(110a) Life Cycle Analysis of Hydrogen Gas Used for Biogas Upgrading Process in Expanded Granular Sludge Bed Reactor
AIChE Spring Meeting and Global Congress on Process Safety
2017
2017 Spring Meeting and 13th Global Congress on Process Safety
Sustainable Engineering Forum
Distributed Chemical and Energy Processes for Sustainability I
Tuesday, March 28, 2017 - 1:30pm to 2:00pm
Shruti S. Karambelkar, Haider Al-Rubaye, Manohar M. Shivashankaraiah, Joseph D. Smith, PhD.
Chemical & Biochemical Engineering Department, Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, USAAbstract
The high demand for energy around the world and the environmental effects resulting from the use of the fossil fuels, makes many industrial sectors focus on the alternative energy. Biogas Production from anaerobic digestion forms an essential part of alternative and renewable energy development.
The biogas mainly consists of methane, carbon dioxide and trace amounts of hydrogen sulfide and ammonia. Hydrogen gas produced in the first two steps of the anaerobic digestion - Hydrolysis and Acidogensis is released to the atmosphere during the process. Injecting the same amount of released Hydrogen into the last two steps of the Anaerobic Digestion - Acetogensis and methanogenesis, improves Methane composition in the biogas, up to 88%. On injecting Hydrogen, it reacts with the produced carbon dioxide to produce more methane, thus, enhancing methane in the biogas. This increase in the methane composition will be accompanied by a high production rate since the specific volume of the methane is four times more than hydrogen and the volumetric energy content for methane is higher ( 40 KJ/L) than that of hydrogen ( 12.78 KJ/L).
Life Cycle analysis has been conducted to check the feasibility of using Hydrogen gas to upgrade the biogas so it could be accounted as a natural gas and used in all natural gas equipment.