State-of-the-art biological treatment

Solum has 22 years of experience within biological waste treatment, growth media production, marketing and sales of output products. The company has its origin in composting of green waste and production of grow media.

Within the last ten years Solum has opted into related business areas such as digestion and composting of especially source separated biodegradable household waste and industrial by-products.

Since 1986 Solum Gruppen has been engaged in the treatment of organic resources and biological waste and has through its activities acquired a unique technology and knowledge base. This base has been the offset for the new Aikan system, in which Solum Gruppen as a novelty integrates generation of compost with that of biogas from organic residual resources in solid form.

Solum Gruppen, in cooperation with the Faculty of Life Sciences (University of Copenhagen), Aalborg University and the University of Southern Denmark, has developed the Aikan system from technical research over 1 litre, 6 m³ to the present 600 m³ per module in the plant. The concept has proven its reliability in recent years at two facilities in Holbæk (Denmark) and Elverum (Norway), which has formed the basis for further marketing in Europe and beyond.

The rationale for Solum Gruppen to venture into facilities for the treatment and energy recovery of organic waste is that society generates increasing amounts of organic waste, and Solum Gruppen has for years considered it socially and economically profitable to digest and compost waste containing up to 70 % of water, provided it is done in a robust and reliable way. Most recently, this has been confirmed in two environmental-economic analyses carried out by the Technical University of Denmark and Rambøll Danmark A/S in 2007.[1]

Furthermore, we see increasing needs for - and focus on - renewable energy, such as it is delivered by Aikan. In brief: Aikan is a good idea.

Solum Gruppen has since 1999 invested more than DKK 25 million in the development of the Aikan concept. This development has been financed by our own operations in other business fields of Solum Gruppen. The only external support has been DKK 2 million from the EU Life project and support from the Danish Environmental Protection Agency for reporting of the pilot plant.

When we are enganged in a project our philosophy is: Always foresee a treatment facility with the utmost flexibility with regard to the solid fractions and their contaminations as well as with regard to a possible pumpable fraction.

In this way, we aim to optimize the equation of:

• Maximizing gas output,
• maximizing flexibility and
• minimizing pretreatment and the overall processing cost.

[1] Rambøll Danmark A/S, May 2007 "Miljøøkonomisk undersøgelse i Holbæk, Kalundborg og Odsherred kommuner" (Environmental-economic analysis in the Municipalities of Holbæk, Kalundborg and Odsherred)