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Here is a quick posting for all our UK based agricultural Anaerobic Digestion Newsblog subscribers.
If you have not seen this yet, the Anaerobic Digestion and Biogas Association (ADBA) launched a free consultancy service for farmers, in February 2012, who are considering whether AD is a viable option for their business.
This sounds like a first pass pre-feasibility analysis for those that are eligible, and could be very useful for a large number of farmers.
However, you must be a paid subscriber to MRW magazine to read their article and receive complete, unrestricted access to mrw.co.uk
If you are a MRW subscriber just sign in with your email address and get started!
The Anaerobic Digestion Newsblog is not a MRW subscriber, so we would appreciate it if some kind person who is a MRW member and is able to read about this has time, would please come back here and comment so that our readers can see what you thought of this offer. There also may be a link direct on the ADBA web site but I have no time to look right now! So please comment on that if possible as well!
Helsinki -- Within the Academy of Finland?s research programme Sustainable Energy, researchers looked at the use of biogas as a transport fuel. As a joint Finnish-Chilean effort, the researchers studied the upgrading of landfill gas into fuel. ?In recent years, interest in using biogas technology in the utilisation of industrial by-products for energy purposes has increased considerably. Some countries have already introduced this technology on a large scale, says Professor Jukka Rintala, the principal investigator of the project.
Our video for this post is on the subject of Finnish Biogas. There is no association between the video and the article.
Biogas can be produced from many different materials ranging from biodegradable waste to energy crops. The biogas produced in this process is a versatile source of energy. It can be used for heat and electricity, be processed into vehicle fuel or fed into the natural gas grid. In addition, the residual material, the so-called digestate, from the process can be used as fertilizer or soil conditioner,? Rintala explains. Methane derived from biogas has been shown to be one of the most suitable candidates for use as biofuel, thanks to its sustainable production chain. Methane also meets the EU?s criteria for sustainable biofuels, which will take effect in a few years? time. Rintala: ?Biogas can be used as a biofuel once its methane content is raised above 95 per cent. In our research, we used water absorption, which yielded a methane content of 80?90 per cent. The rest is carbon dioxide and nitrogen.?
Nitrogen does not cause any damage to car engines, but it does lower the energy content of biogas. To reach a higher methane content through this process, we should prevent the access of nitrogen in the gas collection system in the landfill. Carbon dioxide does not damage engines either, but it lowers the energy value of biogas, says Rintala.
Rintala would like to see more research on the effects of process parameters on the costs of biogas upgrading and the effects of pressurisation on compound removal. As a rule, the only criterion for biomass is that it can be broken down by microbes under oxygen-free conditions. Of course, the composition of feedstocks does affect the composition of the biogas produced and also the chosen method of purification. Landfill gases are generally thought of as being the most difficult ones to upgrade into fuel.? Quelle: Academy of Finland View the original article here
Many governments, towns and communities throughout the Western world are making new rules concerning the treatment of Municipal Solid waste (MSW). New concepts of waste management are needed in which the idea of recycling is of major importance.
Incineration will be used for the easily burnable fraction of what cannot be recycled, and for some kinds of hazardous wastes such as hospital waste, while the left over will be disposed of in sanitary MSW landfills.
The recycling of products is best done at source by the public when they put their waste out for collection and this is called source separation. However, if the waste is mixed up when collected it can still be separated again by mechanical separation plants or by hand picking using human labour and a conveyor.
The plants in which the separation of mixed wastes is carried out are usually called Mechanical Bioligical Treatment Plants, or MBTs. These plants cost a lot to build, are expensive to run. They also use a lot of power which reduces the value of recycling by expending non-renewable energy in the process.
The last decade has seen source separation introduced in many countries, especially in Scandinavia, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria and Canada. Now, more recently source separation is being implemented in the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe now that European Waste Regulations require so much of the MSW produced not to be landfilled.
The most important reasons to separate waste at the source are:
- The difficulty to find sites for new landfills and the negative attitude of the public towards landfilling and incinerating.
- Source separation improves the quality of the products which will have to be recycled. The fact that the organic fraction is separated from the inorganic fraction means that the organic fraction will have a low concentration of heavy metals and will be free of metals, glass and stones, while the inorganic fraction will be drier and less dirty.
The degree of recycling which can be achieved depends of the system used for source separation but it is the highest if the separated waste is picked up at the houses in separate containers.
A high percentage of recycling can only be achieved though by recycling the organic fraction of MSW whereby anaerobic techniques such as the anaerobic digestion process are very promising since they not only produce a humus-like residue, comparable to the compost produced in aerobic conversion techniques, but also a form of energy, biogas, which can be easily upgraded to several forms of valuable energy.
So, by source separating your waste you can make a difference - especially if there is an Anaerobic digestor in your area.
Why not find out more about waste technologies, and encourage your friends to recycle. Your children and later generations will benefit - don't they deserve the same opportunities you had?
The Environment Secretary for Scotland has announced ambitious new plans for waste management in Scotland.
New targets of 60 percent recycling by 2020 and 70 percent by 2025 have been proposed, no more than 25 percent of waste is to be used to generate energy, while municipal waste being sent to landfill is to be reduced to 5 percent by 2025.
Anaerobic-Digestion.com view: This is going to be tough to achieve, and if 25% will be used for energy there is huge scope for Anaerobic Digestion (biogas Digesters) in Scotland, and a lot of them!
