What is biogas?
Biogas is a renewable fuel produced by the breakdown of natural matter corresponding to meals scraps and animal waste. It can be used in quite a lot of ways including as vehicle fuel and for heating and electricity generation. Read on to learn more.
What’s biogas? How is biogas produced?
Biogas is an environmentally-friendly, renewable energy source.
It’s produced when organic matter, similar to food 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 materials must be enclosed in an atmosphere the place there isn’t any oxygen.
It will probably occur naturally or as part of an industrial process to deliberately 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 materials, food waste or sewage.
Which gases does biogas comprise?
Biogas consists primarily of methane and carbon dioxide. It could possibly additionally embody small amounts of hydrogen sulphide, siloxanes and a few moisture. The relative quantities of those vary relying on the type of waste involved in the production of the ensuing biogas.
What can biogas be used for?
To fuel vehicles – if biogas is compressed it can be used 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 facts
1. Biogas is a gas of many names
Biogas is most commonly also known as biomethane. It’s additionally typically called marsh gas, sewer gas, compost gas and swamp gas in the US.
Biogas is a naturally occurring and renewable supply of energy, resulting from the breakdown of organic matter. Biogas is not to be confused with ‘natural’ gas, which is a non-renewable supply of power.
2. Biogas and biomass: relatedities and variations
Biomass and biogas are both biofuels; they are often burnt to produce energy. But biomass is the stable, natural material. Biomass has been used as an energy supply since humans first discovered fire and burnt wood, plants and animal dung to create energy.
As we speak, 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 just isn’t a new discovery
The anaerobic process of decomposition (or fermentation) of organic matter has been happening in nature for millions of years, even before fossil fuels, and continues to occur throughout us in the natural world. Right now’s industrial conversion of natural waste into energy in biogas plants is simply fast-forwarding nature’s ability to recycle its useful resources.
The primary human use of biogas is assumed so far back to three,000BC within the Center 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 organic matter. Van Helmont can be liable 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 means to treat municipal wastewater, before chemical treatments. In the growing world the anaerobic process is still recognised as an inexpensive, natural various to chemicals and the reduction of dysentery bacteria.
And let’s not neglect that in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome the post-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. In the present day China leads the world in using biogas
China has the largest number of biogas plants, with an estimated 50 million households utilizing biogas. These are principally in rural areas and small-scale residence and village plants.
