Membrane-based technologies for biogas upgrading: a review
- PDF / 1,929,262 Bytes
- 10 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 70 Downloads / 200 Views
REVIEW
Membrane‑based technologies for biogas upgrading: a review Francisco M. Baena‑Moreno1,2 · Estelle le Saché2 · Laura Pastor‑Pérez2 · T. R. Reina2 Received: 27 April 2020 / Accepted: 11 June 2020 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Global warming caused by increasing C O2 atmospheric levels is calling for sustainable fuels. For instance, biomethane produced by biogas upgrading is a promising source of green energy. Technologies to upgrade biogas include chemical absorption, water scrubbing, physical absorption, adsorption, cryogenic separation and membrane separation. Historically, water scrubbing was preferred because of the simplicity of this operation. However, during the last decade, membrane separation stood out due to its promising economic viability with investment costs of 3500–7500 €/(m3/h) and operational costs of 7.5–12.5 €/(m3/h). Here we review biogas upgrading by membrane separation. We discuss gas permeation, membrane materials, membrane modules, process configurations and commercial biogas plants. Polymeric materials appear as most adequate for membranes aimed to upgrade biogas. Concerning membrane modules, hollow fibers are the cheapest (1.5–9 €/m2). Multistage configurations provide high methane recovery, of 99%, and purity, of 95–99%, compared to single-stage configurations. Keywords Biogas upgrading · Bio-methane · Membranes for biogas upgrading · Polymeric materials · Multistage configurations
Introduction The continuous increase of greenhouse gases emissions and the future scarcity of fossil fuels are great challenges facing our society (Gonçalves et al. 2013; Lu et al. 2019). Diminishing the environmental effects caused by the first stated problem has become a priority (Sánchez et al. 2015). Among these emissions, carbon dioxide prevails (Zhang et al. 2020a). Indeed, since 2010 carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere has increased more than 20 ppm, as shown in Fig. 1. For this reason, carbon capture and storage technologies have been widely developed during the last decade (Wang et al. 2011, 2020). However, further development of these techniques is needed to be an economic alternative for carbon dioxide mitigation (Vega et al. 2020). Alternatively, carbon capture and utilisation technologies arose (Zhang * Francisco M. Baena‑Moreno [email protected] 1
Chemical and Environmental Engineering Department, Technical School of Engineering, University of Seville, C/ Camino de Los Descubrimientos S/N, 41092 Sevilla, Spain
Department of Chemical and Process Engineering, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, UK
2
et al. 2019, 2020b; Baena-Moreno et al. 2020a). Nevertheless, this alternative presents some commercial limitations for the high scales needed for C O2 emissions abatement. In this sense, in the medium term only the combination of renewable energy and traditional energy sources is a realistic solution (Srivastava et al. 2020). Biogas resulting from the anaerobic digestion of biomass is a promising renewable energy option. Biogas is mainly composed of
Data Loading...
