BIOMASS DIGESTION
INTRODUCTION
Thanks to close cooperation guaranteed by the license agreement signed by Italy, Portugal and Romania with the Belgian company Global Water Engineering, we are able to propose anaerobic digestion of biomass (the organic fraction / wet urban solid waste, the slurry, silage and agricultural mowing) with biogas production (energy recovery in boilers with hot water and steam production) and electricity generation.
The collaboration with GWE usually includes the acquisition of basic engineering, procedural safeguards, some key equipment and start-up and commissioning service of the plant.
Fidia Engineering integrates GWE services with detailed engineering package, equipment purchase, installation and start-up. This collaborative agreement allows our Italian, Portuguese and Romanian customers to have a product widely referenced and reliable, but integrated with Italian products and managed by a highly professional partner and specializes in waste water treatment, which often integrates the products of GWE with traditional water treatment plants. This usually results in a reduction of the investment costs and the interface with an interlocutor present on the territory, always present even as a reference point for plant management.
GWE uses his 30 years of experience in the construction of more than 300 plants in the search for new customers.
GWE offers reliable, state of the art, functional and modern technology and is very proud of the 100% record in process guarantees.
THE RAPTOR™ SYSTEM

RAPTOR ™ means RAPid Transformation of Organic Residues. It is a powerful liquid state anaerobic digestion process, that converts almost any organic residue (waste) or energy crop (“substrate”) into biogas, valuable electricity or heat.
The process consists of an enhanced pre-treatment followed by multi-step biological fermentation.
A RAPTOR™ plant is a total solution starting with logistics for substrate intake and handling, and ending with production of biogas, green electricity or steam.
The detailed design of RAPTOR ™ system adapts to the specific requirements imposed by the three main fields of application: industrial, agricultural and urban.
In agricultural sector, seasonally harvested crops can be ensiled for longer storage over the whole year. This makes possible to overcome the period of down-time between two harvests and maintain a constant energy output.
PRETREATMENTS
The right pre-treatment should be chosen for the rapid digestion’s optimization, because different substrates require a series of different pre-treatments, to enable fast transition to the next phase (the digestion) and to provide the highest possible conversion’s efficiency.
GWE’s RAPTOR™ plants can be consisted of one or more of the following pre-treatments:
- Enzymatic pre-treatment: it is a high temperature enzymatic reactor, for pretreatment of certain (hemi-) cellulosic substrates, to solubilize organic matter prior to fermentation to enhancing fermentation process.
- Chemical pre-treatment: it is a slight caustic treatment, at elevated temperature, for partial hydrolysis of polysaccharides and proteins that are difficult to digest and for increasing yields in biogas production.
- Thermal pre-treatment: heating the slurry for hygienization (animal products), protein denaturation and cell autolysis, used in combination with enzymatic, chemical or mechanical pretreatments..
- Biological pre-treatment: Thermophilic Acidification Reactor (TAR) enhances the digestibility of many organic substrates, with partial solids solubilization, low pH induced, protein denaturation and polysaccharide hydrolysis.
- Mechanical pre-treatment: POWERPULPER™ system allows to turn coarse slurry into a fine mash. It consists of a compact tank with a powerful cutter pump mixing system
APPLICATIONS
RAPTOR™ system applies to food-grade residues (surplus fruit and vegetable markets, kitchen waste, fruit and vegetable expired), agro-industrial complex (beet pulp, tapioca pulp, waste vegetables and potatoes) industrial wastes (breweries, scraps of fruit, sludge from paper) and energy crops (silage, grass, algae).
