Complex biogas membrane upgrading to BioCNG at agriculture biogas plant
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Complex biogas membrane upgrading to BioCNG at agriculture biogas plant Jiří Maršálek1 · Pavel Brož1 · Marek Bobák1 Received: 13 March 2020 / Accepted: 30 May 2020 © Institute of Chemistry, Slovak Academy of Sciences 2020
Abstract Biogas upgrading in Czech Republic evinces very slow start, especially because of low foundation support. Distrust of biogas plant operators is caused mainly by high capital costs and further biomethane utilization. Cheap, small-scale demonstration units, which evince additional value, could present potential kick-off for following capacity increase in order to supply the gas into the grid or broaden insufficient net of dispensing gas stations to fuel CNG vehicles. In this article, we present our biogas upgrading pilot unit, which is long-term operated at agricultural biogas plant in Czech Republic. It presents a compact and complex system of biogas pretreatment, purification and BioCNG dispensation placed in one transportation container ISO 20. It processes 12 N m3/h of biogas while produces 6.3 N m3/h of biomethane (95–96 vol%) with overall methane recovery 83.9%. Acquired data confirm that any funding support makes small-scale upgrading profitable with acceptable return of investments. Keywords Biogas · Upgrading · Membrane separation · Pretreatment · BioCNG
Introduction There are nowadays 554 biogas plants in Czech Republic, which can be separated by the source of the biogas accordingly: (1) communal waste (7 plants), (2) industrial (11 plants), (3) agriculture (382 plants), (4) landfill (56 plants) and (5) waste water treatment (98 plants). They are generally equipped with cogeneration unit in 90% cases, while utilizing heat in ranges 200–3000 kW and electricity in ranges 100–3000 kW. To compare in size with other countries biogas plants, 3000 kW of electricity is an European average (Deremince and Königsberger 2017), while in Czech Republic, there are only 15 biogas plants exceeding 2000 kW of installed electric power (Czech Biogas Association 2019). This points to the fact that small-scale plants are stood in Czech Republic predominantly. The remaining 10% relate especially to waste water treatment biogas plants, which do not have any utilization currently. With respect to this fact, there were efforts to install biogas (average 50 vol% * Jiří Maršálek [email protected] http://www.membrain.cz 1
MemBrain s.r.o., Pod Vinicí 87, 471 27 Stráž pod Ralskem, Czech Republic
of methane) to biomethane (> 95 vol% methane) upgrading unit on these not utilized plants (Vrbova and Ciahotny 2017), but generally upgrading in Czech Republic still has to deal with utilization issues of produced biomethane and potentially with residual carbon dioxide. There is unfortunately no government funding support for any biogas to biomethane conversion, which causes low interest of biogas plant owners in the upgrading. To increase their interest, it is worthy to offer some additional value to produced biomethane, for example, by its conversion to BioCNG and/or production of liqu
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