Abstract
Membrane operations nowadays drive the innovative design of important separation, conversion, and upgrading processes, and contribute to realizing the main principles of “green process engineering” in various sectors. In this perspective, we propose the re-design of traditional plants for biogas upgrading and integrating and/or replacing conventional operations with innovative membrane units. Bio-digester gas streams contain valuable products such as biomethane, volatile organic compounds, and volatile fatty acids, whose recovery has important advantages for environment protection, energy saving, and waste valorization. Advanced membrane units can valorize biogas by separating its various components, and establishing environmentally friendly and small-scale energivorous novel separation processes enables researchers to pursue the requirements of circular economy.
Highlights
The use of renewable energies is increasing continuously to mitigate the increment of earth temperature
Biogas plays a crucial role in the market of renewable energies because of its lower capital and operating costs, and the fact that a wide range of organic biomass wastes can be used to generate biogas, which otherwise would be landfilled and would increase greenhouse gas emissions (GHG)
This perspective highlights an innovative approach where biogas is seen as a source of methane, and as a source of valuable compounds such as volatile organic compounds (VOCs)/volatile fatty acids (VFA), and water vapor, which can be recovered in the logic of circular economy and minimization of wastes
Summary
National Research Council—Institute on Membrane Technology (ITM–CNR), Rende, Italy. Reviewed by: Xuezhong He, Guangdong Technion-Israel Institute of Technology (GTIIT), China Giuseppe Genduso, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia. Specialty section: This article was submitted to Separation Processes, a section of the journal Frontiers in Chemical Engineering. Membrane operations nowadays drive the innovative design of important separation, conversion, and upgrading processes, and contribute to realizing the main principles of “green process engineering” in various sectors. In this perspective, we propose the redesign of traditional plants for biogas upgrading and integrating and/or replacing conventional operations with innovative membrane units. Advanced membrane units can valorize biogas by separating its various components, and establishing environmentally friendly and small-scale energivorous novel separation processes enables researchers to pursue the requirements of circular economy
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
