Never again food waste up to the knees

“The hose pump is one of the best things I have acquired in a long time,” says Carsten Rube. He runs a biogas plant, a farm, and also a machinery station, so he knows what he’s talking about. Since he began biogas production, he has invested heavily in equipment and technology. “Before I installed the LSM hose pump on the farm in 2018, I had to go down into the pre-tank almost every other week,” says Carsten Rube, who produces biogas electricity and supplies heat to the town hall in Korbach. “Then I had to stand in the food waste to repair the piston pump, which had been damaged by foreign objects.”

However, that is now definitively over. Since the LSM pump was installed at his biogas plant on the outskirts of Korbach in the northern Hessian region of Waldeck-Frankenberg, he no longer has to stand in food waste. But that’s not all. Since its installation, the hose pump—with a motor power of only 7.5 kW—has been pumping the substrate of organic waste from the pre-tank to the fermenter. This has significantly reduced problems in Rube’s business and allows the work to be carried out much more safely.

Previously, his production was halted by foreign objects such as glass, bones, or stones. These still occur in the substrate even though a sieve is installed before the pump. But now, production is not interrupted because the hose pump is virtually unaffected by these foreign objects. Admittedly, this does not last forever, but maintenance intervals have been significantly extended. This means Rube only has to replace the pump hose about twice a year. “The replacement is done in four hours,” explains Rube, very satisfied, especially because the biogas process is in no way negatively affected by this. It is easy to replace the hose because the pump is placed on the floor of the operation hall, easily accessible from all sides.

With a pipe diameter of 20 cm, the flow rate at the biogas plant in Korbach is about 40 cubic meters per hour. With this transport volume, the LSM pump only needs to operate for a few minutes each hour to adequately fill the fermenter with energy-rich substrate. This means the pump is used about four hours daily. This results in an annual electricity consumption of about 7,300 kilowatt-hours, which according to Rube is less than two percent of the biogas plant’s total electricity consumption.

Although the purchase price for an LSM pump has been somewhat higher than for piston and screw pumps, it is fully acceptable when considering the significantly longer service life. Despite the current difficult situation for the biogas industry, he remains positive about the future. “In recent years, I have had difficult periods. With the ambitious climate goals, the use of residual materials for energy production will be an indispensable basis for the sustainable energy supply of the future.”