You're reading: New biogas plant in Lviv to save energy, environment

A new biogas center to process sewage will be built in western Ukraine’s largest city of Lviv and has the dual aim of saving energy and reducing harm to the environment.

The plant, which is being built by municipal water company Lvivvodokanal, will help modernize Lviv’s wastewater infrastructure, produce energy and improve the quality of the utility’s services, according to Lvivvodokanal spokeswoman Uliana Horbata.

Construction is budgeted at €31.5 million, and is to be funded jointly with loans from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Nordic Environment Finance Corporation, an investment grant from the Eastern Europe Energy Efficiency and Environment Partnership, and a contribution from the city budget. Plant operation should start in 2019, according to the investors.

Methane gas will be processed produced from the fermentation of sewage sludge left over after wastewater treatment. The gas produced will be burned, and generators will transform the heat energy into electricity. The resulting 40,000 megawatts of energy will then be used to power Lvivvodokanal’s own pollution control facilities, Horbata told the Kyiv Post.

That will allow the company to achieve energy savings and a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions of approximately 128,600 tons of carbon dioxide per year, according to EBRD.

As well as energy savings, the facility will reduce the unpleasant smell and carbon dioxide emissions from sewage sludge.

Apart from the biogas plant, the city will install grit chambers and a chemical precipitation plant, “which are expected to improve overall wastewater treatment in Lviv and reduce the pollution discharged into the Poltva River,” according to information on the EBRD website.

The investment will literally have far-reaching consequences because the wastewater from Lviv eventually ends up in the Baltic Sea off the coast of Poland via the Poltva, Bug, Narew and Vistula rivers.

This project is historic not only for the city but for the whole of Ukraine,” Sevki Acuner, EBRD director in Ukraine, said in comments posted on the Lviv City Council website. “I think this is evidence that all of the organizations gathered together in this project believe and support your strategic vision of the potential of the city – your view of the future.”

Acuner added that this first plant was a pilot project, and after its implementation the investors would develop more “to repeat this experience in other cities of Ukraine.”

Horbata said that negotiations on with investors started in 2008 after Swedish experts evaluated the water pollution control facilities in Lviv. According to the experts, building new plants would be more effective than modernizing existing ones.

It would cost at least €150 million to completely overhaul all of Lviv’s wastewater treatment facilities, the experts said.

Similar projects in the Polish city of Poznan cost over €100 million.


Biogas plant in Poznan

Unlike in Poland, where almost all cities and towns have installed biogas stations over the last 10 years, Ukraine has never processed sludge from sewage. Instead, the sludge is left to decompose in large slurry ponds.

Horbata said she expected Ukraine to follow Poland’s lead in future.

Sludge is produced every day, and it’s a source of energy. This is a modern trend of the European economy – to switch to alternative energy sources,” she said.