Environmental Overachievers GWE Win Asia Manufacturing Award For Del Monte Philippines Inc's Outstanding Waste-To-Energy Project

A waste-to-energy project undertaken by Global Water Engineering for the world’s largest integrated pineapple operation, Del Monte Philippines Inc. (DMPI), has won the Best Water and Wastewater Solutions Provider honour at the Asian Manufacturing Awards.

The DMPI project, which exceeded even the high effluent quality targets originally set for the job, took the Award at the presentations dinner organised by Contineo Media to honour control, instrumentation, and automation product manufacturers and service providers who, over the past year, have provided the best solutions to address today’s engineering and manufacturing challenges.

The winners at the recent presentation event (July 27) were determined by an international panel of judges who analysed and selected the best technology solutions/services providers, with the judging process audited by an external party to ensure fairness and transparency.

The Global Water Engineering (GWE) wastewater treatment installation at the Cagayan de Oro pineapple canning plant has achieved 93 percent organic pollution (COD) removal in its anaerobic reactors, producing in the process enough green energy (methane rich biogas) to power two 1.4 MW generating electrical power generator units or gensets. The effluent of the anaerobic digestion step is further polished in an activated sludge type final treatment step to satisfy the local DENR discharge effluent standards.

DMPI – which accounts for about 10 per cent of the world’s annual production of processed pineapple products – will benefit from environmentally clean electricity to replace fossil fuels typically used in electrical power plants. And the waste heat from the gensets is also put to use to heat up steam boiler feed water, which is a further reduction of fossil fuel use in the factory, says GWE Chairman and CEO Mr Jean-Pierre Ombregt.

“Achievement of this award is a great compliment to DPMI’s foresight and environmental credentials. It is also a further demonstration of the proven performance and financial benefits of GWE technologies that both increase water quality while reducing dependence on fossil fuels,” said Mr Ombregt, whose company has also previously won a global IChemE chemical award for its RAPTORTM solid waste-to-energy technology turning wet pulp from cassava starch production into biogas used for green electricity production. GWE’s RAPTORTM technology is being applied worldwide on a wide variety of solid wastes, both mono streams and mixed wastes.

DMPI processes more than 700,000 tons of pineapple and papaya a year to produce more than 100 food and vegetable variants. DMPI is owned by Del Monte Pacific Ltd (DMPL), who also owns Del Monte Foods Inc., the company that owns the Del Monte brand in the USA. DMPI is one of the largest producers, distributors and marketers of premium quality, branded food products for the US retail market through its affiliate DMFI, as well as private label products.

Benefits of the company’s new wastewater and green energy plant mean that DMPI can replace fossil fuels with green energy, and given the high prices of electricity from the Grid and the sometimes erratic supply, the plant will achieve rapid ROI payback. Generally this takes only 2 to 5 years, says Mr Ombregt, whose company has installed more than 150 waste-to-green energy plants worldwide and ca. 400 high quality industrial wastewater and waste treatment plants, the benefits of which are applicable to any manufacturing operation with one or more organically loaded wastewater and waste streams.

GWE anaerobic technologies have been successfully deployed on diverse organic and agribusiness waste streams produced by industries including food and beverage processing, starch and fermentation industry, pulp & paper and many other type of agro-industry.

“Biogas from waste water is an outstanding source of base load power. As part of a renewable energy mix – complementing wind and solar generation, for example – electricity generated with biogas is highly reliable and consistent. As the major component of natural gas, methane is an environmentally attractive alternative to fossil fuels,” said Mr Ombregt, whose company was complimented by DMPI on achieving better than guaranteed process results.

For more information, visit www.globalwaterengineering.com.