COMBIZYME is a broad-spectrum enzymatic additive designed to accelerate the breakdown of organic feedstock in anaerobic digesters. By enhancing hydrolysis (the first step of anaerobic digestion), COMBIZYME helps biogas plants increase their efficiency and throughput. It works especially well for plants dealing with fibrous materials or those looking to reduce retention time and input volume.
With COMBIZYME, the feedstock is disintegrated faster, meaning more of it is converted to biogas in a shorter time. This can lead to up to 10% reduction in feedstock usage for the same biogas output, as well as improvements in mixing and handling due to lower viscosity.
In essence, COMBIZYME helps you get more energy out of what you feed in, making your AD plant more productive and cost-effective.
Higher Biogas Yield per Ton of Feedstock: COMBIZYME’s powerful enzyme blend breaks down complex plant material, resulting in up to 10% less feedstock needed to produce the same amount of biogas. This boosts the overall economy of the plant by saving on feedstock costs or allowing more biogas from existing inputs.
Reduced Mixing Energy and Better Flow: By disaggregating fibrous particles and reducing sludge viscosity, COMBIZYME lowers the mixing and pumping power requirements. Operators report needing less mixer runtime and experiencing easier pump flow, which cuts parasitic electricity load and wear on equipment.
Prevents and Solves Digestate Handling Issues: Improved breakdown of solids means fewer pumping problems and blockages. The digestate becomes more homogenous and flows better, mitigating issues like clogging of pipes, foam formation, or crust buildup to some extent.
Shorter Hydraulic Retention Time (HRT): Because substrates break down faster, the effective HRT can be shorter – you’re extracting energy quicker. This is great for plants that have limited digester volume or want to increase feeding rates; COMBIZYME can help avoid overloading by speeding up digestion.
Broad Applicability: This enzyme mixture works on a range of materials (starches, fibers, proteins). It is ideal for any size biogas plant, especially those using a lot of crop residues, manure, or high-fiber materials. It’s also beneficial if you have short HRT or high throughput conditions, or if you want to maximise gas from silage and other yields.
COMBIZYME contains a mix of specific enzymes that target the major components of typical AD feedstocks: cellulases and hemicellulases (for plant fiber/cellulose), amylases (for starches), proteases (for proteins), and lipases (for fats), among others. The mode of action:
Once added to the digester, these enzymes start breaking down complex organic molecules in the feedstock:
Plant cell wall degradation: Enzymes break down cellulose, hemicellulose, and pectin in plant biomass, effectively tearing open plant cells and making their contents available. This releases sugars and other easy-to-digest compounds that bacteria can then quickly convert to acids and methane.
Starch and fiber hydrolysis: Starches are converted into sugars more rapidly, and fibers are reduced to shorter chains or monomers.
Reduced particle size: By disintegrating large particles and clumps (disaggregation), enzymes increase the surface area available to the anaerobic bacteria, speeding up their metabolism.
The result is that the hydrolysis step, which is often the rate-limiting step in AD, is greatly accelerated. The subsequent steps (acidogenesis and methanogenesis) then have more substrate available faster, which can boost overall biogas production rate.
COMBIZYME works continuously as long as there are substrates to act on. It essentially outsources some of the breakdown work from microbes to free enzymes. Normally, microbes produce their own enzymes, but that can be slow or insufficient for recalcitrant materials. COMBIZYME supplements this with a higher concentration of enzymes, jump-starting the process.
By making more of the feedstock digestible within the typical retention time, COMBIZYME ensures that less undigested material exits as waste. This is why you can reduce feedstock input – because now you’re extracting energy more completely from what you do feed. Additionally, with things like fibers broken down, the mixture’s consistency becomes smoother (imagine blending up what was chunky); this is why mixing energy goes down and pumping is easier.
One additional point: COMBIZYME’s broad-spectrum formula means it doesn’t overly depend on one kind of substrate. So if your feedstock mix changes (crop silage one month, more manure the next), it still has relevant enzymes to help break those down.
COMBIZYME is typically applied daily to the digester to ensure a constant presence of enzymes:
Feeding Method: The enzyme powder can be added directly to the solid feeder or pre-feed tank each day. Typically, you’d just toss it in with your daily feed. If you feed multiple times a day, you might split the dose accordingly (e.g., half in the morning feed, half in the afternoon feed).
It can also be pre-mixed in a bucket of water to help disperse it, then poured into the digester. But generally it’s not necessary to pre-dissolve; the digester’s mixing will circulate it.
Dosage: The guideline dosage is approximately 100 grams of COMBIZYME per tonne of organic matter fed into the digester daily. To put in perspective:
If your plant feeds 50 tonnes of substrate per day (including manure, silage, etc. on a wet weight basis), and say the average solids content is 20%, that’s 10 tonnes of organic dry matter per day. At 100 g/tonne, you’d dose about 1,000 g (1 kg) of COMBIZYME per day.
