公開日:2022/02/11 / 最終更新日:2022/02/11

Biogas is a renewable fuel produced by the breakdown of organic matter reminiscent of 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 be taught more.

What is biogas? How is biogas produced?

Biogas is an environmentally-friendly, renewable energy source.

It’s produced when organic matter, such as 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 where there is no such thing as a oxygen.

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

What kind of waste can be utilized to produce biogas?

A wide number of waste material breaks down into biogas, including animal manure, municipal garbage/ waste, plant material, food waste or sewage.

Which gases does biogas contain?

Biogas consists primarily of methane and carbon dioxide. It could also embrace small quantities of hydrogen sulphide, siloxanes and some moisture. The relative quantities of these differ depending on the type of waste concerned within the production of the ensuing 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 analogous way to methane; this can include 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 typically called marsh gas, sewer gas, compost gas and swamp gas within the US.

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

2. Biogas and biomass: similarities and variations

Biomass and biogas are both biofuels; they can be burnt to produce energy. However biomass is the solid, natural material. Biomass has been used as an energy supply since people first discovered fire and burnt wood, plants and animal dung to create energy.

Right now, many energy 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 organic matter has been occurring in nature for millions of years, even earlier than fossil fuels, and continues to occur all around us in the natural world. At this time’s industrial conversion of natural waste into energy in biogas plants is just fast-forwarding nature’s ability to recycle its useful resources.

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

A 17th century chemist, Jan Baptist van Helmont, discovered that flammable gases might come from decaying natural matter. Van Helmont can also be responsible 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 inventive Victorian engineer, John Webb from Birmingham, created the Sewage Lamp, which transformed sewage into biogas to light avenue 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 means to deal with municipal wastewater, earlier than chemical treatments. In the developing world the anaerobic process is still recognised as a cheap, natural various to chemical substances and the reduction of dysentery bacteria.

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

4. Today China leads the world in the use of biogas

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

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