Abstract
A large-scale biogas upgrading plant using the CarboTech® technology with a treatment capacity of 1333 Nm3 biogas per hour was analyzed. Our scope of evaluation encompasses all technology steps that are necessary for upgrading biogas, i.e., both pretreatment and biogas upgrade. A cradle-to-gate life-cycle and life-cycle cost assessment (LCA and LCCA) methodology was used with the functional unit (FU) of 1 Nm3 of biogas upgraded in order to ease comparison with other biogas upgrading technologies. The calculation was made using the GaBi8 LCA software and databases of GaBi Professional, Construction materials, Food&Feed, and the ecoinvent3. We applied the CML characterization model with all its mid-point indicators. The mid-point indicators of the CML characterization model were aggregated after normalization by the CML2001 - Jan.2016 normalization factors. The normalized environmental impact was 541.74·10−15/Nm3 raw biogas. The highest environmental impacts were the marine aquatic ecotoxicity potential (15.705 kg dichlorobenzene-equiv./Nm3 raw biogas), the abiotic depletion potential (1.037 MJ/Nm3 raw biogas), and global warming potential (0.113 kg CO2-equiv./Nm3 raw biogas). The unit production cost of the PSA technology was 0.05-0.063 €/Nm3 raw biogas. The most considerable source of expenses was the operational cost from which 77% was spent on electricity. The initial investment, personal costs, and the reinvestment amounted to only 34% of the total costs for the whole life cycle. Strategies to lower the environmental burden of the PSA technology are to use green electricity and to optimize the size of the plant in order to reduce unnecessary material flows of building material and their indirect energy use. This can also lower investment expenditures while automatization and remote control may spare personnel costs.
Highlights
Renewable energy has a major role to play in combating climate change and establishing a more sustainable way of living [1, 2]
The size of the biogas upgrading plant was defined along the renewable energy subsidy scheme given at that time (EEG 2012) that gave the highest subsidy (3.0 €ct/kWh of fed-in thermal energy) to plants having a nominal capacity of 700 Nm3/h biomethane
The high emissions of heavy metals and NMVOC again from steel production resulted in a high human toxicity potential (HTP)
Summary
Renewable energy has a major role to play in combating climate change and establishing a more sustainable way of living [1, 2]. Between 2011 and 2017, biogas production in the EU increased from 123,526 to 195,684 GWh [10]. The majority of biogas is used for electricity (62%) and heat (27%) production [5, 11], the amount of upgraded biogas grew from 752 to 22,048 GWh [12]. This is almost a thirtyfold growth that indicates a shift of the business model of biogas plants, from electricity and heat production to upgrading biogas to biomethane [3]. During the earlier development of the biogas upgrading technology, water scrubbing
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