Grignon Farm Wins the Green Solutions Awards Audience Choice Award
July 04 2023On Monday, July 3, Grignon Experimental Farm was announced a winner in the 2022-2023 Green Solutions Awards organized by Construction21- France, having been selected from twenty-nine projects submitted from all over France. This contest showcases sustainable buildings, districts, and infrastructures, and aims to foster the emergence of outstanding achievements in France and worldwide and promote them to as many people as possible.
Grignon Experimental Farm, which is home to crop-growing activities, innovative projects, and a world-class educational program, received the Audience Choice Award at the ceremony for its biogas production project. The award is the result of research work carried out over the past twenty years on the site’s consumption of energy from fossil fuels and its production of agricultural waste, particularly slurry from livestock.
Grignon Farm has shown a consistent commitment to recovering waste, and nearly ten years ago, it acquired a “Nénufar cover” (nénufar meaning water lily) which, floating on top of the slurry, consists of a cover and ballast system to recover and store the biogas. Since the beginning of 2023, the approach has further evolved with the construction of a biogas production unit (composed of a digester and a purifier) operating in a more “traditional” way: incoming matter (waste such as manure, for example) is mixed and ferments, with bacteria transforming the matter to produce biogas.