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Date Published:
31 July 2014

Volume 5, Issue 4


EPA: Reduce methane at new landfills

Feature
In a move to reduce methane emissions from US landfills, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed updates to air standards for new municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills. This announcement is part of the President’s Climate Action Plan – Strategy to Reduce Methane Emissions, published in March earlier this year. At the same time, the EPA says it is also seeking broad... [read more]

Hotting up

Feature
Fortum Värme, a subsidiary of Finland’s state-owned energy corporation Fortum co-owned together with the Swedish city of Stockholm, is constructing a combined heat and power (CHP) plant in Värtan. Costing €500 million to build over a three-year period and designed to produce 280MW of heat and 130MW of power, this will be one of the largest biomass-fired CHP plants in the... [read more]

Staying ahead of the game

Feature
Since it was opened in 1992, Lemvig Biogas has been the largest thermophilic biogas plant in Denmark. The plant, located in Lemvig town, is owned by 25 local farmers in a 100% privately owned cooperative. It uses slurry from approximately 75 farms, and waste and residual products from industrial production to generate renewable heat and power. Today the plant processes approximately 248,000... [read more]

One for the road

Feature
In Norway, the government is working towards carbon neutrality by the year 2050. This will be achieved in stages; first greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will be slashed by 30% in 2020 before they are further reduced to 50% in 2030. Liquefied biogas (bio-LNG) could be a key player in helping the nation achieve these ambitious targets. The government has recognised this and, on 12 February this year,... [read more]

Biogas in Scandinavia

Feature
The small northerly nations of Scandinavia tick many of the boxes for a strong biogas sector. Early adopters of carbon taxes? Check: 1990 for Finland, 1991 for Norway and Sweden, and 1992 for Denmark. Densely forested for a good supply of woody biomass? That’s a yes for Norway, Sweden and Finland. Strong agricultural sectors for feedstock and a market for by-products? That’s certainly... [read more]

Material decisions for tanks

Feature
for tanks As energy prices continue to rise, the number of bioenergy plants across the world is increasing rapidly. However, design engineers are faced with a number of basic choices when it comes to starting a new project. One of the major decisions is the construction material to be used in the tank design of the digester, gas storage and feedstock storage vessels. Essentially, three materials... [read more]

Waste not, want not

Feature
In today’s climate there is a need to look at alternative ways to create low carbon, renewable energy. It is only in the past couple of years that the opportunities from biogas have become more apparent to a broader audience. Looking at its vast potential, it is clear biogas could play an important role in the creation of renewable energy for now and in the future. Deploying it as a fuel... [read more]

Sliding towards success

Feature
The 26-year-old boilers at Sandcastle Water Park in the UK posed a number of risks to the day to day operation of the business. Energy costs had risen to over 40% of operating overheads in the last five years. The management needed to reduce energy consumption without limiting customer experience. Also, the facility was approaching the limit of available mains power, thus impeding future growth.... [read more]

Upgrading for a better future

Feature
Sweden’s leading role in bioenergy production is set to be further enhanced with the news that Schmack Carbotech has been awarded a contract to design and build a new 2,000 Nm³/h processing plant just south of Stockholm. A development, that in early 2015 will see the Swedish capital increase its proportion of biomethane by 50%, Schmack Carbotech’s Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA)... [read more]

Some like it hot

Feature
The advantages of thermophilic anaerobic digestion (AD) units (operating at around 50-60°C) over mesophilic AD units (operating at around 40°C) are already well-documented in terms of higher yields and improved efficiencies. The challenge has always been to transfer that higher-speed reaction and processing time evidenced in laboratory setups into a commercial unit which, by definition,... [read more]

Increasing biogas output with liquid lime

Feature
Many manufacturing and municipal treatment plants produce acidic effluent from the production process. Some effluents must be treated extensively to remove contaminants before being safely discharged into the environment. The purpose of an effluent treatment system is to generate a solids stream containing the impurities in the effluent and a liquid stream that is suitable for discharge to the... [read more]

SRC harvest technology: Still a pioneer's trade

Feature
Short rotation woody crops (SRWCs) such as poplar and willow present considerable potential as a biomass feedstock, and are extremely viable when established where conventional crops cannot be grown. The deployment of SRWCs is, however, being held back by the fact that the present harvesting technology is still relatively new. Very few commercial harvesters have been developed for this purpose,... [read more]

Combating climate change

Feature
Since March 2013, Finland-based heat and power producer Vaskiluodon Voima, a joint venture between EPV Energy and Pohjola Voima, has been operating the world’s largest biomass gasification plant. Located in the Finnish city of Vaasa, the plant will generate both renewable electricity and district heating for the local community. By enabling the utilisation of biomass in addition to coal,... [read more]

On the double

Feature
It is of major advantage to compress straw into briquettes if it is to be used for boosting gas yield in biogas plants At Research Center Foulum, Aarhus University in Denmark, large quantities of straw, dry grass and similar solid biomass is fed into a full scale biogas plant. Prior to being fed into the reactor, the biomass is pre-treated. This involves compressing the dry crop residues (straw... [read more]

A fine example

Feature
Wood pellets have a tendency to break up when they are handled. Friction, caused during transportation, leads to the creation of a very fine wood powder and this represents a significant risk for fires and explosions. It must therefore be dealt with and removed. The increasing number of wood pellet shipments from North America to Europe means this phenomenon is today very relevant at port... [read more]

No more agro-vation

Feature
When one renewable energy supplier wanted to utilise its ‘agro dust’ — the by-product of a central aspiration system in a biomass-fired power plant — it turned to Nawrocki Pelleting Technology, a specialist solutions provider for manufacturers of biomass pellets and feeds. The solution: convert this waste product into agro pellets. To do this, the agro dust was to be... [read more]

A solution to reliable baseload low carbon power

Feature
The transition from fossil fuels to low carbon emitting renewable energy for power production is necessary if we are going to mitigate the carbon effects on climate change. There are, however, serious constraints to the typically envisioned pathway of using wind and solar power. For every megawatt of wind and solar generating capacity, there has to be a megawatt of thermally generated or hydro... [read more]

On the horizon

Feature
The wood pellet industry in the US has seen rapid growth in the last decade. Exports of wood pellets from the US have doubled in the last two years alone, reaching over 3 million tonnes in 2013. But is this kind of growth sustainable? First, let’s address sustainability from an environmental perspective. Is the industry in the US able to supply a good portion of the growing demand for wood... [read more]

Small but mighty

Feature
Pyrolysis is a thermochemical process in which a material is heated to high temperatures exceeding 400-500°C in the absence of oxygen. Fast pyrolysis accomplishes the heating of the material in about a second. In the case of biomass pyrolysis, the biomass particles essentially rupture at pyrolysis temperatures, generating a vapour and carbon soot or char. One way to think about pyrolysing a... [read more]