Biogasprocessen : Bestämning av verkningsgrad

Biogas is increasingly used for fuel in for example vehicles and it´s produced in a biogas processconsisting of the steps of pretreatment, digestion and gas cleaning. The pretreatment is a method usedto increase the gas production and / or destroy pathogens. The digestion is the stage when anaerobicmicroorganisms convert bio-mass of a substrate to a raw gas containing about 65% of methane. Thegas cleaning is used to increase the methane content to about 97% so the gas can be used for motors invehicles. The biogas part of the Ekeby sewage plant in Eskilstuna is using multiple substrates. Sewagesludge is mostly used but also other substrates, like food waste. The time for processing is in average25 days before the content is taken out for drying and finally for use as cover material. The producedgas will be cleaned in a water scrubber before pressurization and after that used as fuel for vehicles.The usage of support energy in the biogas process is essentially district heating, electricity and oil. Theoverall efficiency term is the energy produced in the gas minus the supporting energy divided with theenergy from possible biogas production of the substrates. For calculation of a continuous process thefact that there is always a part of the substrates which not will be digested has to be considered.Another thing to think about is that the inserted energy as material will not be converted to gasimmediately, several days is needed. In 2009 the overall efficiency in Ekeby biogas plant was inaverage 70.5%, and the value was higher during the summer than the winter. Calculation of overallefficiency of a biogas plant will always involve some uncertainties because differences of thecomposition of the substrates, the condition of the micro-organisms, digestion of many substrates atthe same time etc