Operational study and simulation of a biogas upgrading plant

Abstract

The drive for finding alternative energy to supplement fossil based fuel within the South African energy sector has led to research on waste to energy in particular biomethane as vehicular fuels. Biogas is produced from the anaerobic decomposition of organic matter with 40-70% vol. of methane. Biogas if upgraded, by removing the non-combustible component, can achieve 99% methane concentration which makes it a potent vehicle fuel and a direct substitute to natural gas. In this paper, a biogas upgrading plant operation that uses gas permeation technique for methane enrichment of biogas was studied and simulated. The effect of recycling permeate stream on methane recovery was studied. Recycling of the permeate stream improved the methane recovery of the simulated process by 18%. The overall methane recovery of the simulated process is 81.23%