The Kalfresh Bioenergy Facility will be the centrepiece of the new Scenic Rim Agricultural Industrial Precinct at Kalbar.

It’s a new energy model for Australia that value-adds agricultural waste and residues, food waste and crops to generate baseload electricity 24/7, gas for transport and industry and biofertiliser.

This model is proven and working overseas, where it’s already powering trucks, buses and industry in Europe, the UK, America and Canada.

The Kalfresh Bioenergy facility at Kalbar will use anaerobic digestion to transform agricultural and food waste and crops to produce heat, electricity, renewable natural gas and digestate fertiliser.

When fully developed the facility will produce up to five energy products:

1. Renewable electricity for the Precinct 
2. Renewable Compressed Natural Gas (RNG) to replace diesel in trucks and buses
3. RNG for industrial manufacturing
4. Food-grade carbon dioxide gas for use in food and beverage production
5. Biofertiliser – digestate is the by-product of anaerobic digestion and will be returned to farms as a biofertiliser for soil nutrition, reducing reliance on synthetic fertilisers.

The anaerobic digestion process is simple and well-established overseas – feedstocks are added to sealed anaerobic digestion tanks where bacteria breaks down the organic matter and produces methane biogas and digestate.

The Kalfresh energy model provides farmers with a new revenue stream from crops grown in rotation with food and fodder crops.

The Kalbar facility is the first stage of a plan to roll out this innovative energy model across regional Queensland.

It’s a good news story for Australian agriculture and will help deliver on environmental and sustainability goals.