Biogas upgrading – Review of commercial technologies - SGC

SGC Rapport 2013:270
Prometheus Energy www.prometheusenergy.com
Terracastus Technologies www.terracastus.com
Table 7 Manufacturers with special focus on small scale biogas upgrading
Company Homepage
Biosling www.biosling.se
Metener www.metener.fi
1.4 Aims, scope and report disposition
The present report aims at presenting a review of biogas upgrading today, taking
into account and comparing relevant upgrading methods by presenting their
advantages and shortcomings. Each technology is described in detail, including
a technical walk-through, a description of different conditions influencing energy
consumption, methane loss, investment costs, etc. The report focuses on the
upgrading technologies which are commonly used today, i.e. pressure swing
adsorption, amine scrubbing, water scrubbing, physical scrubbing with organic
solvents and membrane separation. The report intentionally also includes even
less-proven methods such as cryogenic technology as well as small scale approaches,
albeit on a less detailed level, because this is where the strongest
development can be observed.
The aim is to provide a reference for existing biogas upgrading plants in order
to evaluate their technology, place themselves in the right context and identify
optimization possibilities. It shall also be a reference for those planning to build
a gas upgrading plant, and give the underlying knowledge and holistic view
necessary for choosing the most suitable solution.
The report has been prepared in cooperation with several manufacturers of
biogas upgrading units to ensure that reliable and updated data is presented.
Not all technologies are represented by a manufacturer in the reference group.
Also to ensure reliable data in these chapters, the authors have contacted industry
representatives to review the data presented about these technologies.
The data collected during this project have also been compared to data from the
research literature, to see if recent developments have meant any drastic
changes.
Chapter 2 presents the technologies that are available for biogas upgrading. This
chapter presents technological details and is intended for the reader who wants a
proper understanding of the technologies, the driving forces behind them and their
limitations. The reader not interested in these details may jump directly to Chapter
3 which presents a comparison between the upgrading technologies, with respect
to investment costs, energy demand, consumables and gas purity. Chapter 4 presents
the developments within cryogenic separation and liquefaction, a quickly
developing topic. In Chapter 5 two new technologies especially designed for small
scale upgrading applications are described. Finally, some concluding remarks and
visions about future developments are presented in Chapter 6. In Appendix I-III
some specific theoretic considerations are presented.
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