North Rhine-Westphalia advances study on biogas production and processing
The Department of Trade and Industry advances feasibility study on the production and processing of biogas due to the NRW-EU Ziel2-Program
Gelsenkirchen based GELSENWASSER AG has been engaged in the support program "energie.nrw" with their cooperation project called "Nachhaltiges Biogas" (sustainable biogas). A board of experts supported the application and recommended an advancement by the Federal State. On June 6, 2009 Secretary of Commerce Christa Thoben handed over the grant on 137,000 euro for the research project to GELSENWASSER AG and its project partners in Gelsenkirchen. Using the example of Niederrhein, the project aims at developing a concept for an idustrial and sustainable production and distribution system of biogas.
The applied study, conducted in a rural area, is to create a basis for the development of a regional model of biogas. Besides technical and economic aspects, this project especially accounts for aspects of sustainability. This is to be achieved by the survey of ecological effects of biogas supply, an emmission balancing and the development of a corresponding material flow management.
This concept integrates the whole value added chain for a decentral industrial feed system which is supplied by agricultural degesters. All the partners have planned to analyze the feasibility for a decentral production of biogas in small digesters. They also want to analyze if it is possible to pipeline the gas to a central processing plant. Afterwards the biogas is to be fed into the local gas distribution system. The total volume of the project is at some 450,000 euro. In the case of positive research findings, GELSENWASSER and its partners e.g. from agriculture, gas suppliers, plant manufacturers and operators and financial service providers, are intending to invest some 25 m euro in sustainable biogas generation in the future.
(Sources: EnergieAgentur.NRW and Gelsenwasser AG)