Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 15 October 2025
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture and Food
Anaerobic Digestion: Discussion
2:00 am
Mr. Graeme Lochhead:
We put a nutrient recovery system in our technology. I am going to use big random figures. If I put in 100,000 tonnes and 20,000 tonnes get converted into gas, I can grab that. I am left with 80,000 tonnes. Of that 80,000 tonnes, we will separate it and 10,000 will come out as a solid. That is a soil enhancer. That is carbon - a nutrient that can go back into the soil to enhance the soil. Do not get me going on worm count. It enhances worm count. It helps porosity, fertility and all the other good benefits that we get with that. Of the 70,000 that is left, we reduce that by putting it through a nutrient recovery system - a membrane system - and reverse osmosis that gives me a high nutrient fertiliser. It is still a sludge, but it is reduced to about 30,000 tonnes of those 70,000 tonnes. Just like one would evaporate milk or whey into whey powder, there is a step-up of energy that we probably will not do because it is just not economic. However, we have a good high quality biofertiliser that can be put into land, but we have dramatically reduced hydraulic load in that process.