1. BioPower-to-Gas
Is bio-P2G feasible from a techno-economic and sustainability point of view?
On the reference model, a cost price of 72.1 €ct/Nm3 was obtained at an annual production of 2,400,000 Nm3/a of green gas, whereas this case study generated a price of 66.4 €ct/Nm3 of green gas at an annual production of 4,031,992 Nm3/a.
(preliminary results)
With an increasing penetration of wind and solar (PV) energy in our energy supply, one of the issues is excess electricity at times of much wind or solar energy available. Amongst other possibilities, a way to cope with these situations may be to convert excess electricity to an energy carrier in the form of methane. Biological methane production (biomethanation) from electricity is subject of the project Bio-P2G. The focus of this research is to investigate the feasibility of biomethanation in terms of economy, energy efficiency and greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction.
Concerning a reference biogas supply chain (Figure 1), the transformation blocks within the blue frame were replaced with transformation blocks resembling a biomethanation step (Figure 2).
Figure 1: Reference model Figure 2: Added transformation blocks.
For this adapted supply chain model, techno-economic parameters to model the new transformation blocks are determined from literature research. If parameters are not available from literature, experiments are suggested to find the information to fill the gap. The cost price, energy efficiency and greenhouse gas reduction were calculated related to the biomethane produced. The model allows to study scale dependency of the biogas production and a variety of electrical input patterns.
Although the cost price results show a reduction with regards to the reference model, the final price of the green gas is still subject to increase according to the expected need for equipment to stabilize the electrolyzer. Furthermore, this process relies on the availability of energy surpluses for its operation, which can be translated into operating hours per year. The less frequent the energy surpluses become, the lower amount of green gas will be produced and the more expensive it becomes. The same situation happens while studying the effect that the variation of the electricity prices would have within the process. The higher the price of the electricity, the more expensive the final gas becomes. Within this context, it is recommended to explore the effect that the establishment of a price for energy surpluses would have within the final price of the gas.
A. Choudari
M.C. Orsini Muňoz
E.J. Hengeveld
J. Bekkering
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