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Komptech: Circular economy is the goal

Photo by Komptech GmbH

Stefan Lengel is considered a pioneer in the industry. As one of the first in Austria, the successor to an agricultural business founded a plant for the composting of biowaste and green waste in 1988.

Today, the family-owned company in the Vienna region has two state-of-the-art compost and soil plants as well as its own biogas plant. When it comes to compost, the demand for quality is high. Foreign matter, especially plastic, is therefore a major problem. To solve this, a new stationary compost fine treatment plant was recently realised together with Komptech.

Organic soils with quality

When Maria Lengel started with a turf brick production at the end of the 1960s, no one had any idea that sustainability and climate protection would one day be discussed so intensively. But the company oriented itself to the cycles of nature early on and aligned its production processes accordingly. “We are proud that our actions actively contribute to the conservation of environmental resources,” says their son Stefan Lengel. For the current company owner, the principle of sustainability is an essential part of the corporate philosophy practised in the family business – and has been for three generations.
three generations. In the meantime, the children also bear responsibility in the management. Daughter Stefanie manages the business of Lengel GmbH and son Alexander, as managing director of Marchfelder BioEnergie GmbH, is also responsible for biogas production. “Green blood flows in our veins,” comments the senior boss with a smile.

Both Lengel plants recycle biogenic waste and green waste from the region. In this way, around 15,000 tonnes of ready-made compost, various organic soils, planting substrates and bark mulch are produced each year. Ready-made turf is also still part of the portfolio. More than half of the annual compost production achieves grade A+. “Our company stands for high product quality,” Alexander Lengel emphasises. The increasing contamination of biowaste with foreign substances is therefore a problem. Recently, the managing director sat down with Komptech Anlagentechnik Büro in Vienna. The goal was to optimise the fine processing of compost.

Photo by Komptech GmbH

Compost almost free of foreign matter

Instead of a drum screen, Lengel now uses a tension wave screen (BIVITEC® from Binder+Co) with a perforation of eight or six millimetres to screen the compost. The fine fraction obtained is thus almost free of foreign matter. The end product is also beautifully flaky, as no balls can form in the tension wave screen. The screen overflow is passed through a combination of air classifier and stone separator to further remove foreign matter and is then returned to the composting process. In this way, no valuable biomaterial is lost.

To enable the Lengel management to assess the achievable output qualities before investing in the new plant configuration, Komptech consulted the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences Vienna and the technical centre of the Binder+Co company. Together, they evaluated a series of material samples from the treatment process. This procedure received high praise from the customer.

Organic waste that does not end up in composting is used at Lengel to produce green energy. As early as 2004, the current senior boss commissioned the company’s own biogas plant, which has been supplying parts of the vehicle fleet with CO2-neutral energy ever since. The plant processes overstocked food, leftovers and biowaste from the collection of regional waste disposal companies. About 15,000 tonnes of biomass are collected annually. “Materials with a high energy content are more likely to go to the biogas plant. In addition, we can better compensate for seasonal fluctuations in compost production,” says Alexander Lengel. The biogas plant produces about 220m3 (500 kWh) of raw gas per hour, 100 per cent of which is converted into electricity. This produces twelve megawatts per day. For the future, Alexander Lengel plans to increase the plant’s capacity to 30,000 tonnes of processed biomass per year, and also to install a gas treatment system that will enable the delivery of biogas in natural gas quality. A biogas filling station is also planned. This would allow the company to start selling green gas.

Business partners and friends

The companies Lengel and Komptech have not just been connected since yesterday. After Stefan Lengel founded his first composting plant, he met Josef Heissenberger in the early 1990s and purchased a first-generation Komptech compost turner. It was the Topturn 300 with the number #3. Both founders shared the vision of returning biowaste to the natural cycle on a large scale, and the business relationship turned into friendship. Over time, the compost and soil manufacturer has acquired exactly 24 Komptech machines, including shredding and screening technology and eight Topturn compost turners. The cooperation with the now third Lengel generation and the current Komptech team is also running smoothly. Alexander Lengel: “We choose Komptech because of the overall package. This includes the secure availability of spare parts as well as the fast and reliable service.” It is also important to him that they work together for a “greener world”, he says.

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