A biogas plant is a facility that provides oxygen-free conditions where anaerobic digestion can occur. Simply put, it’s an artificial system where you can turn waste into sustainable energy and fertilizers, with positive effects on the environment.

This is produced when bacteria decompose organic material such as garbage and sewage, especially in the absence of oxygen. Biogas is a mixture of about 60 percent methane and 40 percent Carbon dioxide. Methane is the main component of natural gas. It is relatively clean burning, colorless, and odorless. This gas can be captured and burned for cooking and heating. This is already being done on a large scale in some countries of the world.

Farms that produce a lot of manure, such as hog and dairy farms, can use biogas generators to produce methane.Biogas a renewable fuel that’s produced when organic matter, such as food or animal waste, is broken down by microorganisms in the absence of oxygen. This process is called anaerobic digestion. For this to take place, the waste material needs to be enclosed in an environment where there is no oxygen.Biogas can occur naturally or as part of an industrial process to intentionally create it as a fuel.

Corrosion and odor build-up in biogas after-treatment

In the biogas after the methane upgrading, high concentrations of hydrogen sulfide are often present, creating issues for the following process steps. Corrosion is one of the issues to be considered, since very high H₂S levels may corrode pipes and process instrumentation, resulting in costs up to several thousand euros per year. Odor is also one of the major problems related to the methane upgrading off-gas. This is due to the high sensitivity of the human nose to hydrogen sulfide, since the odor receptors are triggered for concentrations in the part-per-billion (ppb) range.

Thus, even a small leak in the process lines or an opening in a process step may create an odor issue for a large area, since the emitted gas needs to be diluted up to 200 000 times before the odor is masked.