion between the Excel native
file format and html/javascript which is the standard set of languages of the Internet.
With the use of more advanced features of the Spreadsheet Converter® extended by
Google Analytics® platform we are able to gather the data about the use of our
application. It is important that users are aware of that background process of
gathering the data for scientific purposes.
Some of the new features that we are currently working on for the future
releases of the BWP: to extend the capabilities of the application by adding new
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calculation models (cost of the bank loan and how it affects the overall ROI, cost of
transport and utilization of the pulp as the natural fertilizers) and more advanced
analytical module (including Software as a Service architecture for gathering the data
and custom build module for processing).
3 Results
Before we introduce the BiogasWebPlanner® on the laboratory website there
were around 250 visits per month on average. Our visitors were looking for contact
information and other general information about The Laboratory of Eco-
Technologies (fig. 1).
Fig. 1. Details of visits on laboratory website before BWP run .
After the full year from the start of the Biogas Web Planner the traffic on our
website increased over 10 times and we have reached almost the whole country (but
also from other counties like Western Europe, USA, Brazil, China). From the data we
were able to define what are the key regions interested in the Biogas industry (fig. 2).
A lot of traffic came from the largest cities of Poland, probably because they are the
places where the consulting companies and/or investors have their offices.
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Fig. 2. Details of visits on laboratory website after BWP run .
About 30 % of the visitors came from Poznan, which is the city where our
University is located (fig. 3). Probably several hundreds of that traffic were our
students working with the application during their courses but from the direct
contacts (via email and phone calls) made with us we know that the Biogas Web
Planner was used by the biogas companies as well.
Fig. 3. Geographic distribution of BWP users from Poland.
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In order to analyse the data collected from the users activities, we cancelled
the users from all University IP numbers (including the numbers from student houses
which can be the effect of the projects made by the students). The users of BWP
applied in their calculations mainly agricultural substrates like slurry, maize or grass
silages and manure (fig. 4). However, 28% of future investors take into account
usage of biowaste substrates. This suggests that in Poland industrial biogas plants
worked with wastes can take much bigger percentage than in Germany (only below
10% of industrial biogas plant, over 90% is agricultural).
100
90
Frequency of usage [%]
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
slurry silage manure other plant biowaste
substrate
Kind of planned substrate
Fig. 4. Frequency of different substrates usage in planned installations.
Analysing the size of planned plants, there are clearly 2 dominant groups of
biogas plant size (fig. 5).
35
30
Contribution [%]
25
20
15
10
5
0
< 70 kW 70-400 kW 400-1200 kW > 1200 kW
Distribution of calculated electric power
Fig. 5. Distribution of electric power size in calculated installations.
The most often calculated were the installations over 1200 kW of electric
power, however small installations (below 400 kW el) had together 49%. It confirms
239
the prognosis that in Poland two groups of biogas plant will dominate: big (1-3
MWel) realized within governmental program and small (below 400 kWel) built by
the farmers.
4 Conclusions
After 2 years of BiogasWebPlanner® working and data acquisition, we came to the
conclusions:
1. BiogasWebPlanner® is a good internet tool for planning the parameters of
biogas plant installation for future investors.
2. The concept of data acquisition based on open usage internet tool works well
and allow to collect the huge amount of information without any costs.
3. The collected data about geographic distribution of planned biogas plant as
well as the parameters of installations and used substrates created the
biggest database about Polish biogas market. This information will be used
in the future in scientific activities but also for governmental and regional
projects and planning.
References
1. Igliński B., Iglińska A., Kujawski W., Buczkowski R., Cichosz M. 2011
Bioenergy in Poland. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews. Volume 15,
Issue 6, Pages 2999-3007.
2. Krzak J., 2009 Biogas plants in Poland—an underestimated energy source,
INFOS 4 (51), pp. 1–4 [in Polish].
3. Pilarski K., Dach J., Mioduszewska N. 2010 Comparison of efficiency of
methane production from liquid muck and dung with refined glycerine addition.
Journal of Research and Applications in Agricultural Engineering, vol. 55 (2), 78-
81[in Polish] .
4. Pilarski K., Adamski M. 2009 Perspectives of biogas production with taking into
consideration reaction mechanism in the range of quantitative and qualitative
analyses of fermentation processes. Journal of Research and Applications in
Agricultural Engineering, vol. 54 (2), 81-86[in Polish].
5. Popczyk J., 2011 Main problems and directions of development of energy market
in Poland. Mat. Conf. “Biogas plants: facts and myths”. Piła, 5 th of April 2011 [in
Polish].
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