If you feed less, adjust proportionally (e.g., a small 5 tonne/day plant might dose ~0.1*5 = 0.5 kg per day).
It’s important to not under-dose, or the effect might be limited; conversely, there is little harm in slight over-dosing except waste of product (there is typically an optimum beyond which extra enzymes give diminishing returns).
Ideal Conditions: Add the enzyme around the time of feeding to ensure it’s well-mixed with fresh substrate. The enzymes will function at typical digester temperatures (mesophilic 37°C or thermophilic 52°C) as they’re chosen for those ranges. They also need a certain pH range (most AD are fine, pH 6.5-8.0 is okay). Extremely high ammonia or other inhibitors could reduce enzyme activity, but if you have those, you likely are addressing them with other products.
Observation: After starting COMBIZYME, you should observe within days to weeks:
Improved gas production (especially if previously limited by hydrolysis).
Lower viscosity digestate (easier mixing).
Possibly a reduction in floating layer or sediment formation (because those are often due to undigested fibers).
If desired, you can conduct a simple test: measure the dry matter in digestate before and after a trial – a drop in VS (volatile solids) in the output indicates more was digested.
COMBIZYME is provided in 25 kg bags. The product is a granulated powder containing the enzymes stabilised (sometimes enzyme products are granulated onto a carrier).
Storage: Keep COMBIZYME in a cool, dry place. Enzymes are proteins and can be sensitive to high heat and moisture. A stable room temperature storage area away from direct sun is ideal. Make sure the bag is sealed or in a bin, as exposure to air humidity could clump it or slowly degrade activity. If stored properly, it typically has a shelf life of a year or more, but fresher is better to ensure full potency.
Handling: When handling the powder, avoid inhalation; wear a dust mask because enzyme dust can cause allergic reactions in some people or respiratory irritation. Gloves and safety glasses are good practice as well. If it’s a granulated form, dust might be minimal.
When adding to the digester, since it’s daily, you might want a small scoop or container to measure ~100 g increments. For example, one could pre-divide a 25 kg bag into smaller daily packets or use a measuring cup that corresponds to the needed weight (based on density). That makes daily application quick and consistent.
Enzymes are biodegradable and won’t harm the environment; any spills can be cleaned with water and a rag (the area might become slightly soapy/slippery if a lot of enzyme is spilled with water, as they can break down grime). If spilled on skin, just wash off.
The bag being 25 kg is reasonably manageable. If you have a larger plant requiring multiple bags a week, you might store them on a pallet and take one bag at a time as needed.
COMBIZYME can offer a strong ROI by both reducing costs and increasing output:
Feedstock Savings: Up to a 10% reduction in feedstock usage means direct savings. For instance, if you normally need 1000 tons of silage a year, a 10% efficiency gain means 100 tons less needed – that’s a significant cost saving (or the ability to use that 100 tons for extra gas if you keep feeding the same). The cost of the enzyme is typically much smaller than the cost of that amount of feedstock, so it pays for itself by lowering feedstock expenses.
Increased Energy Production: Alternatively, you can keep feed rates the same and get more biogas. More biogas means more electricity or biomethane to sell. The additional revenue from even a few percent more output can cover the enzyme cost. Think of COMBIZYME as squeezing more juice from the orange – it makes the process more productive.
Energy Savings (Mixing & Pumping): Less mixer operation and smoother pumping translate to lower electricity consumption internally. Your parasitic load (the power the plant uses for its own operation) goes down, which improves net energy gain. Although the power saved might not be huge, it’s noticeable – and in a big plant, every kWh saved is a kWh that can be sold or a reduction in power bills.
Maintenance and Reliability: By preventing issues like clogged pumps or thick scum layers, COMBIZYME can save on maintenance costs. For example, not having to manually break up crusts or unclog pipes saves labor and downtime. While hard to quantify, one less pump repair or one less digester clean-out is a big cost avoided.
Capacity Utilisation: If your plant was at max capacity in terms of HRT, using COMBIZYME effectively increases your capacity (because you can process the same amount faster, or more in the same time). This could postpone the need for capital investment in additional digester volume if you were considering expansion. Deferring capital expense is a form of ROI – you get more out of what you already have.
Versatility (using cheaper feed): Sometimes, to avoid mixing issues, operators avoid very fibrous cheap materials. With COMBIZYME, you might incorporate more fibrous, low-cost inputs (like certain crop residues) because it will help break them down. This feedstock flexibility can improve your input cost structure.
In economic terms, consider a scenario: if COMBIZYME costs X per month and it saves you 1.1X in feed costs plus yields another 1.5X in extra energy revenue, the ROI is huge. Real operators often share that enzyme products, when effective, repay their cost multiple times over.
The key is to monitor the benefits – track if you can reduce feed or if gas goes up. If you see those positive changes, you’ll know COMBIZYME is yielding returns. Given the relatively modest cost of enzymes compared to the scale of a biogas plant’s operations, the risk-reward is strongly in favour of trying and continuing use if results are as expected.