Digestate Dryers

Good for the Environment and Your Bottom Line
What is digestate? Microorganisms are used to anaerobically digest organic waste such as food, manure, and related products. This process produces a biogas and digested material. Digestate is the solid and liquid material leftover. Rather than paying to transport digestate to the local landfill, you can use it to create a new revenue stream for your company.
How can digestate dryers turn animal and food waste into a moneymaker for your company? By handling digestate in a new way, digestate dryers reduce the moisture content and risk of harmful pathogens, making it cost-effective to process the digestate for sale.

Types of Biosolids

Animal waste
Commercial food waste
Manures and slurries

What Are Digestate Dryers?

These machines use heat to evaporate the water in animal and food waste, reducing the volume. Dried digestate can be pelleted or granulated for easier storage and transport. Anaerobic digestion has gained in popularity due to the generation of biofuel that can reduce dependence on natural gas. However, many companies that use anaerobic digesters fail to profit on the digestate.
Instead of making money off the residual organic materials the microorganisms couldn’t process, companies pay $40-$70 per ton to dump them in the nearest landfill. Digestate dryers enable businesses to transform digested material into safe, reusable material.

How Do Digestate Dryers Work?

A digestate dryer is a post-production tool that removes water from digestate. Dehydrated solids make their way through the dryer's intake and come in contact with heated air. The system moves the solids into a storage area and recycles the hot air.
To produce a saleable product, there are a few hurdles to overcome. With proper drying, businesses can reduce the moisture content from 35% to 10% by weight. Getting rid of water content makes sense since it adds no value to the product. With a high enough drying temperature, this process can create Class A fertilizer, which the Department of Agriculture approves for use on farms. It’s also sold to homeowners to fertilize their vegetable gardens.
You may need to install add-on controls for volatile organic compounds and particulates. It depends on the location of the processing plant and different aspects of the waste stream. Add-on controls are less of a concern in rural areas, but there are usually permitting considerations.

Benefits of Digestate

The advantages of drying digestate include the following:

Reduce volume of digestate
Increase storage capacity
Eliminate harmful bacteria
Maintain nutrients
Reuse biofuel from drying process
Use or sell the pellets or granules for fertilizer
Save on transportation costs

Applications for Dried Digestate

The end product of material processed in a digestate dryer can be used for:

Animal bedding for livestock
Fertilizer to replenish nitrogen in soil
Solid biofuel to create energy

Increase Your Revenue Streams with a Digestate Dryer

Uzelac Industries Inc. supplies dryers that turn digestate into cash. Here’s one example:

A digestate dryer designed to process 30,000 tons of poultry manure a year operates 5 days a week for one shift a day.
The machine costs $4 million to buy and install and has an annual operating cost of $400,000.
The dryer produces 19,000 tons of fertilizer annually. Sold at $145 per ton, this generates $2,755,000 in annual revenue.

After recouping the initial cost of the machine and minus any maintenance costs, it doesn’t take long for digestate drying to become a profitable sideline instead of an operating cost. Now, that’s some math you can get behind!

Ready to talk to Uzelac Industries Inc. about a digestate dryer for your business? contact us online or call us at 4145290240 to schedule a site visit.