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Metener Oy – a company of biogas expertise

Erkki Kalmari, the managing director of Metener, is a well-known visionary, inventor and advocate of biogas. The biogas generated on his farm goes into the tanks of about 15 vehicles in Central Finland and he himself also drives a biogas-powered car. Metener operates in the Leppävesi area of Laukaa, a municipality to the north of Jyväskylä, but has been building co-operation with China for a number of years now. Jyväskylä Regional Development Company Jykes Ltd and FECC, the Finnish Environmental Cluster for China-project, have helped in creating contacts and co-operation with the province of Heilongjiang in Northern China.

Components for the biogas reactor are manufactured in China, while the equipment for upgrading and bottling the gas is made in Central Finland. "Around us lies a huge amount of energy which we could make use of as a transport fuel. If more extensive use was made of biogas it would generate more employment in rural areas and reduce the load on the environment", points out Kalmari.

In his view biogas would offer an excellent solution to the emissions caused by traffic in China and India, for example. "There are considerable opportunities in China for exploiting biogas. Simply in order to put the brakes on climate change, especially these densely populated countries must embrace solutions based on biogas", Kalmari stresses.

The principle of biogas technology is quite simple, based on microbial activity. Microbes break down organic matter (e.g. manure, biowaste, plant biomass) under anaerobic conditions in such way that as an end product of decomposition biogas containing a large proportion of methane is generated. The typical composition of biogas is roughly 60 per cent methane and roughly 40 per cent carbon dioxide. The methane contained in biogas is a versatile fuel which can be exploited in electricity and heat production and as a fuel for vehicles and machinery. Biogas can be used in place of fossil fuels.