Particulate content of biogas

¹ VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd, Centre for Metrology MIKES, Tekniikantie 1, 02150 Espoo, Finland
² VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd, Biologinkuja 5, 02150 Espoo, Finland

^* Corresponding author: richard.hogstrom@vtt.fi

Abstract

Increased use of biogas in energy production and transportation is necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and dependency of imported fossil fuels in the EU. To support this, quality specifications for biogas is under development specifying, among other things, limit values for impurities including the requirement of particle free biogas. At the moment, however, the particle concentration of biogas is not monitored. In this study, the need and appropriate methods for measurement based quality control was investigated. Biogas was sampled at the Kujala biogas production and upgrading facility in Lahti, Finland. Both off-line measurements of bottled biogas and on-site measurements were performed. Results indicate that the particulate content of biogas is very low even before any processing, and thus measurement based quality control is not necessary. However, the particulate content probably depends on the specific biogas production process and thus it must be assessed for each process separately. The measurement of particulate content of biogas should preferably be performed on-line, because sampling and storing biogas in gas bottles results in significant particle losses.