Suitability of vessels and adsorbents for the short-term storage of biogas/biomethane for the determination of impurities – Siloxanes, sulfur compounds, halogenated hydrocarbons, BTEX

Abstract

Biogas is a renewable energy source with many different production pathways and various excellent opportunities to use, for example as vehicle fuel (biomethane). Reliable analytical methodologies for assessing the quality of the gas are critical to ensure that the gas can technically and safely be used. An essential part of any procedure aiming to determine the quality is the sampling and the transfer to the laboratory. One of the greatest challenges is then to ensure that the composition of the sample collected does not change between the time of sampling and the analysis. The choice of the sampling vessel to be used must be made only after fully assessing its short-term stability. In this paper, the results from short-term stability studies in different vessels (cylinders, bags and sorbents) are presented for siloxanes, BTEX, halogenated hydrocarbons and sulfur compounds. Storage of dry gas at high pressure (> 6 MPa) appears to be a good alternative however it is currently challenging to find an optimal treatment of the cylinders for all species to be assessed in biogas/biomethane. At lower pressure, adsorption effects on the inner surface of the cylinders have been observed. The use of bags and sorbent tubes also shows limitation. No existing sorbent tubes are sufficiently universal as to trap all possible impurities and high boiling compounds may adsorbed on the inner surface of the bags walls. Moreover, the presence of water when storing biogas most certainly impacts the storage stability of compounds in most vessels. Using at least two sampling methods for a given compound and comparing results will allow taking into account the eventual effects of water vapour, and adsorption on the inner surface of the vessels.