Methane in natural gas quality can be obtained from biomass, according to a research article published by the PSI. However, Switzerland currently recovers only about half of its available volume, the article states further. The reason for this is primarily that wet biomass such as liquid manure, sewage sludge and biowaste is not quite as easy to exploit as dry wood or harvest residues.
A pilot plant designed to improve this situation is currently being put through its paces at the PSI, which is based in Villigen in the canton of Aargau. Initial test runs have produced a yield of between 60 to 75 percent, the PSI writes. In contrast, conventional biogas plants only recover around 30 percent of the net energy potential offered by biomass at best.
“With this pilot plant we will test everything that an even larger industrial plant, one that will process two to five tons of biomass per hour, should be able to do later on”, explains chemical engineer Frédéric Vogel, head of the Catalytic Process Engineering Group in the Bioenergy and Catalysis Laboratory at PSI, in the article. He adds: “Since biomass, like crude oil, consists of hundreds of different substances, the reactions of which are impossible to calculate in detail, we had to experiment a lot”. In so doing, the researchers were able to turn to the Swiss Light Source SLS, which is housed at the PSI. This allows chemical reactions to be investigated with atomic resolution.
With this pilot plant, the researchers are aiming to show that methane can be produced in natural gas quality from various forms of wet biomass without creating undesirable by-products. Subsequently, concepts for systems on an industrial scale are to be tested. According to the PSI article, researchers at the institute have already touched base with corporate partners such as KASAG Swiss AG and Trea Tech Sàrl.
