公開日:2022/02/10 / 最終更新日:2022/02/10

Biogas is a renewable fuel produced by the breakdown of organic matter corresponding to meals scraps and animal waste. It can be used in quite a lot of ways together with as vehicle fuel and for heating and electricity generation. Read on to learn more.

What is biogas? How is biogas produced?

Biogas is an environmentally-friendly, renewable energy source.

It’s produced when natural matter, similar to meals or animal waste, is broken down by microorganisms within the absence of oxygen, in a process called anaerobic digestion. For this to take place, the waste material must be enclosed in an atmosphere the place there is no oxygen.

It could occur naturally or as part of an industrial process to intentionally create biogas as a fuel.

What sort of waste can be used to produce biogas?

A wide variety of waste material breaks down into biogas, including animal manure, municipal rubbish/ waste, plant material, meals waste or sewage.

Which gases does biogas include?

Biogas consists primarily of methane and carbon dioxide. It may well also embody small amounts of hydrogen sulphide, siloxanes and some moisture. The relative quantities of those fluctuate depending on the type of waste concerned within the production of the resulting biogas.

What can biogas be used for?

To fuel vehicles – if biogas is compressed it can be utilized as a vehicle fuel.

As a replacement for natural gas – if biogas is cleaned up and upgraded to natural gas standards, it’s then known as biomethane and can be used in an identical way to methane; this can embody for cooking and heating.

Biogas: 6 fascinating information

1. Biogas is a gas of many names

Biogas is most commonly additionally known as biomethane. It’s also sometimes called marsh gas, sewer gas, compost gas and swamp gas in the US.

Biogas is a naturally occurring and renewable source of energy, resulting from the breakdown of natural matter. Biogas is not to be confused with ‘natural’ gas, which is a non-renewable source of power.

2. Biogas and biomass: similarities and variations

Biomass and biogas are each biofuels; they can be burnt to produce energy. However biomass is the stable, organic material. Biomass has been used as an energy source since humans first discovered fire and burnt wood, plants and animal dung to create energy.

Today, many power stations run by burning a biomass of compressed wood pellets – a by-product of timber and furniture-making. By changing fossil-fuel coal, biomass enables renewable electricity to be produced.

3. Biogas is just not a new discovery

The anaerobic process of decomposition (or fermentation) of natural matter has been occurring in nature for millions of years, even before fossil fuels, and continues to occur all around us in the natural world. Right this moment’s industrial conversion of natural waste into energy in biogas plants is solely fast-forwarding nature’s ability to recycle its useful resources.

The primary human use of biogas is thought so far back to 3,000BC in the Center East, when the Assyrians used biogas to heat their baths.

A seventeenth century chemist, Jan Baptist van Helmont, discovered that flammable gases might come from decaying organic matter. Van Helmont can be accountable for bringing the word ‘gas’, from the Greek word chaos, into the science vocabulary.

The first massive anaerobic digestion plant dates back to 1859 in a leper colony in Bombay.

An ingenious Victorian engineer, John Webb from Birmingham, created the Sewage Lamp, which transformed sewage into biogas to light street lamps. The only remaining Webb Sewer Lamp in London is now just off The Strand in Carting Lane – or as some wags would have it, Farting Lane.

Anaerobic digestion was used as a method to deal with municipal wastewater, earlier than chemical treatments. Within the growing world the anaerobic process is still recognised as an affordable, natural different to chemical compounds and the reduction of dysentery bacteria.

And let’s not overlook that in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome the put up-apocalyptic settlement Bartertown, run by Tina Turner’s terrifying Aunty Entity, is powered by a pig-farm biogas system with biogas used to power the desert-chasing vehicles.

4. Right this moment China leads the world in the use of biogas

China has the most important number of biogas plants, with an estimated 50 million households using biogas. These are principally in rural areas and small-scale residence and village plants.

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