Worlds first commercial biological methane formation in commercial scale launched in Denmark, and it's coming to Brazil.

Groundbreaking new technology will make the production of Methane or Natural Gas from CO2 much easier with lower cost.

Today, the formation of methane today is done in large petrochemical plants under very high temperature and pressure. This will now change with the introduction of a this much cheaper technology where each individual biogas plants can produce its own methane.

This is the first time that a Power-to-X plant with this technology, called bio-methanation, has moved from an experimental stage to a full-scale factory. This methane formation has a great advantage of using normal temperature and pressure, which makes the required reactor much more simple.

It's nothing short of a world sensation.

Despite its status as a green energy source, biogas plants emit large amounts of CO2. About 40 percent of the gas created in a biogas plant is CO2, which fizzles out of the chimney and directly into the atmosphere. The remaining biogas consists of methane. But in the plant on Als this is now over. Here, researchers from the University of Southern Denmark have discovered how to convert CO2 into methane using bacteria.

This is the first time that a Power-to-X plant with this technology has now moved from an experimental stage to a full-scale factory.

The two companies behind the pant have invested $15 million in both the electrolysis and the biomethanation reactor, and the current installation has a production capacity of 1,5MW, and will be expanded to 6MW in the coming year corresponding to a production of 12.000 m3 of methane per day. This plant is contributing to a reduction in carbon emission in the municipality now reaching an impressive 57%.

The plant simply gets more methane out of the waste management that is already done at the biogas plant. Waste is therefore being used better than before. And then it is a very big factor in the reduction of CO2.

According to Nature Energy, by converting CO2 into methane, the biogas plant in Als can produce about 25 percent more green gas than before the new plant was built.

The Danish Minister for Industry, Business and Financial Affairs, Morten Bødskov, who also attended the inauguration, and called the facility a piece of world history.

As the first place in the world, Als can now produce green biogas for commercial use. This is the kind of innovative thinking that will help drive the green transition forward.

TR4NSFORM ENERGY was visited the plant already before it was taken into commercial operation. You can see the video and article here.

The groundbreaking thing about this is that biology is used. This makes the process much more usable and cheaper to operate. And this makes it much more economically viable.

When CO2 is converted to methane, it is done with the help of hydrogen. In this plant, the hydrogen is made with water and power from wind turbines when they produce more than is consumed by the power grid. The current installation has a production power of 1,5MW, and will be expanded to 9MW in the coming year.

When you produce lots of wind energy, you can capture and store it by converting the energy into hydrogen and then into methane, which is the same as natural gas. Methane is much easier to store than electricity. In this way, better use can be made of the various pillars we have in the energy sector.

In principle, you can use the technology from the Power-to-X plant on Als to extract CO2 from the atmosphere. But it is troublesome and very expensive. Among other things, because oxygen, of which there is also a lot in the atmosphere, interferes with the process.

Therefore, the technology is far more applicable in a biogas plant. Here the oxygen is already gone and the concentration of CO2 is high.

But it can also be used elsewhere.

Typically, this will be in industries where there is a high CO2 emission. There it would be possible to collect and convert the C02 into something useful, which can then be transported directly into the gas pipeline network.

Bio-methanation coming to Brazil

TR4NSFORM ENERGY is matching global leading biogas technologies to the state and need of the Brazilian biogas sector, and is bringing bio-methanation to Brazil. We will be at the 10th Biogas Forum in São Paulo on November 13-14.