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Biogas Cleaning and Upgrading Technologies

AEX-653.1-14
Agriculture and Natural Resources
Date: 03/26/2014

Liangcheng Yang, Postdoctoral Research Associate, and Yebo Li, Associate Professor and Extension Engineer,
Department of Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering, The Ohio State University–OARDC

Anaerobic digestion breaks down organic wastes in the absence of oxygen and produces
biogas. Methane (CH₄) and carbon dioxide (CO₂) are the two major components of the
produced biogas, accompanied by many other impurities such as nitrogen (N₂), oxygen
(O₂), hydrogen (H₂), hydrogen sulfide (H₂S) and ammonia (NH₃). Conversion of biogas to
bio-CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) or injection into a natural gas pipeline usually
requires a much higher CH₄ purity, thus calling for feasible technologies to clean up raw
biogas generated from either anaerobic digesters or landfills. This fact sheet discusses
the composition of biogas and introduces typical commercially available biogas cleaning
and upgrading technologies.

Biogas Composition
A typical biogas composition is shown in Table 1. Biogas generated from anaerobic
digestion (AD) is very similar to that produced from landfills, but both are quite distinct
from natural gas. The existence of impurities in biogas may cause problems. High
concentration of O₂ is explosive. H₂S is corrosive to steel in reactors and engines when
biogas is used for electricity production. Chlorines are toxic, forming polyhalogenated
dioxins. Siloxanes may lead to formation of microcrystalline quartz, which can deposit on
surfaces and cause clogging issues.

Purification Needs for Biogas Applications

When biogas is used for heating and electricity production, only water and H₂S removal
is required. However, most of the gaseous impurities need to be removed for pipeline
injection and transportation fuel conversion. According to U.S. pipeline specifications,
natural gas pipeline injection requires purified bio-gas containing CO₂, water and H₂S
contents of less than 3%, 112 mg/m³ and 4 ppm, respectively [3]. Most bio-CNG
practices require purified biogas to have higher than 97% of CH₄. For liquefied bio-CH₄,
biogas has to be purified until it contains less than 25 ppm, 4 ppm and 1 ppm of CO₂,
H₂S and H₂O, respectively, to prevent dry ice formation and corrosion [4]. Therefore, the
need for biogas cleaning and upgrading is application dependent.

Table 1. Composition comparison. Adapted from [1].

Character Unit AD biogas Landfill biogas Natural gas

CH₄ vol% 53–70 30–65 81–89

CO₂ vol% 30–50 25–47 0.67–1

N₂ vol% 2–6 <1–17 0.28–14

O₂ vol% 0–5 <1–3 0

C₂+ Hydrocarbons vol% 0 0 3.5–9.4

H₂ vol% 0 0–3 NA

H₂S ppm 0–2000 30–500 0–2.9

NH₃ ppm <100 0–5 0

Chlorines mg/Nm³ <0.25 0.3–225 NA

Siloxanes µg/g-DW <0.08–0.5 <0.3–36 NA

Table 2. Biogas cleaning methods, number of plants and averaged purities of output
CH₄. Adapted from [2].

Method Number of plants Ave. CH₄ purity, %

Water scrubbing 107 96.1

Pressure swing adsorption 55 95.8

Chemical absorption 53 94.6

Membrane permeation 22 90.3

Cryogenic process 1 88.0

Purification Methods
Removing biogas impurities other than CO₂ is referred to as biogas cleaning, while
further separating CO₂ from biogas is known as biogas upgrading. Commonly used
methods are listed in Table 2, together with the number of industrial plants worldwide
using them and their achieved CH₄ purities.

Water scrubbing (Fig. 1) removes both CO₂ and H₂S simultaneously by taking
advantage of their higher water solubility compared to CH₄. To enhance absorption,
biogas is usually compressed. After absorption in the scrubber, the purified biogas,
which contains more than 97% CH₄, is collected from the top of the scrubber, while
liquid effluent containing high concentrations of CO₂ and a trivial amount of CH₄ is
treated in a flash tank to recover CH₄. The water is then regenerated in the stripper with
air blown (air sparging) into the reactor.

