BAYVIEW FLOWERS
St. Catharines, Ontario
PROJECT DETAILS
» approx. 6,000 tonnes/yr of grape pomace, tulip bulbs, waste grease
FITEC UPGRADES
» External Heat Exchanger
» Pasteurization System Design
» Skimming System
» Food Waste Receiving Pump & Agitation
» Manure Receiving Tank Agitation
» Automatation of Food Waste Pumping
» Primary Digester Agitation
Optimizing Existing Biogas Systems:
How Fitec Transformed a Challenged Project into a Success.
Bayview Flowers, based in Jordan, ON is a second-generation family owned and operated greenhouse floriculture business that supplies retailers across North America. In 2007, they installed a 250 kW AD facility which allowed them to recover the heat produced by their CHP to offset greenhouse heating requirements. Their system consisted of a standard agricultural type design with a 1000 cubic meter digester tank with in-wall heating, paddle & submersible mixers, a dry feeder and liquid manure feeding and a 1000 cubic meter end-storage tank with double membrane.
By 2011, four years into operating the AD facility, Bayview was still experiencing inconsistent gas production. Fitec was able to come aboard and provide the knowledge and direction necessary to make the plant profitable.
Fitec first came onboard to provide biological support services. Fitec’s detailed feedstock analysis and modeling were able to provide Bayview’s operators proper feeding ratios for their unique feedstock mix. This readjustment along with a supply of custom trace elements, allowed the biological system and gas production to stabilize and revenue to increase.
As the biogas market in Ontario continued to mature, the demand for waste caused an increase in competition for clean feedstock. Waste haulers wanted a delivery site that could reliably accept material, have the capacity to pasteurize and produce a digestate that was suitable for land application. Wanting to remain competitive in this marketplace, and finding a trustworthy partner to work with, Bayview decided to invest further into their AD facility. In 2013, Fitec worked with Bayview first to convert their end-storage facility into a pasteurizer using Fitec’s external double-tube heat exchangers and secondly to install an externally mounted skimming system to separate solid fibres that could be used for compost. These changes now allowed Bayview to take pre-treated, post-consumer food waste which also increased their revenue streams.
In 2021, Bayview constructed a new food waste receiving tank to better manage incoming materials. Fitec supplied a dedicated agitator for this tank, ensuring homogeneous mixing and a more consistent organic loading rate (OLR) to the digester. This upgrade resulted in a noticeable improvement in the stability and consistency of biogas production at the site. Based on its performance, Bayview subsequently elected to install a similar agitator in their manure receiving tank to achieve the same benefits.
One ongoing challenge at the facility has been sediment accumulation within the original digester. Due to the presence of a central column, Fitec’s floor sweeper technology could not be retrofitted into the existing tank. In addition, the digestion of grape pomace has led to elevated sedimentation rates, compounded by the limited effectiveness of the original mixing system. When the digester required a clean-out earlier this year, Bayview worked closely with Fitec to address this challenge. A new agitator was installed to significantly improve mixing within the digester and reduce future sediment buildup. This installation was completed last month and represents another step in extending the operational reliability and longevity of the original infrastructure.
Through a long-term, collaborative approach, Fitec has helped Bayview Flowers continuously adapt and optimize their biogas facility in response to changing feedstocks, market conditions, and operational challenges. This project highlights Fitec’s deep expertise in anaerobic digestion process design and their ability to deliver robust, reliable systems that work in real operating conditions. By combining sound engineering with a practical understanding of day-to-day operations, Fitec helped ensure the facility could be run efficiently, reliably, and with confidence by Bayview’s operating team.
MARYLAND FARMS BIOGAS
PRECISION BIOGAS™
Learn more about Fitec’s standards for biogas systems. With resource-efficient equipment, advanced designs, and expert support: there’s biogas, and then there’s Precision Biogas™.