Biointegra3
Name of the project: Enhancement of landfill gas by an integrated biological system (Biointegra3)
Name of the programme: Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad. Proyecto I+D+i, dentro del Programa Estatal de Investigación, Desarrollo e Innovación Orientada a los Retos de la Sociedad. CTM2016-79089-R
Start-End date: 2017-2019
Summary:
Nowadays, it is vital to promote the use of safe, sustainable and clean energy technologies. The use of biogas from landfill helps reduce the dependence on fossil fuels and the emissions of methane to the atmosphere (the greenhouse effect of methane is 25 times higher than that of CO2).
Among all the different types of biogas, landfill biogas shows one the lowest methane and highest CO2 concentrations and is produced at high volumetric flow rates. Nevertheless, the reduction or elimination of CO2 allows obtaining an enriched methane (biomethane) biogas. Enriched biogas production is currently performed by physicochemical techniques such as pressure swing adsorption (PSA), membrane separation, scrubbers, cryogenic systems, etc.
In this project the enhancement of landfill gas by using an integrated system of three biological processes: anoxic desulphuration, nitrification and photobioreactor is proposed. This system will allow the production of purified biogas, methane-enriched biogas, the elimination of elemental sulphur and the production of biomass (protein extracts). The three processes will be integrated in order to minimize the need of external nutrients.