UT researchers Frieder Mugele and Wim Brilman have received a Demonstrator grant from NWO to build a pilot installation that can separate biogas into carbon dioxide and pure biomethane. In the installation, the researchers use a material they have developed that allows for better and cheaper separation than with existing technologies.
The production of biogas releases both carbon dioxide and methane. The biomethane is useful as a sustainable fuel, among other things, but the carbon dioxide makes the gas less useful. Therefore the gas must be purified. This is still done with, for example, membranes or other materials that can capture carbon dioxide, but these techniques are expensive and require a lot of energy.
Cat litter pellets 2.0
The Mugele and Brilman teams have developed a new material that they make from the clay type Bentonite. This is the same clay that cat litter is made from. Using small, positively charged particles, the Twente researchers ensure that the spaces in the clay are exactly the right size. The spaces must be large enough that carbon dioxide can fit in between them, but the larger methane molecules cannot.
The fact that the material can efficiently capture carbon dioxide has already been demonstrated in the lab, but with the pilot installation the researchers now want to see whether it also works on a larger scale. “We will test on the scale of an individual farm and under realistic conditions,” says Mugele. “We want to purify hundreds of kilos of biogas per day.” The installation must be built and the first test results available before 2025.
Source: Utwente
