Environmental Technologies

The environment and sustainable energy are taking an increasing place in our society, including in the agricultural sector. Marotechniek has already supplied various modular control systems for biogas plants, nitrogen strippers, phosphate strippers and solid feed plants, among others. These installations can be remotely monitored by the end user using a computer, smartphone or tablet.

A Bio-HUB was also completed in 2022. This project involves five farmers in the Deventer area, each with their own manure fermentation, supplying sustainable biogas to a central HUB. From this central HUB, with the help of a booster station, the gas is transported via its own gas pipeline to two industrial customers in Deventer. The Bio-HUB can produce 600,000 m³ of natural gas equivalent per year, which is enough to heat 400 households.

This project covers all aspects of industrial automation such as PLC control technology, HMI visualization, both wired and wireless network technology, communication protocols and monitoring of all systems through a secure Cloud solution.

Not only is the demand for Bio-HUBs increasing, but the size of these Bio-HUBs is also increasing. Plans are currently being developed for Bio-HUBs with 12 to 22 farmers. Thanks to the modular design of the containers and the standard control system, it is largely a “Plug & Play” system.

Marotechniek also provides environmental and money-saving solutions for rose and gerbera cultivation by supplying the control and software for the advanced spraying machines of a supplier in crop protection. A graphical representation in Excel can be used to indicate which paths and sections in a greenhouse should be sprayed, according to a set spray method. The sprayer can then work autonomously after the spray schedule is loaded and navigates to the correct paths thanks to RFID tags.

The boxes to be sprayed are determined using redundant pulse counters. After completing the spray schedule, a spray report is sent by email and the sprayers can also be tracked via PC, cell phone or tablet via a secure cloud solution.