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Review
. 2019 Oct 2;6(4):92.
doi: 10.3390/bioengineering6040092.

Technologies for Biogas Upgrading to Biomethane: A Review

Amir Izzuddin Adnan  1 , Mei Yin Ong  2 , Saifuddin Nomanbhay  3 , Kit Wayne Chew  4 , Pau Loke Show  5
Affiliations
Review

Technologies for Biogas Upgrading to Biomethane: A Review

Amir Izzuddin Adnan et al. Bioengineering (Basel). .

Abstract

The environmental impacts and high long-term costs of poor waste disposal have pushed the industry to realize the potential of turning this problem into an economic and sustainable initiative. Anaerobic digestion and the production of biogas can provide an efficient means of meeting several objectives concerning energy, environmental, and waste management policy. Biogas contains methane (60%) and carbon dioxide (40%) as its principal constituent. Excluding methane, other gasses contained in biogas are considered as contaminants. Removal of these impurities, especially carbon dioxide, will increase the biogas quality for further use. Integrating biological processes into the bio-refinery that effectively consume carbon dioxide will become increasingly important. Such process integration could significantly improve the sustainability of the overall bio-refinery process. The biogas upgrading by utilization of carbon dioxide rather than removal of it is a suitable strategy in this direction. The present work is a critical review that summarizes state-of-the-art technologies for biogas upgrading with particular attention to the emerging biological methanation processes. It also discusses the future perspectives for overcoming the challenges associated with upgradation. While biogas offers a good substitution for fossil fuels, it still not a perfect solution for global greenhouse gas emissions and further research still needs to be conducted.

Keywords: CO2 utilization; anaerobic digestion; bio-succinic acid; biogas upgrading; biomethane; feasibility assessment.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Technologies for biogas upgrading via CO2 removal route.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Summary of fundamental knowledge on physical scrubbing technology [15,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28].
Figure 3
Figure 3
Summary of basic information on chemical scrubbing technology [15,19,20,25,27,28,29,30,31,32].
Figure 4
Figure 4
Depicts information on pressure swing adsorption technology [19,20,25,28,33,34,35,36,37].
Figure 5
Figure 5
Summary of base knowledge of membrane separation technology [20,21,25,27,28,29,38,39].
Figure 6
Figure 6
Depicts fundamental knowledge on cryogenic separation [15,19,20,25,28,29,40,41,42,43].
Figure 7
Figure 7
Metabolic pathways for hydrogen assisted methanogenesis [25].
Figure 8
Figure 8
Potential products by using succinic acid (SA) as feedstock [95].
Figure 9
Figure 9
Market forecast of bio-SA volume from the year 2015 to 2022 [112].
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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