Methane from carbon dioxide - System Integration

The following objectives were reached:

•  Transferred microbial culture from the United States to Denmark and and restarted culture production in Foulum using off-the-shelf laboratory equipment
•  Produced ~200 L of microbial culture for reactor inoculation from 0.1 L of innoculum in less than four weeks
•  Completed detailed engineering of gas delivery and reactor management systems
•  Validated start-up procedure and gained culture growth experinence at 3,000-L scale
•  Grew microbial culture to 4,800 L and demonstrated ability to manage state of culture over long periods of time
•  Produced product gas with methane content >90% despite considerable technical limitations of reactor
•  Confirmed predicted reactor performance of 65% to 95% conversion of carbon dioxide to me-thane, dependent upon mixing energy and flow rate, based on earlier engineering analysis, and validating our understanding of key operating parameters
•  Demonstrated the culture’s resilience to withstand environmental insults, including through two unplanned process upsets that resulted in the delivery of air and unknown substances into the reactor system
•  Achieved 3,400 h of operational run time with raw biogas feedstock from an adjacent anaero-bic digester
•  Produced methane with 4:1 hydrogen to carbon dioxide molar ratio
•  Produced and stored sufficient microbial culture for 1st commercial unit
•  Demonstrated needs for key nutrients for the catalytic culture at this scale are less than 5% of the amount predicted from laboratory scale cultures.

Affirmation of the project’s success is validated by Energinet.dk’s ForskEL program approval to fund Electrochaea’s P2G-BioCat demonstration-project with a 27,6 mDKK PSO grant. The BioCat project is 2

a 1.0 MW commercial-scale unit to be sited at the Avødore wastewater treatment plant near Copen-hagen. Formal project partners include Audi, Electrochaea, Energinet.dk, Erdgas Zurich, ewz (Swiss Utility), HMN Gashandel, Hydrogenics, Insero Business Services, Nordjysk Elhandel, and Spildevandscenter Avedøre. The experiences and data collected in the Foulum project will support the design, engineering, construction, and operation of the BioCat facility. We are excited about this pro-ject and the opportunity it provides to build and operate the first commercial-scale power-to-methane unit in Denmark. It is our belief that successful execution of the project will lead to larger additional projects in the Danish market.