Tomato grower’s recycles CO2 to increase yields
The vegetable and flower production capabilities of the Netherlands are well known with the country exporting its goods around the world. The greenhouse horticulture industry employs 40,000 people with 75 per cent of its output sold overseas.
Euros 3.2bn a year business: It’s a 3.2 billion euros-a-year industry and home to 12,000 businesses covering 10,000 hectares.
Company concentrates on tomatoes: Typical of this industry is the 40-year old family-owned tomato-growing company J van Marrewijk BV based in the small town of Vierpolders. It originally started life based on the Hook of Holland producing salads, cucumbers and tomatoes but now concentrates on the latter.
Annual output of 8.2 million kg: Compared with the average family gardener’s efforts to produce them, this company grows tomatoes on a mind-boggling scale, despite its claim that there are several much bigger operations in the Netherlands. Each year it ships out more than 8.2 million kilograms of tomatoes for the plates and kitchens of the world.
80 million tomatoes for the world: That equates, very approximately, to around 80 million average sized tomatoes which are carried by air, sea and land to the company’s major markets in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Scandinavia and Poland.
Gas Rolls-Royce engines run greenhouse temperatures: In the UK J van Marrewijk has supplied the country’s leading supermarket chain, Tesco, since 1994. Providing the climate is the responsibility of two natural gas-fired Rolls-Royce KVGS-12G4 engines built in Bergen, Norway which provide the electricity and the heat for the greenhouses.
Gas engine a winner: The gas engines have proved to be popular in the Dutch horticultural markets with 20 units sold so far throughout the country. The Rolls-Royce units offer three advantages for Jan. The carbon dioxide from the flue gases of the engines is cleaned via a catalytic converter and fed back into the greenhouses to help fertilise the environment.
Extra CO2 ups tomato yield: The plants use carbon dioxide when they grow so the extra input into the environment has been estimated to increase tomato yields by some ten per cent.
Engine grid link up pulls in extra cash: Electricity produced by the engines controls the heating and lighting in the houses with the added advantage that when the power is not needed by Jan it can be fed into the Netherlands’ national electricity grid to bring extra revenue to the tomato company.
Six hours of power into national grid: Jan explains: ‘Typically we start the "sunlight" from the engines at six in the morning and we stop at four in the afternoon – after all the tomatoes can’t grow all of the time and they need to sleep sometime! When they do we switch the power from the engines into the national grid for another six hours and that provides extra money for us.
Weather doesn’t matter: ‘Having the engines also means that we can be certain of the type of growing conditions we are going to have, we always know that inside the houses it will be warm and bright and the growth of the plants is not dependent on the weather outside which can be very variable and poor.’
Reference: The Magazine Issue 110 September 2006. Rolls-Royce. http://www.rolls-royce.com
Erisk Net 11/10/2006