Ddevelopment of a new membrane concept for biogas upgrading

Denmark has a huge potential for using biogas as a renewable source of energy. However, biogas contains 30% CO2 on average, which means that it is not easy if not impossible to use in the Danish gas grid. For biogas to be usable, CO2 must be removed in a process called biogas upgrading. Among the existing technologies for biogas upgrading, membrane gas separation is especially economical. Danish Technological Institute has recently developed a method of producing membranes for gas separation that employ zeolite particles as additive. This method results in a tight connection between zeolite and polymer, making the membrane significantly adept in separating CO2 from biogas. A certain zeolite type, DD3R, has just recently been detected to be able to increase CO2 removal even more. These two new developments at Danish Technological Institute will be combined with an innovative new solution at Totax Plastic A/S that has sent in a patent application on a cheap way of making gas separation membranes. This collaboration in the project has the goal of producing a membrane unit that will be able to remove CO2 from biogas and compete with the existing technologies.