Filed under: Natural Gas
Biomethane: finding ways to capture lost energy
At AutoblogGreen we have discussed many times the potential of biogas (usually biomethane) for different industries. The fact is that it's a flammable gas that is produced by the natural fermentation of waste and/or trash. In most of our landfills, this gas is just expelled to the atmosphere. Methane is claimed to be one of the gases that cause the greenhouse effect.
The use of methane in cars is somewhat limited (although it can potentially be mixed with CNG), many are very interested in using it to generate electricity. In 2006, the EU produced 5.3 oil-equivalent tons of this gas, which is 13.6 percent more than in 2005.
The latest efforts, however, seem to prefer extracting biomethane from agricultural waste instead of landfills, because if obtained from a coherent source, the purity of the gas can be better assured. This guarantees it can satisfy the standards that make it usable as a fuel.
According to a recent article in The Lancet, farming is responsible of 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. 30.5 percent of this is gas which is produced by manure (and off the record, 25 percent is direct consequence of the animals' digestion process). There's great interest in capturing that 30.5 percent of currently unused energy.
ProBiogás, a comprehensive R+D European plan that unites 12 research centers and 14 companies, has announced that 2007 is marked as "Biogas year". We'll keep our eyes open.
Related:
[Source: Energías Renovables (link is in Spanish)]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
A.Brien 9:42AM (9/14/2007)
I read somewhere that in the middle east they burn the natural gas that come when they extract crude oil because they sell just the oil and don't need the natural gas.
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Christine Smith 10:57AM (9/14/2007)
Just a note of clarification; you say in your article that: "Methane is claimed to be one of the gases that cause the greenhouse effect."
I think what you meant to say is that it is claimed to cause "human-induced climate change", rather than the "greenhouse effect"--the two are related, but not interchangable.
The greenhouse effect simply describes the mechanism by which certain atmospheric gases (referred to as greenhouse gases) retain long-wave radiation (heat), keeping the earth warmer as a whole than it ordinarily would have been--the greenhouse effect without humans as a factor already operates by keeping the earth's average temp. at about 59 degrees F, rather than about -4 degrees F. Methane is indeed one of the greenhouse gases--others include carbon dioxide, CFCs, nitrous oxide, and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6).
"Climate change" as popularly referred to specifically describes how humans have increased the greenhouse effect by adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, and the anticipated results of that action (changing climate, overall increase in the Earth's average temp.)
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