Pressure swing adsorption (PSA, Fig. 2) uses the adsorbent's pressure dependent gas
adsorption rate to capture preferred gases at a high pressure, and then release the
adsorbates at a low pressure to regenerate the adsorbent. In the pressurized vessel
(step 1), impurities having high gas adsorption rates are adsorbed, while enriched CH₄ is
collected from the top of vessel. The saturated vessel is then depressurized to around
atmospheric condition (step 2) for desorption of the impurities. As the gas released in
this step contains both impurities and a small amount of CH₄, it is recycled. The pressure
is further decreased to a near vacuum in step 3, which de-adsorbs captured gases and
regenerates the adsorbents. The gas that leaves the vessel in this step mainly consists of
CO₂, N₂ and O₂. Pressure is built up in step 4 for the next cycle.

Amine solvents, such as monoethanolamine (MEA), diethanolamine (DEA) and

methyldiethanolamine (MDEA), can selectively absorb CO₂. In the amine absorption
system (Fig. 3), absorption happens at a high pressure and a relatively low temperature
(35–55°C), with the high purity CH₄ collected from the absorption reactor. The CO₂
enriched solvent is then regenerated at a temperature of 115–125°C with a steam flush.
A heat exchanger is usually employed to pre-heat the CO₂-rich amine using the hot lean
amine for energy saving (Fig. 3).

The design principle of membrane permeation is that under a certain pressure, gases
with high permeability (e.g., small molecular size and low affinity) can be transported
through the membrane while gases with low permeability are retained. As shown in Fig.
4, high permeable impurities such as CO₂, O₂ and H₂O pass through the membrane as
permeate, while low permeable CH₄ is retained and collected at the end of the hollow
column.

Cryogenic technology takes advantage of the different boiling points of gases and

progressively cools the biogas to obtain high purity CH₄. Most impurities can be
condensed at -25°C, and CO₂ can be frozen and separated from the gas stream at
-78.5°C.

Benefits and drawbacks vary among these methods. Water scrubbing is able to remove
CO₂, H₂S, NH₃ and dust at the same time, but needs lots of water. Pressure swing
adsorption requires low energy input, but needs pretreatment to remove H₂S and water,
which may damage adsorbents. Amine absorption usually shows low CH₄ loss and
produces high quality CO₂, but is energy intensive. Membrane permeation systems are
compact and easy to operate, but with a relatively low CH₄ purity [5, 6].

Figure 1. Schematic diagram of water scrubbing.

Figure 2. Schematic diagram of PSA.

Figure 3. Schematic diagram of amine absorption.

Figure 4. Schematic diagram of membrane permeation.

Broader Impacts
Biogas purification is usually a high energy demanding process. However, the
appropriate choice of cleaning and upgrading method based on CH₄ purity requirements
can save energy and reduce CH₄ loss, especially for large-scale biogas plants. The
biogas cleaning and upgrading methods are quite different from each other in design
principle, supporting materials, and energy demand, and consequently are varied in raw
biogas handling ability and CH₄ purity. Therefore, selection of cleaning and upgrading
methods depends on the biogas composition, the available resources (e.g., water,
electricity and space), and the target CH₄ purity. This fact sheet can be used as a starting
guideline for evaluating future practices.

Reference
1. Korres, N.E., O'Kiely, P., Benzie, J.A., and West, J.S. 2013. Bioenergy production by
anaerobic digestion: Using agricultural biomass and organic wastes. Routledge.
2. IEA Bioenergy. Up-grading plant list. 2013. iea-biogas.net/plant-list.html.
3. Ullmann's Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry, 1986.
4. Johansson, N. 2008. Production of liquid biogas, LBG, with cryogenic and
conventional upgrading technology. Lund Institute of Technology, Sweden.
5. Persson, M., and Wellinger, A. 2009. Biogas upgrading to vehicle fuel standards
and grid introduction. Biogas upgrading and utilization.
6. Patterson, T., Esteves, S., Dinsdale, R., and Guwy, A. 2011. An evaluation of the
policy and techno-economic factors affecting the potential for biogas upgrading for
transport fuel use in the UK. Energy Policy. 39: 1806–1816.
Originally posted Mar 26, 2014.

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