Intelligent biogas fuelled energy conversion technologies

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Biogas is a collective term for gases formed by decomposition of various biological materials without the supply of air. Consisting mainly of methane and CO2, biogas offers the possibility as a renewable and environmentally sound fuel for distributed ener gy utilization. The project is targeted at biogas fuelled energy systems for combined heat and power production, investigating three different technologies. These are energy conversion through the use of gas engines, gas turbines and fuel cells. Using ex perience and competence on natural gas based systems, focus will be on performance, emissions, maintenance costs, availability etc. for the different technologies when using various mixtures of biogas. The objective is to optimize the utilization of bioga s through the use of advanced monitoring tools and by continuous monitoring of each energy conversion technology. Deviation from expected performance will be detected and necessary measures will be taken to run the system at its optima. The R&D tasks wil l have both an experimental and modelling side. Through long-term testing and monitoring, tools for surveillance and techno/economic optimization of biogas based energy systems will be developed. This will involve new control systems, intelligent monitori ng tools and surveillance technology. Measured performance, condition based maintenance, experienced and documented operation envelop will form the basis for development and validation of the models and analysis tools. The project's relevance with regard s to application potential is through the development of knowledge needed for efficient implementation of CO2 free energy production based on local resources. It is the ambition of the project partners to develop and provide knowledge, crucial for integra tion of biogas in the energy system.